#71 The National Strike Team & EM Operations - Interview with Ops Chief Tim Britt

The National Strike Team actively engages in catastrophic disasters. Tim Britt is the Operation Section Chief on the team and talks next steps for the program.

The Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (PKEMRA) created the National Strike Team - 3 sets of emergency managers staged across the US to act in times of catastrophe. FEMA took on these teams and called them the National Incident Management Assistance Team (N-IMAT). Tim Britt is the Operations Section Chief on the Red team (formally known as N-IMAT West). Host John Scardena served with Tim on this team, they catch up and talk about future steps of the N-IMAT Program.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

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Host: John Scardena (1m 42s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your host John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. I have Tim Brett, the operations section chief for the National Incident Management Assistance Team. Red is what I think they're called now. Oh, he got the red on the shirt, wow they updated everything, that's cool. When I was there, the color was gold, so maybe they've gone down in value out of now, but Tim's the man. I'm excited to talk about what the national strike team is doing and see about future plans. I'm sure he's going to give you great advice today. Tim, welcome back to the show.

Guest: Tim Britt (2m 16s):

Hey John, thanks to be back. Appreciate the opportunity.

Host: John Scardena (2m 19s):

Yeah, absolutely. So first things first, are you following hockey at all?

Guest: Tim Britt (2m 27s):

Only the guy who got shot in the chest with a firework.

Host: John Scardena (2m 33s):

Tragic man, freaking nuts, dude. I'm like no, I'm laughing, but it's absolutely horrible. I will say though, it kind of makes sense for one reason and it's going to be really dark, but just follow me for a second. He played for the Columbus Blue Jackets, Ohio. Of course he went up to Michigan and they killed him, right. Essentially Michigan's the worst. So go Bucks, Ohio state, but seriously I have to make light of it. I mean it shows that like fireworks are dangerous, but you think the guy could like take it right with all those hockey pucks hitting him or something. I don’t know man, exploded on his chest, right?

Guest: Tim Britt (3m 13s):

Yeah. I think that just amplifies the necessity for PPE. Now, like you're doing operations, whether it's hot tub fireworks, or actually going into a contaminated environment has not area. You've got to have your PPPE on because if you don't have the right stuff, yeah you're going to be impacted.

Host: John Scardena (3m 32s):

The fact that they were shooting off mortars next to a hot tub just tells you everything about like something could go wrong. I mean, I don't mean to like make light of it, but like seriously, there's probably a lot of really obvious takeaways from that situation of time and place and it is unfortunate. So you're not following the Las Vegas Knights. I don't really follow them either, but that was a lot of fun when we went to that. Yeah, that was awesome. I still have that video somewhere of us doing that. Okay let's talk about your job. This is why people want to talk to us. First of all, red, did we talk about this last time? The rebranding of the IMAT teams? There's a lot of big changes that's happening with the IMAX, right? I mean, there was a new directive that came out and stuff.

Guest: Tim Britt (4m 20s):

Oh yeah, got that. I meant directives. We're not operating off of the car while memo that, Hey, I actually have it right here from 2011, which our response metrics were kind of measured against this guidance from 2011. The new IMAT directive has our… gosh, this is crazy. I've got this stuff right here. This is hot. I mean the little metrics tags I can go right to, It's important. I mean, I'm asked to board within two hours’ drive driving instance in the continental United States within 12 hours.

Oh, corn is 24 hours. Right? So we've got some great readiness objectives and capabilities within 18 hours of arrival, complete initial assessment of unstable critical infrastructure. So it's really good metrics lined out, you know, to see what right looks like. Or you're not getting the job done, we're not meeting those metrics that are laid out there. So important objectives put in their forest.

Host: John Scardena (5m 28s):

The two hour thing is, I mean, I operated under that as well when we were there. But to see that actually outlined as an official metric, you know, how many times did we say we were out the door in two hours and we'd get the call on four, six, and you know, get on a commercial flight. Has that changed at all? Do you guys ever, actually, so this is a funny thing about being alive, Matt. Like we'd always test using military flights, but then we'd all get on commercial. Have you guys actually implemented that at all? Or what?

Guest: Tim Britt (5m 58s):

Well, we have done the coast guard load up in, fly out, but not in a response, right. Because you know, we execute the known type incident, like in their weather related normally right. Where we have a vision on what that timeline looks like as opposed to the Wasatch earthquake scenario. Or two, we just spent this last previous three days working on the Bay Area or quick response and the Alaska earthquake catastrophic earthquake response where you may see that military flight because there's no foresight to plan backwards plan that arrival time.

Host: John Scardena (6m 45s):

Black swan event. Yeah, I have to remind myself, this is public knowledge. Okay, so I'm not giving away secret here. When I got to the IMAT team, I'd been on the IMF team for about three weeks, just joined FEMA from another federal agency. We went down to FEMA region nine and this planner, I'll just leave him nameless for now. He's like, Hey, I just finished the catastrophic plan for the Bay Area and he shows us the maps.

Again, I'm the GIS guy, so I'm supposed to know the maps, right? I'm looking at the maps and the evacuation routes, and I'm like, this is way off to the point where I gave this as public knowledge. So I'm not giving away anything crazy here. There was one evacuation route outside of the Bay Area and that one evacuation route goes by Lawrence Livermore, National Laboratories. I said, Hey, if you're in a catastrophic event where you're truly trying to evacuate the entire region, national laboratories will be impacted, you really don't want everybody to be driving by that. He was like, oh, they haven't had live testing in years. I was like, oh, just kidding. I was there three months ago and yes they do. I'm not going to tell you what the kind of stuff they have, but they have a lot of stuff that if it mixes with the air, that's not good for me, and that was the only evacuation route out of location. I was like, maybe you want to revisit. He's like, well, I just chose the best route. I was like, you did not choose the best route of go, let's pump the brakes there. So I don’t know, that was my last review of the Bay Area evacuation plan.

Guest: Tim Britt (8m 39s):

Well, feel better now because there are other routes out there that are going to be utilized. You know, this scenario is still, there's the public version of a plan out there. The operation would probably at a minimum be broken out into probably three different kind of areas of operation, four geographic branches, but supported by a designated federal, state staging areas for each of those operational kind of areas. I'm kind of mixing terms, I don't want to confuse anybody. Yeah, so the North Bay headed up North Coast, there's the 80-corridor west egress out, then there's that south bay exit. So yeah, not just one area now, and yeah, it's unfortunate that the region nine office is right there on the Hayward fault. So, it's a concept of itself.

Host: John Scardena (9m 48s):

It's the same thought process of having FEMA region two the freedom tower, you know, like the target. Right, I think there's some political weight there of like saying like, Hey, FEMA's there, it's safe and trying to help people feel like it's safer. But in terms of strategic, I remember a long time ago, they were talking about moving FEMA region nine to the Capitol, but they decided to keep it in Oakland. So, I don't know, there's a lot of planning constraints there. In fact, you guys have been dealing with a lot of different planning and constraints. We talked in December about how COVID changed a lot of things in the virtual aspect of that.

Now that I think the world has gotten tired of talking about COVID and politics, they're open even though we have the Delta variant, to me of all these other things, but we also have vaccinations now in terms of like call Congress, shelters and the response, pretty much all of FEMA, Joseph this on the show, pretty much all FEMA has been vaccinated at this point. So, in terms of like future responses, do you feel like it's getting kind of back to like the normal, or do you feel like COVID taught to you so many lessons that like everyone's rewriting the book? Like what are your thought processes there?

Guest: Tim Britt (11m 3s):

Well, I think we're talking operations. I mean, Kobe was definitely a limiting factor. You know, there are constraints that specifically, in the mass care arena and resource availability, for any sort of medical decompression, you know. So, that was always a consideration on how we responded, you know, the team itself, we spent six weeks in Louisiana during kind of a heightened COVID right. Kind of amplified felt firsthand that mascara mission and the medical availability of resources, you know, to decompress or even to medical transport. Right. So, yeah, that was impactful. I think coming out, you know, we're kind of metaphorically coming out the other side of this thing now and headed right back into another hurricane, fire season, and the national IMS, you know, really are, from my perspective in kind of what our role is in that catastrophic big type one plus event. That's the mission set that we can't fail on. Right. That's as a national IMAT, we go there and not know what we're supposed to do would be an embarrassment to myself.

Like what have you been doing the last year of not preparing for this, right. We've got some pretty good, you know, a basic approach to complex problems, right. That I think can be applied across operations that we've come up with. So, looking forward to executing them either in an exercise environment, preferably as opposed to a real incident that can hit this catastrophic, that Alaska or California, or for the whole Cascadia subduction zone, you know?

Host: John Scardena (13m 7s):

Okay. So, in terms of understanding those, you just explained like, Hey, we're doing these new things where we want to implement them, we want to test them out. Recognizing like county level emergency manager or campus level of emergency manager, you know, they have different operational constraints, they have different operational perspectives. Is there some advice that you could give them from like your lessons learned as the ops chief to say like, Hey, this is what you should apply at your level, at any level.

Guest: Tim Britt (13m 38s):

Right. Yeah. That's the thing that we tried to do is operationally try to create a brilliant at the basics. Right, and I think this could apply to the county. You know, I was in Calloway, we asked the state of California, so I get that state relationship and the state relationship we're supporting the county. Right. I had conversations and we went back and forth on this with our emergency services, mass care, critical infrastructure, our branch directors, right. We said, Hey, what makes us good? Right. Briefing out an FCO reporting on information and establishing operations.

We really came up with, you can apply this at the catastrophic level and to a flood in your county. That's the nuances of established communications, right? Talk to everybody, find out who you can and cannot talk to, gain access to that impact, that area, assess the impact and then deliver the capability, right. You can do that as a county emergency manager or as the federal government coming into a state, right.

So that initial approach to establishing your operations, and then how do we communicate and relay to inform decision-making from the USCG or the director of emergency management for your county, or, or what you have and operate off of, where's the line of efforts in that incident or the current operations that are ongoing. Identify which ones those are identify, which are the critical considerations to those and what are the limiting factors, right? Then what are your resources that you have, what's coming in and what do you need? Then finally, what are the future operations? What am I going to have to support? Where am I going to have to sustain forward? I think if we did it in Delta and we did it wore out, we kind of knocked it down to that and it was really effective. You didn't get a, Hey, here's what I did today briefs right. I know you did your job, right, that's why we're here. You know, I trust that right. Then apply those kinds of four areas in a quad chart is kind of what we visually look at too. So, I think those two concepts are going to play well for us.

Host: John Scardena (16m 26s):

I love the, tell me what you did today, or let me tell you what I did today, man. There's so many of those meetings where I was like, I do not need to hear this at all. Like, can we move on? It always has felt like somebody patting themselves on the back, like, Hey, this is what I did. Then you create a culture of thinking you all did really great because you never took time to talk about the gaps, right. So, hey what do we need to get done? So of course, Tim Brit, our friendly Marine is going to say like, Hey, let's think about what comes first. I was actually just telling who was Kevin Coleman, I was just talking to him, or was it Kevin Koehlmoos, Patrick McGuinn. It was somebody, one of our mutual friends. We've had a really great year with Doberman. We've hired a lot of really talented people and what happens is people want to create their own projects. They want to like expand, they want to do career development, all that kind of stuff. They start making these goals, and the question I keep on going back to them with, and it's coming kind of repetitive. It's coming with kind of a thing is, what is the outcome you want? If they can't tell me the outcome they want, that means they're approaching the planning process from the wrong direction. You always start with the outcome in mind for IMAT.

It's how do you go home right? How do you get people out of shelters? How do you return to normal? How do you get into recovery? That's the outcome. So, it's just really fascinating that the advice you give is so applicable to anybody. It's like get away from the fluff. As I'm talking too much myself, you brought up three things. Yeah. You brought up three things that I wrote down here. Basically, you're describing situational awareness and true situational awareness. Get in, get into the disaster, assess the damages, make courses of action, go, right. I'm a big fan of situational awareness. I don't think it's utilized as much as it should be in emergency management. Therefore, a lot of decisions create snowballs that have directions, aimless directions. So, I think that's a really good call out. In fact, maybe you can bring that up a little bit later. Again, you talk about lines of effort. This is where maybe for a while, pause here, I actually have a third one, the support versus sustain lines of effort. Tell me more about lines of effort.

Guest: Tim Britt (18m 57s):

Boy, you're going to embarrass me with a book definition, right? Conceptionally, those are the current operations, right, that are impacting community lifelines. Those key factors, let's say mass care would be a line of effort. And along that line of effort, you have an outcome or an end state, but you know, along that line of effort, there are intermediate objectives that need to take place to stabilize that community lifeline or that operation temporary powers. Another one, right? That would be a line of effort bringing stabilizing the power requirements for community lifeline.

What does that end define, that end state, and then apply what needs to happen along the intermediate objectives, along that line of effort. It can be a little bit wonky because you'll look at it visually linear when the actions may not be linear. Okay, something to keep in mind when you're talking about it and briefing it. We do a federal incident approach that we developed. It outlines the line of efforts, shows the resources, shows the gaps, what are we doing to mitigate against maybe environmental factors to execute that line of effort really helps me see it operationally like wherever and in a C is really complex.

It's really has a bunch of interdependencies. Then maybe that's where you're going to stand up a task force within your organization, bring all the key players together. That's really one of the benefits of developing that line of effort, writing it down because of the efforts that it takes, the communication effort in cross coordination effort to build it, to be able to articulate it, usually get you to the outcome of that situational awareness you can talk about.

Host: John Scardena (21m 6s):

The interdependency was the word that was coming up in my mind. It's an easy way to explain something that's interdependent and even interconnected the way I would describe it as like the fourth grader doing the solar system. If you do like a solar system display, you have the sun, and then you have these perfect equal rings of where each of the planets are. That's a really easy way to explain what the solar system looks like. By the way, there are nine planets. So, screw anybody who thinks there's not, but a blue is a planet. If you look at the reality of it, it's obviously much more complex. They cross paths constantly. There's the sun and the solar system is actually turning in real time on top of itself. For a fourth grader or four on paper, it's, it's easier to see that and you should see that. So, you understand what the problem set is, but in the reality of it, it requires lots of taskforce to understand a very complex situation. Great way to explain that support versus sustain. I'm going to do this whole definition thing on you really quick, tell us the difference between support versus sustain.

Guest: Tim Britt (22m 24s):

Well I think the supporting and sustaining, I don't know if there's really that broad of a difference, right. But I think sustainment is the goal. Right? Supporting it is one thing, but I think sustains a much stronger action. Mike Smith, the other operations section chief on one of the other national IMATS, right, one of the first things that he mentored me on was don't start something you can't sustain, especially in the delivery of commodities, per se, where you have an impacted population.

It's one day they come somewhere for MREs and water or blankets or tarps. Then the next day they come and it's not there, right? Because you only had the limited amount or, you know what I mean? So, whenever you start, you have to be able to sustain, then that's got to help those that you can help, but keep that in mind if you can wait 12 hours or 10 hours to get it, get it right. Maybe that's the better choice. I like to look at it from us from future ops, and it's normally in the mass care. How long is this mass care shelter mission going to be? Can those people who are survivors themselves going to be able to sustain that shelter operation at the local level? Or are we going to have to augment that beyond the state capabilities? Because you can't be late to need on that.

Host: John Scardena (24m 10s):

Okay. I'm going to pick on you a little bit. It's never a smart idea to pick on Tim Britt, but I'm going to pick on you a little bit and it's really picking on FEMA. Future ops are really just planning and most of planning and FEMA is just documentation. So, like I find that the terminology is kind of like… that term is used a lot with FEMA of future plan and future ops and well, let's just create your plan and understand, okay, we're going to put people in a shelter, which means we need food, we need water. How long can we live there with kids? Should we put it in a flood zone? Probably not. So, there’s a lot of planning goes along with that, but yeah, that is future ops. This is like I said, it's a problem. It's always a problem.

Guest: Tim Britt (24m 60s):

Right? So, I think over the last two years at a minimum, we've been able to do some engagement with analytics, smarter people than what you would say, what you would normally associate with theme of planning, right. Giving them the tools, showing them, and utilizing analytic tools and methodology to be able to project out how long that POD mission's going to last and utilizing that national business EOC and grocery input, and, you know, when is food going to be available.

Where's that fine line between providing commodities that are readily available as part of the recovery of that impacted region and charting that out to give us an idea what that future feeding commodity operation is going to look like. Right. Then also as part of the future ops, or in my mind, are cascading events. Or if this thing continues to trend this way, the shelter's going to be in the fire, right? I mean, cause by fire behavior and using buyer behavior tools to inform operational decisions that are, you know, 5, 10, 15 days out, another future off thing, right. That we're doing really well now, is bringing in the IRC or the kind of inner agency recovery coordination piece and bring it in early, you know, there's no bigger future off, up then long-term recovery, right? I mean, us being able to inform and hand off that capability to that IRC branch now, I think we're getting better every day at what we're learning and applying lessons learned and with our operations. Like you said, I'm not going to disagree with what you said as a snapshot in time, but I think we're getting better. I think that’s important you know.

Host: John Scardena (27m 19s):

That's a good call-out and I will say that when I worked with informed leaders at FEMA, those informed leaders like yourself would try to use analytics to figure out what was going to happen. The cascading effects, whether it's cascading is not usually paired with something negative, but there is an impact to what you do and trying to figure out what the impact will be based off of courses of action. The more you can use analytics and decision-making, this is what, this is what I tell people. I keep telling people, it's three things. It's like why I think Doberman has like figured out like this amazing niche.

If you take data, training, and experience, you're going to have a perfect emergency manager. You need to be able to be smart enough to say, I don't know everything. You start to grab, gather all the information, whether it's different stakeholders, looking at geospatial information, cascading events, whatever. So, you're starting to pull in all the data, training, you got to be really good at your job. So, you had to practice constantly and the last part is, sometimes there's just no substitute besides I've been doing this for 30 years, trust me, X is going to happen. Andy, John just shared that on our episode, talking about that in a similar fashion where somebody said, Hey, I've got to follow my gut and that's after they looked at all the data.

You take those three things and you're going to have a very proficient emergency manager, an emergency management group. I think if FEMA is pushing more into that realm of getting experience, training, and analytics, I think that's all great news. I will still say though, that the planning section, I don't know how much the planning section actually does planning, planning based off of analytics, right. So like if they're pushing that direction, that's phenomenal for sure.

Guest: Tim Britt (29m 17s):

Yeah. Right. No, I agree, right. Like I said, we're trying to get better. We're leveraging talented people on our team to fill those roles. You know, Patrick McGuinn was a planning support, Cameron Sterrett, a really bright planner builds a concept of operations for us. Like I said, we're getting better, better because we're demanding more too. So, I like that, yeah that’s great.

Host: John Scardena (29m 55s):

Oh man, I have so many thoughts based off of that. First of all, Patrick McGuinn and Cam Sterrett, phenomenal emergency managers. In terms of the planning section, the emergency support unit leader is the most emergency manager kind of vault really on the team, to be honest, they're the ones looking at all the plans and creating a plan based off of that. So, there you go and very smart to hire Cameron to replace Patrick. Wow, that was genius.

Guest: Tim Britt (30m 23s):

Yeah and it didn't take a genius to do that though.

Host: John Scardena (30m 33s):

Pretty obvious choice. I think that people like Patrick and Cameron, people like Kevin Coleman, people like you and several others, I think what sets people like that apart, I've been really looking at this because we actually, we obviously try to hire really talented people here and Franzia economy, man, she's off the charts. But I think this thrive for wanting to know more and willing to do something about it. I remember seeing you at the IMAT and like, most people being super bored and you're like, man, I'm so busy.

And I'm like, what? But you were just like that thirst for knowledge and wanting to do things right and to have that work ethic, Cameron's like that, man, Cameron is one of these dudes, let's be real. He wouldn't have FEMA Corps. FEMA Corps, that program is mediocre at best, went into peace Corps, phenomenal program, but it requires a lot of self-starting effort. So, he goes on to the national team with not a, I would consider an expert level of understanding of what emergency management is, but within the six months he was already beyond most people like that. That’s who he is and to your credit, I mean, by the way you talked to Cam Sterrett, you get to about 12 seconds before he brings up Tim Britt. Oh, Tim Brett, man, I love where he's blah, blah. I'm like, are you sure you're not? The deputy is like, are you trying to get, no, he’s a big fan of you. Again, it goes back to that train of thought, talking too much, but well done too, for setting that standard. I have a question is, kind of my Q and A with Tim Brett here. I keep hearing lately from some emergency managers, I disagree with it, but I want to hear your thoughts. They say emergency managers should not be involved with response as a guy whose entire job is response and who, obviously I like response. What would you say to that? Without just laughing them out of the room, what are your thoughts on that?

Guest: Tim Britt (32m 56s):

Well, I think that when you're looking from an emergency management perspective, even with FEMA, even with my role, right? So you bring it down, there's the crisis management component of this, where your fire, your law, your public works, right? They're the subject matter experts dealing with that crisis, right. But there's a consequence management part. I think as an emergency manager, your back, your situational awareness, understanding the situation, applying the right capability to it. One of the times the emergency manager has a direct line to whatever that governor, the city manager, the county board of supervisors, you know, that governmental component and they're looking for information related to the incident.

So, there's that ESF five, you know, capability that role that you fill with providing information that links that public affairs component does that alert warning. So yeah, you have to be, when you use at core capabilities, were those lists, right? You have to be involved in response. Then just the actual management of, and the consequences that come out of that are people being evacuated. Do they need the sheltering, you know, as a mass care, the grant programs, right. That put that thing back together. That was that impacted through public assistance or other grants. You know, I mean, that's the training, right? That can tie all that together into one organization that lives under that emergency management umbrella. Yeah.

Host: John Scardena (34m 52s):

I agree with that. It's so obvious to me, but what I think, what happens is they think, oh man, I love the crisis versus consequence management. I think what happens is either they have a crisis background or they don't have a response. They haven't been working directly with a response. They might work in a response, but it's not seeing that coordination that has to happen that the, like the IMS, is kind of this funny thing, because it's both strategic and tactical, definitely strategic for obvious reasons. But tactical, because you're literally working with the direct people who are involved.

I've been on this train of thought and thinking about like, okay, how do I not laugh them out of the room, but try to understand where they're coming from. I think what they're trying to say is mitigation and preparedness needs to be much more focused on. So I would say that the most time consuming thing an emergency manager should do is focus on mitigation. Mitigation should be much more focused on when you should stop disasters from happening for sure. But the most important function of an emergency manager is life-sustaining right. We're here, we're in the business of saving and sustaining lives, life, property, and continuity of operations. You'll have no more like a real moment than helping somebody muck something out of their home or putting them up in a shelter because they have nowhere else to go like most important versus my most time consuming.

Guest: Tim Britt (36m 29s):

Right? I mean, you're in mitigation and preparedness until you're not right. That's a hundred miles an hour, right? Like really, when you start talking about this is where I'm envious, right? If the county or city emergency manager, I would love to get a fire, right? Identify this threat, start planning, immediate actions. Hey my community, I want them to be able to execute this through external affairs. You know, when this event happens, incident happens, immediate actions by not only the crisis folks, fire, public works, they're doing their thing, but citizens, right.

Guest: Tim Britt (37m 19s):

They are paying us to say, hey, protect us, right. Inform us, tell us what we need to do. I would if I lived next to like a nuclear power plant, right? If there’s some sort of nuclear threat, it's an accident or an actual nation state threat that is involved and you're telling somebody in and around that impact area, Hey, I need you to shelter in place for 24 hours, right. They should know that before the incident, right. But if you tell me that thing just blew up over there, all that's on fire, but I need you to shelter in place because that's all that fallout and stuff has to happen first. Then if you just tell me the day off, that was some sort of messaging, I'm like, yeah, that's cool when I'm out. And I'm running from that thing that I see you there. Yeah. So, I just think that engagement at the local level and doing the preparedness piece, the THIRA evaluations and having putting plans in place, and then articulating them to the citizens that fall under your jurisdictional boundaries. I think that's the wind man. Like that's where you really move the needle, you know, emergency manager.

Host: John Scardena (38m 39s):

I liked that. I like moving the needle. The idea of that you brought up a lot of really great points today. You talked about, obviously crisis versus consequence management, which we were just talking about. We were talking about the need for response. We've talked about kind of what the national strike team does is an overview on the operational perspective that can be applied across the board. So, we covered a lot of really great topics today. I just want to give you the last word. If you're going to give advice to emergency managers out in the field right now, what would you give? What advice would you give?

Guest: Tim Britt (39m 9s):

I would say first off is be brilliant at the basics and be able to execute on that, on that consequence management. Then going back to what you said on that, the situational awareness, and why is that important? Right. Is understanding the situation as it relates to operations. As you know, in big events, we operate off planning, assumptions and planning, assumptions come along with push of resources. The quicker we can understand the current situation, we can turn off that articulated to our higher headquarters. Then we can stop the push of resources based on assumptions and do a pool of required resource requirements and fulfilling requirements, actual things that we need to apply to problems and fill those gaps for in our case, the state, right, or the territory or the Tribe that we're supporting. So, I think just that situational awareness, be brilliant at the basics, understand the situation, you know, and turn that, push it into a pull. I think that's a win for response.

Host: John Scardena (40m 27s):

It's a good thing that the mics are connected right now, because I could probably just drop it right now. That's a great way to end on, be brilliant at the basics, situational awareness, mitigate until you're not nearly going a hundred miles an hour. Right. Tim, thanks so much for coming back on the show, man. It's always a pleasure.

Guest: Tim Britt (40m 46s):

Hey John, thanks for having me.

Host: John Scardena (40m 47s):

Absolutely. So, if you liked this episode, would you should have, you need to give us that five-star rating and subscribe. If you have questions for Tim, you can send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com, or you can be brave enough to put your question out on social media. We'd love to be able to see that there for Disaster Tough Podcast or for government emergency management. If you want to work with Doberman Emergency Management, you want somebody who has training experience and a lot of data to back up their plans, then you should contact us again at info@dobermanemg.com and we'll see you next week.

#70 The EM Student - Interview with Host Franzi Economy

Franzi Economy walks through her journey of exploring emergency management by interviewing experts in the field.

Hosted by Franzi Economy, the EM Student podcast works to bring interviews of industry and academic leaders by discussing trends, topics, and issues that affect emergency managers, first responders, military, higher education, public safety, communications, disaster volunteer organizations, public health, humanitarian groups, NGOs, professionals, students, and researchers.

The EM Student podcast is a part of The Readiness Lab, a network of podcasts owned and operated by Doberman Emergency Management.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.

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Host: John Scardena (1m 48s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode! About a month ago now we introduced the Readiness Lab, we were so excited for that. We brought on some other shows, really great content creators, really great information across the field. Today we want to highlight one of those. We're going to be talking to Franzi Economy, she is amazing. You'll find out why in a second, she runs EM student. So she just created several episodes there and we want to talk about some of the content that she found and EM Student. She can really go into more about that. But EM student, really this focuses on the learning aspect of our emergency management. We kind of focus on changing and the future of emergency management and what she on this show and what she does is saying like, hey, if you're going to be approaching this topic of emergency management, what does that even mean? By getting different people's perspectives, she's been able to formalize several ideas, which we think are really exciting and fun. So, without further ado, Franzi welcome to the show. So EM Student, you're part of the Doberman family, now we're very excited about that. Let's talk about some of the big shows you've had recently, what have they been focusing on and what are some of the things that you've been learning about?

Guest: Franzi Economy (3m 3s):

Yeah, absolutely. I was really excited for this kind of series that I've been working on. I think the idea behind it was, you know, I'm relatively new to emergency management and kind of wanted to just explore and kind of see where my curiosity would take me and just kind of assuming too, that a lot of the questions that I would have, a lot of other people that are either new to the field. I think a huge theme in a lot of people that I've been talking to in emergency management is just that so many people have this kind of always learning mindset. So I think people are just always kind of curious, and as the field is evolving, I just thought a lot of, you know, people would be interested in hearing about some of those things.

Basically, I just started by making a huge list of questions that had tons of questions, you know, that I would love to talk to people about. So, some of those were more about how to navigate the field, how to find education, how to break into the field and things like that, or how to pivot if you're already in the field, but would like to kind of change what you're doing. Then, as I really started talking to people, I really found that emergency management is such a kind of broad topic. I mean, you know, we've kind of talked about this before, how it's kind of like business where there's so many different aspects of it.

It touches so many different other fields and I think where the emergency management kind of intersects with a lot of those other fields was really what I found interesting. So, then I started talking to different people who kind of had emergency management experience, but also could really speak to a lot of other areas. Some of those were talking about kind of where economics and emergency management come together. I talked to somebody who is the communications manager for the city that they work at. So, she kind of brought the communications perspective. I talked to somebody that was really nodular about data. So trying to figure out like what the role of data and data management is and emergency management, and just kind of been this overall connectivity in that, how all fields work together and how we can utilize all these different expertise areas to just really creatively problem solve and really help people. So that was kind of the angle that I was coming from.

Host: John Scardena (5m 28s):

Cool. So man, you just made me want to ask 30 questions based off of that, but let's start with this. So, if emergency management is so broad, right. It is right, it is like saying like the business, what do you do in emergency management? If you're stepping into this field as a kind of a student yourself and this perpetual education aspect, what were some of the most surprising answers? Or like, oh, I had no idea this was a thing, you know, what were some of your big aha moments?

Guest: Franzi Economy (6m 4s):

That's a good question. I think a lot of it was kind of some advice that I expected certain things about like networking's important and really just jumping in there and things like that and setting goals. But I think the thing that was really interesting for me is how different people kind of interpreted or applied that. So, they would give me that advice and then kind of talk to me about how they had implemented that in their career and how they had been successful. So, I think that was more the interesting part. What I've kind of seen is that there are all these common threads. I think there are people that work in emergency management. There are a lot of different things that are very similar and kind of bring people together in that way. But so many people have lots of different paths towards emergency management. I think, you know, that kind of diversity in the space was really cool. Just to kind of see what people learned from, you know, I talked to people who would work in the public sector and the private sector, in government, local government, and EOC, lots of different perspectives. So, kind of seeing how they utilize those different experiences and what they learned from it. I think it was the part where I was like this was really cool.

Guest: Franzi Economy (7m 25s):

I was like, whoa, I hadn't really thought about how to utilize that experience or things like that. So, I think that was probably the interesting part for me.

Host: John Scardena (7m 34s):

Yeah. That's cool, it's kind of like, it's kind of like a hodgepodge kind of industry, because you can bring in all these different things, all these different aspects of emergency management or like things that don't seem related to humanitarian aid, but once you realize how complex a responses or mitigation is, or even recovery, you realize how many different systems it touches, right. Information systems, roadways, you know, even the little building of shelters. Right. It's kind of fun to meet with people with all these different perspectives. I do think that standardization is key to increasing the effectiveness of emergency management for the future, but it keeps drawing people, even yourself.

By the way, Franzi Economy and an economist is like the greatest ever, but even yourself, your path is interestingly enough, right. Where you weren't even closest field and it's kind of starting to draw you in a little bit, right. In fact, for our listeners sake, can you kind of walk us through how that happened and how you kind of got involved, you fell into emergency management somehow, right?

Guest: Franzi Economy (8m 56s):

Yeah. As you mentioned, I definitely come from a background that's really nothing to do with emergency management. Although it is actually pretty interesting how I'm starting to see a lot of different experiences that I had along the way are kind of coming together, you know? There are so many different facets of emergency management and things that you can specialize in. So that's pretty cool. But yeah, I basically was just really interested I think, in learning about different careers and had kind of thought about potentially pivoting and I heard about emergency management. It actually was literally, my mom sent me an article on, I thought I'd be good at it. So just started reading into it and inside outside, it's really great. I really loved the main focus and central tenant is that we're helping people and sometimes I'm like the worst day of their life’s kind of thing, and really being able to have that impact. I just, yeah, that was not great, and so I started investigating more. I actually reached out to Todd Devo on LinkedIn. I mean talk about networking and he was really wonderful. Talk to me about it and gave me kind of a little, you know, insight into what it was like to be emergency manager.

So, I ended up sending up for some classes, started learning more, just really got to meet a lot of really great people, you know? Then when I kind of joined the team and started working on the podcast, to me, that was just really more an extension of the kind of exploration that I'd already been doing. Before I'd been talking to different people in the classes, I was taking the professors I had and was asking them lots of questions too. It's just that when we first started doing the podcast and I just started recording it and making you know, the answers to the questions, we all with other people as well. So you're kind of right, it does draw you in. I think the more I learn, the more I'm interested by it and you know, you get lots of answers to your questions, but then also more questions come up and more curiosity comes out. So that's kind of where I am now.

Host: John Scardena (10m 55s):

That's awesome and that's exciting. So for those who might've caught that Todd Devoe is the host of EM weekly. He's also one of the other shows on the Readiness Lab. He's been on the Disaster Tough Podcast a couple of times, and he's a great guy and a great resource. It’s just kind of funny that you kind stumbled upon his world a little bit and he pointed you in the right direction. Definitely the right direction. What's your mom's name by the way?

Guest: Franzi Economy (11m 24s):

My mom's name is Alice.

Host: John Scardena (11m 26s):

Alice. Alice. Thank you so much for sending that article to Franzi, Franzi is phenomenal. We really like working with Franzi here on the show. So again, Alice, thank you. So, send that to your mom. Yeah, because Alice you're incredible. With that then, in terms of that process, I was actually thinking about this the other day, that lots of people ask me, like, how do I break into the field? You've asked that same thing. So same question to other people, but your process is kind of the process, right?

Like you develop this curiosity for a burdensome management and you start to network, right? Those are the obvious things. But what I find most fascinating about this, and this is what I did, and this is what you did, is I immediately reached out to experts again, that networking thing. But then, I try to find opportunities within to see if I even liked it. I think the problem sometimes with emergency managers, especially those who get a degree to that, I got a degree, I got two degrees in it. I'm kind of hyper-focused, but like they want to start off at like running FEMA, right. They're like, I like helping people.

So, I think I'm qualified to run FEMA, like no, be okay with finding like different aspects of emergency management. Even the idea of linking up with Todd, taking some classes and him saying, Hey, startup, you know, do the series on EM Student. You've had this opportunity now to talk to all these different experts. Now you get to work at Doberman and we're very excited about that, obviously. So yeah, In terms of talking to other people about that, you asked that question on your show. What was the answer essentially?

Guest: Franzi Economy (13m 28s):

Yeah, I think your kind of right. I think the practice that I followed, it turned out to be one that people did end up kind of advising on. I think one of the biggest ones was really just jump in, literally  whatever you can get kind of thing, you know, at whatever level, if it's even tangential, like I had a really cool example that somebody gave where, you know, she really wants to work in emergency management. Her first job wasn't in that it was in, it was still in city government, but it was like kind of in a different office. She then, not long in to her experience figured out that they didn't have an emergency manager or a coordinator for her office.

There wasn't somebody that was being responsible for bringing those principals through and what they were working on. So, she kind of volunteered to take that on. It's like a side project, so she's still working full time for getting paid, but she kind of carved out these responsibilities for herself. So, then she had stuff on her resume and she was like making connections and then her next job, she was much more able to get something more squarely and emergency management, you know, and things like that. I think when it comes to volunteering or just trying to talk to people or joining like a certain thing, anything you can do to kind of increase your contact with people who are already in the field with people you can learn from, anything you can do to kind of just put your hand up.

You know, I think that it almost is to your benefit that I think a lot of times emergency management services can be a little understaffed. So, if you're putting your hand up and saying, I will help and people will take your help and then you get experience I think it really is just looking outside of the typical standard cookie cutter. I want my title to be an emergency manager type route and just kind of any way you can get in and then just people will learn your reputation. If you're just good at what you do, then, you know, they'll have you back

Host: John Scardena (15m 28s):

That title, emergency manager is a title that is heavily sought after in our field because it's like, oh, I'm an emergency manager. That means like I got an emergency management degree. I have to be the emergency manager, but a resource unit leader, a GIS unit leader, a Ops O, anybody in operations, like those are all within the spectrum of emergency management. I think Craig Fugate was pretty smart when he called everybody at FEMA an emergency manager, you know so they could all feel like, Hey, I'm an emergency manager. So, you can get away from that and get to the core mission of emergency management, which is actually helping people.

If you're in the business to helping people and you want to help people, there's a lot of different ways to do that. I am curious though, you and I talked offline about this a little bit, but I think it's good for my audience to hear in the course of your series of interviewing people and learning more about emergency management, you have started to at least, I wouldn't say scratch the surface, but you're able to start sifting now. In that sifting process, you're finding gaps that you're like why is that a gap? I'll call out one that you noted the standardization across the field. Just the simple question of what is emergency management? People have very different concepts of that and there's a lot of history of why that happens that I can explain to for listeners' sake later. But in terms of your perspective where some things like what were the, I want to say the negative surprises, but what were some of the gaps that you've started to flush out? We were like, huh, we really need to work on this as a field.

Guest: Franzi Economy (17m 14s):

Yeah. I think kind of aside from that one, which I do think is actually a really interesting topic because I think there's kind of pull from both sides. So, I think we need a, there kind of does need to be a standardization, but also, I do think that the kind of say, diversity in fields and backgrounds that people have, I really do think that that's important to try to have all those voices at the table. So that is kind of interesting, where to be on that spectrum. I think another thing that really was a recurring theme was that kind of idea of the professionalization of the industry and that kind of idea of how to be taken more seriously or how to be given more authority, more budget, more access to decision-makers and support essentially that that was something that kind of came up over and over and over again.

I think, you know, a little bit in the conversations I had, but also, I actually just mean in my, now almost a year in kind of delving more into the industry. So that was actually kind of something that was interesting to me, I guess, from a very outside perspective, it's like emergency management is a thing, like it's an industry, it's a profession. I didn't realize that there was this kind of more nebulous gray area that it kind of is, or some people think it is, but not everybody thinks it is and that kind of thing, so it would be cool to kind of. That’s the thing, is if this was an easy thing to solve, it would be solved already. I mean, there's lots of such amazing minds, like in emergency management, it's not, you know, it's clearly not easy. But I do kind of wonder, what are some things that people could start working on or how, how to foster that and work on it? I mean, I know there already are people working on it, but you know, it's just so important that I’d be curious to work more on that and to figure that out.

Host: John Scardena (19m 17s):

I’ll ask you a question there's not a right answer to this. There kind of is, but there's not a right answer to this, are people who are in humanitarian aid and people who are first responders, are they in the same field?

Guest: Franzi Economy (19m 38s):

I think if they're in the field of helping people, then yes.

Host: John Scardena (19m 41s):

Well, there you go. Yeah. That's kind of, so like when people think of humanitarian aid, they think of like the Peace Corps, they think of Red Cross, the United nations. They think of, you know, going into Bosnia, right, they think of going to Syria now and helping out. When they think of first responders, fire, police EMS, essentially, they have very urban search and rescue urban search and rescue is the one that's like teetering on both sides of that because they're pulling people out of rebel, which is what's happening right now in Syria. It’s like, what is emergency management? What is humanitarian aid? People have these connotations. If I say first responder, they know what that is. If they say humanitarian, they know what that is. If they say they say emergency manager, they're like what? Like, what do you do? So my thought process is that everybody in emergency management, whether you're a first responder, a humanitarian, you're sitting behind a desk and trying to coordinate resources, that's actually all humanitarian work, right? It's the business of helping people.

I think I said this on the disaster zone, I was just interviewed on the disaster zone. I was like, the greatest lie or the most genius lie of emergency management is whoever came up with the term emergency manager, because you don't actually have any authority to manage but everybody here's emergency manager. So, they think you're the person in charge and kind of are, but you don't really have authority. So my thought process is like, we need to start defining our own scope and not letting other people define the scope for us, and man a lot on that later.

But I've been thinking a lot about in fact, because of you and ultimately because of your mom, Alice, but I was like, what is emergency management? Like, what's that guy to look like? How do you define each of these terms? I started writing down my own questions of what it is and what it isn't and how to box it in so that others create, could create their own framework. Like creating the framework of emergency management is like, despite people who do complex planning for a living, having figured out how to create the framework of emergency management yet, because we're still trying to figure it out I think.

Guest: Franzi Economy (22m 25s):

Well that, and I think another thing that has kind of come up just in my investigation is that it's different people within it. So, it's partly being defined, I think by people outside of the field who don't often understand. That's another thing is when I talk to people, they're like, oh, what are you up to now? You know I tell them I'm studying emergency management. A lot of people don't know what that is. So people outside the field and they're trying to put together their own, you know, understanding of what that is. But I actually even think that there is, there isn't necessarily a cohesive idea or definition within the field, like of people already in it, partly. Part of that comes because all of these people are working in such different fields and they are all like, well, no, what I do is emergency management, and what I do is emergency management. You know, they all have different ideas of what is the main focus of emergency management is, probably based on what their focuses may be. I think there are different ideas, both within the field, as well as that. That's another thing, even if you think about it, I know this is getting really nitty gritty, but even using like the term emergency manager, I mean management, you can be a manager of almost anything. So that's like not super helpful and emergencies like, okay. But there's lots of different types of emergencies will qualify as an emergency. Like if you think about it, if we're going to hear about all the different phases, so preparedness and mitigation, as well as recovery and not just response like okay, but an emergency, is it technically happening during all the times, like no. I don't know, it's just one of those things where I am unsurprised that people have trouble with that term.

Host: John Scardena (24m 12s):

Yeah. Maybe the biggest problem is everybody, kind of funny. It's coming back to what we said a little bit earlier, but we're in the field of emergency management. Therefore, everyone wants to be called an emergency manager, but that's stupid because to your point, that doesn't mean anything. If I'm an emergency support unit leader, that means something I know exactly what that person does. If I'm an ops chief, I know exactly what that person does. So maybe we should all say we work in the field of emergency management, but no one should actually be called an emergency manager anymore.

Host: John Scardena (24m 55s):

Like you and I both worked in the corporate field, the corporate world, I would never have heard somebody call themselves a business manager. Right, I'm just a manager, I'm a manager of this team. I'm like, oh, okay, now what that means? Like, oh, I manage UX, like, okay cool. I get, I get what that means. So maybe that's the big call-out maybe the big call-out is emergency management. The field of emergency management should stop giving the title of emergency manager and start using the real titles that people actually go by. Then they don't have to fight over what an emergency manager is.

I think that's a really good call-out. In my book, what is emergency management? That's going to be my first point. Stop calling yourself an emergency manager. Yeah, chapter one. There's no more emergency managers. The emergency manager just died. Podcast killed over 80 stars. Okay. I even screwed that up podcast killed the emergency, man. Oh, that sounds bad. This is why I don't sing for a living. Okay. Let's see what else? Questions that you said it's developed more questions in your mind about emergency management. What questions do you have? Let's see if I can answer one and then we'll leave it up for everybody to get back onto your show.

Guest: Franzi Economy (26m 25s):

Yeah. I think a lot of the questions that really stems from the conversations that I had, I feel like I was doing the investigating, finding out a lot about what, and I feel like I know kind of why it is helping people and things like that. But I think my next kind of set of questions would be on how so if I think we have all these like lock the ideas of, you know, and either normal ideas, we want to help people, you know, not be traumatized, you know, and help them become whole again after disaster. But so

Host: John Scardena (27m 0s):

That's the idea, to be honest, let's be real, no big deal. Like just repair everything. Yeah.

Guest: Franzi Economy (27m 5s):

Sure. But like have everybody be healthy, happy. For me then, it's like where it gets really tricky. That's the thing you know, if there even is some debate and there are still questions around what more, you can talk a lot in there. But I think when it comes to the how and how to implement that, how to work across these different fields and different levels. So, from federal to state, to local, how to walk at work across the different departments within a local government, how to work with NGOs and how does that, you know, when people always talk about, say that wrench management's out building relationships.

Okay. Well, how do you do that? How do you create trust in the community so that they trust you, trust each other, but also trust the people in charge? How do you know how much information to release? When you know, all these things are things around, how do we implement, how do we create resilience? I think there's a lot of really great work being done on that. People have a lot of ideas and there's a lot of things being tried. But to me, not only is this kind of a blanket way, it is kind of a big question, but then you start getting down to different communities are all different and they all have different needs because they face different potential disasters. There’s a theoretical level where we can talk about how to do this, but then when you start to then try to implement it, it just gets really interesting. I think there's a lot of things that we're trying and figuring out, trying to come up with answers for it.

Host: John Scardena (28m 44s):

Yeah. The how, a lot of that comes with experience. I would say my very first thought on that, and maybe this is good thought to end on, to be honest, but there's no substitute for time. Like they say, don't ever pass out your business card at a disaster. Like, that's like the worst thing you can do. It's like, hey, like I'm going a hundred miles an hour. Like who are you? What can you do for me? I don't have time to learn, like go with what we know, because that's what we've been preparing for. So never handing that business card at the disaster. I would say that the smartest emergency manager, interestingly enough, that term is the best planner and the best planner knows how to figure out who their stakeholders are before at an event.

So that when an event happens, they can just, they call Franzi. They called Todd, they call whoever and say, hey, we need to do X, Y, and Z. We know what your capabilities are. That's the other really big problem is like, Kevin Coleman actually on the show, he's had it really well. He was like, hey, you asked for the need, you don't ask for the tool. For example, hey, we know we need to get a hundred people in helicopters out of this flood, that's headed their way. You don't ask for the specific helicopter. You'd tell the national guard, hey, we need to air lift a hundred people out of here, they figure out which is the best tools to do that. The more you build that trust of like a need versus tool, then that changes a lot of things too. But yeah, a really fascinating to think of. Sometimes I feel like I have the blinders aren't because I've been doing it for so long that I feel like I can address it really well, obviously. But it's kind of refreshing to go in there from like, Hey, I was in economics for 10 years and now I'm going to be figuring out this thing. I would call it emergency manager and emergency management and asking people really, I wouldn't say basic questions, but the fundamental questions and the fact that we can't really answer for you tells us a lot more about us and then than you. It tells us that this field is still developing. I'm still going to say it. Every emergency manager is a humanitarian. If you're not in the business of helping people then get out of my way. Like, that's why I'm here. Right, so great call-outs, I'm going to ask you one final question, you’re closing thoughts of what you've learned and kind of what you expect to look for in the future, in your own journey of growth.

Guest: Franzi Economy (31m 36s):

That's a good question. I feel like there's one huge thing that was definitely a big takeaway from the whole experience really, of working on the podcast in general, and especially these specific episodes that I just kind of put out is that the field of emergency management is filled with really awesome people who will help you. You know, if you ask for it and again, don't ask in the middle of an emergency, obviously take your time. But when I was being put in contact with all the people I wanted to interview, I mean, everybody was so generous with their time, and was really interesting conversation. They're really helpful. You know, basically everybody has offered. They're like, yeah, you have more questions, they all want to help people. I think because they recognized that bringing more people in and more people in the field that want to help people, it’s all going to be good. Ultimately, for the communities we serve, you know? So I think in general that tends to be that way, but it was just like above and beyond what I even thought it would be in terms of people being really helpful and being willing to talk to me about kind of the huge list of questions that I had for them. So that was really great. I think in terms of moving forward, I'm definitely just interested in, you know, there's so many people talking to them, they also have a great deal of passion and in addition to their knowledge.

So that is I think really helpful kind of on my journey. I think it does, talking to these different people and kind of seeing how these different fields overlap to me. I've always kind of been interested in that, but I really was kind of seeing where emergency management touches other fields and how that can be utilized is actually something that is kind of the most interesting thing to me, at least right now, that could obviously change. I'll probably dive more into that. I think that could be really cool and just learning about how the different fields can work together and learn from each other, all those kinds of things. So I think in terms of my own knowledge, that's probably the direction I'll further in.

Host: John Scardena (33m 54s):

My drive moment. Yeah. I think that’s the right mindset. I'm really grateful to have had a lot of experiences outside of emergency management and touch other fields and be like, oh man, this applies so well to what we're doing. We need to start aggregating that including one that is kind of within the spectrum, but use our own learning. I've been on this big kick of use hard lately, especially helping out with the Miami Surfside building collapse and knowing a lot of the people who responded there. There's just been this weird, multi-month like curve outside of like my standard emo. I think that's a great call-out.

So, what I'm going to tell my listeners is EM Student, Franzi Economy. You have another host, Dan Scott, he's also great. We'll have him on here some time, but we're really grateful that you were able to come on here and talk about that. We're grateful that you're part of the Readiness Lab for Doberman. That's really great, but mostly we're grateful for Alice. She is awesome. She pointed you in the right direction. So very good, Alice, this is the show. We'll probably call this show Alice and no one will understand. Actually, Alice has a term. Alice is an acronym for active shooter training. I don't know if you knew that. So, if we call the show, Alice, everyone's going to think we're talking about active shooters, but it is actually a really great training model. Anyways, if you liked this episode, if you learned something from Franzi, especially if your education or your learning to you're trying to like boost your own career, trying to figure out how you can become more capable EM Student is a great resource for you to check out, so make sure you check out EM Student.

Like I said, if you liked this episode, check that out, give us a five-star rating and subscribe, which we always love. Share podcast as much as you want. We would love to hear that too. If you have additional questions, either for Franzi or myself, you can reach out to us in a couple different ways on LinkedIn and Doberman, or emergency management on Facebook, Twitter kind of not really, and Instagram, Instagram is our flagship. Check us out at Disaster Tough Podcast. If you want to work with Doberman Emergency Management, if you want to work with an economist named Franzi, you can send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com and we'll see you next week.

#69 Collaboration in the Disaster Zone - Interview with host Eric Holdeman

Eric Holdeman is the host of the Disaster Zone podcast and a former EM practitioner. He shares his insights on collaboration in EM.

Disaster Zone is hosted by Eric Holdeman, an emergency manager with over 30 years of experience at the federal, state and local levels of government. Disaster Zone is a podcast that focuses on all facets of disasters; the before, during and after of events that are increasingly impacting communities around the world.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

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Host: John Scardena (1m 47s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your host John Scardena, another great week we have coming up here. I'm so excited for this episode. We have Eric Holdeman on here. You should probably recognize his name and his face because if you look at anything related to emergency management, especially Emergency Management Magazine over the last several years, Eric is one of the lead, if not the lead, as far as I know, editor over there. So, he's been putting out column after column after column, he has about 500,000 people read his columns every year. He asked who also owns and operates Disaster Zone, which you can see on the screen behind him, another podcast, that's really great information. So, I'm excited to have Eric on here and to hear his thoughts on emergency management. Eric, welcome to the show.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (2m 25s):

Well, thanks Joh, have we been wanting to do this previously and I'm going to be happy to reciprocate and have you on the Disaster Zone podcast and to my editor at Emergency Management Magazine, I have to say I'm blogging on their site. So those are not columns or blogs, but I then also do write some actual articles for them, do some interviews, that type of thing.

Host: John Scardena (2m 51s):

You have a lot of articles on there. You've been doing it for quite a while. In fact, if you go look at the repository of the articles you've written or the blogs you were in, I mean, it's quite extensive. So, you've had this great opportunity where you get to dive in deep into emergency management for a long time, right? Oh my gosh. Because of that, you also get to see how emergency management has been slowly changing and creeping into other areas. And with that, I got to see a quick preview of an article that you wrote for IEM specifically addressing that. We'd like to talk about the phases of emergency management today and your perceptions or your experience related to collaboration and working with different stakeholders today. Let's just dive in, in terms of your let's say last 14 years of writing posts and looking at this comprehensively, what are some takeaways for you in emergency management? Where is emergency management heading based off of the history?

Guest: Eric Holdeman (3m 57s):

Well, you used the word creeping. I think that's a good word. We're creeping, there's a lot of progress being made, but I say that our profession is still in its tweens. I mean, as it was only 1979, when FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) was created. You know, emergency management came out of the civil defense era and it's only been about the last five or six years that we've had some states like Hawaii and Idaho changed their name from states civil defense over to emergency management. So, it's evolving, but a lot of times we do kind of get whipsawed by what the current hot topic is nationally. We certainly, we gyrate towards whatever the last big disaster was, whether it's 9/11, Katrina, Sandy.

Host: John Scardena (4m 53s):

Yeah, I like to call those sifting events, there's so much in the pile of what emergency management is, and somehow we're both expanding and figuring it out, like what we are really are at the same time. So for all those different ingredients in the sifter right now, each major event, that shaking that happens, we get to see like the new aspect of what the expectation is for our field, from the outside perspective for example, when Congress made the national teams. But we also get to figure out like what our true capabilities are. I just had Kevin Coleman on the show and Kevin was talking about how the pandemic was, they literally invented the playbook. They invented the titles, they vetted all these different things to make that happen. That happens so much in our field, right? Like one day we have to stop inventing new things and just like develop it more, right.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (5m 46s):

I think people ignore the planning that's been done. I know I was still at King county, Washington state rails, the emergency management director there for 11 years, but in 2007, we were working on and then we flew planning and there's a whole playbook, all established for that. When I say there's a couple curve balls that we never planned for in the past on a pandemic, one of them was testing. Testing was not a big thing that we had in the plan and the whole issue of personal protective equipment and supply and the shortage. Everybody thought, well, we got financial store stockpile and that solves it. Well, we found out that’s a poor assumption, so I know a lot has been done. Sometimes people don't read the plan, even as you're getting ready for the actual hazard, even if you have time to anticipate them.

Host: John Scardena (6m 42s):

What’s shocking to me is, how do I say this? As much as I get it, I don't understand why, because it's a pandemic, it is slow onset and so forth. It's hard for people to see, but the fact that there's been so much false information and rhetoric around that, we're actually in a pandemic, even having to convince people that there's an actual pandemic right now has been a mountain of a task for so many emergency managers. It's almost unbelievable. Aye Aye Aye. One of my after actions for this pandemic was, or is, I mean, we're still discovering it, is that the educational system has officially failed because we have the most educated population in history. More people have college degrees, more people have had access to education in the history of the world and yet you still have to explain to people the purpose of wearing a mask or like you can't see the pandemic or that there's not microchips in the vials. So, it's like, man people are dumb dude.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (7m 44s):

We can spend a lot of time on this. I mean, 10 years ago we were worried about rumor control. That was the concept and I’m a big advocate towards use social media to mindful, you know, what's being said. It used to be, you have to watch television with the radio to see what the media is saying. Then you provide accurate facts to counter misinformation that just happens in a rapidly developing event. But in the last four or five years, it's moved from rumor control to disinformation. That's the big thing here where people on purpose know what they're doing. They're sewing seeds of distrust and just not misinformation, disinformation. They're doing it to make money, to get clicks for the website. It's a big difference. Now, the multimedia, there's people like us out there who could be trying to make money just by coming up with conspiracy theories and selling it and there's always somebody seeming to buy it.

Host: John Scardena (8m 50s):

I rarely if ever even, comment to anybody's posts because I understand how the algorithm works. If I like, or I comment on it, then more people see it. So, I usually leave those stuff alone. But I actually had a friend at the beginning of the pandemic, she shared that the virus lived in people's mouths and the virus can only sustain a certain temperature. So, if you drink a boiling water, you will not get the virus. She shared some bogus report and I'm like, man, the fact that there was some idiot out there who shared that. Then my friend who has a college degree, again, stupidity college degree and shares, you should drink boiling water. You know, it's just like, holy crap. So, I had to like contact her and say like, Hey, you have to take that off right now. You're going to get somebody hurt, if not yourself.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (9m 45s):

Yeah. I drank the hydroxy chloroquine. Yeah. Hey, number one, number one treatment, therefore…

Host: John Scardena (9m 52s):

Oh man, hey bleach, we can go into this forever. So, let's not get into that too much, but you're right misinformation, disinformation is real. I remember taking a PIO (public information officer) course, I don't know, 10 years ago or so and we called it room and control at the time. People just misunderstanding or getting excited about information and now it's definitely a whole new ball game. Luckily there's people out you who are writing factual blog posts all about this so that's good. But another one from the vaccination or from the pandemic, you said in 2007, you worked on a playbook for flu pandemic. For flu pandemics in 2014, I was part of a task force that wrote a national playbook national plan for a pandemic response. By the end of February of 2020, all my friends in DC were like, hey by the way, we're not following that plan. They are reinventing the real wheel and it's like, oh man, I wonder how many people have worked on this. I will say, you know, I'll be at all of that. We didn't consider mass vaccination sites, we didn't consider mass testing. The projects, my friends like Kevin Coleman and Joe Dellamura at FEMA that they had to work with and the conditions that they're working under is pretty much phenomenal what they were able to accomplish.

But that kind of opens up that thought process of okay, all these different people you were working on one aspect, I was working on another aspect. They have new constraints that they're considering now. It feels siloed from a person who has been so involved in the process from an emergency management practitioner to writing about this. Tell us about the coordination piece that needs to happen. Not in just a pandemic, but kind of every disaster.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (11m 49s):

Well, I am really and when I talked about coordination, I'm thinking about regional coordination to that. The silo piece is, are how we organize politically, whether you're a city or a county and I always say, you can tell how a emergency management organization thinks about themselves and thinks about regional by looking at their maps. You're a GIS guy, almost every map I see hosted on a wall somewhere has the jurisdiction as an island, there is nothing beyond the actual jurisdictional boundaries of where they are, but that's just the worst thing and in my mind, we have things regionally and for me, that you define a region by one that shares a common population. People move a common transportation system and a common business space here for Washington state. I'm in Western Washington, over half the state's population is in three or four counties and that's the heartbeat, that's the economic engine and that's the region. That's one of the reasons the transportation system, when they do projects now, they're thinking more regionally, but we've got to do that. Not just for transportation, we have to do it for emergency management, for planning, to kind of get out of the box. That means expanding, who are the partners who we are actually working with. And yes, it includes the private sector, for us to be just looking at it from a government solution standpoint, you know, we're headed down the wrong path. We need to engage with everybody and I go into a lot of reasons why people will do that. Sometimes it has to do with personalities of who's next door or who you can't seem to get along with, that type of thing.

Host: John Scardena (13m 40s):

Yeah. Our field is so small, it is majorly defined by the relationship, but emergency managers should be really good at relationships because I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, emergency manager is a misnomer. It's really our emergency coordinator. The best emergency manager is the best coordinator in the room. So, if you can't get along with people, then you kind of suck at your job, right?

Guest: Eric Holdeman (14m 6s):

I'd say we're facilitators. The other piece of it is we lead without authority. So, we're expected to lead, but we have no direct authority. We can't compel people, especially on a regional basis. You can't go to the mayor or the executive and say, I need a memo telling the department, no, we're talking about the folks in the other county over, we're talking about the private sector. So, when you lead, you're leading without authority, I think that's a major piece and the misnomer, I think a lot of people think, well the emergency manager, that's the command center. Now there's no commanding. There's a lot of coordination and information sharing, that goes on at the emergency operations center. I prefer the term emergency coordination center, because it's descriptive of what happens in that facility.

Host: John Scardena (14m 57s):

I think we're going to be talking a little bit more about this on your show about like the meaning of things. But I actually think whoever came up with the term emergency management was a genius because it makes everybody else think that that person is actually in charge of them, but they're actually not. Oh, he's the emergency manager like, oh, listen to that guy. But actually, at the end of the day, oh by the way, I don't have any authority to tell you what to do, I just kind of hope you do it.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (15m 25s):

Oh, okay. My favorite movie, I haven't bought it, I should, it's about Kaino. This is with Tommy Lee Jones (LA) and then there's this lava flow coming down three, and there's all these firefighters. They're white hap cheap. Right. Tom really gets them together. Okay. Movies, Jersey bears around. Then we have a fleet of helicopters dropping water on it, spraying water and it's it. Isn't the humor of trying to stop a lava flow with water. The humor is fire chief listening to the emergency managers, direct them what to do, give me a break. We actually saw the movie in the theater and I was laughing out loud and my wife says, stop it people are looking,

Host: John Scardena (16m 15s):

I'm going to make a ridiculous plug here because that is hilarious. I have a podcast with Todd Devo and Patrick McGuinn called Movie AAR, our movie after action review, where we look at disasters that happened in movies and we kind of make fun of it. Like what happens if you know, they had the marshmallow man in New York. If he blows up, what happens is like people clean that up. Is he, is that a public health issue? Like how do you do? So.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (16m 45s):

And the Graham crackers and chocolate Hershey's.

Host: John Scardena (16m 48s):

Exactly citywide smore night. Yeah. But we've looked at volcano, we've looked at a couple different movies. One of which is another hilarious one is San Andreas.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (17m 2s):

Yeah. Is that the one where they lower the FEMA director into the hole, set off the atomic bomb? That was a great idea, especially if this was Joe Elba.

Host: John Scardena (17m 18s):

Oh my gosh. Wait, hold on. I have something, wait for it. There we go. Here we go. One more time. There you go. That's hilarious.

No, this one is a with a rock and he's a first responder and he's going to the dam on a helicopter and he hears his family's in trouble. So, he straight up steals the helicopter, hijacks three cars, he breaks like 18 federal and state laws and completely abandoned his post. Yet, it's like all at the end cause he has his wife and kid and I'm like, oh, that's not good advice.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (17m 57s):

The Rock was the number one guy in people, it wasn't the sexiest man, it was what makes America great I think, or something like that. Rock was number one. He’s got some competition.

Host: John Scardena (18m 10s):

Well, you know what? Bring it on because I can take that guy I'm pretty sure, that's hilarious. So, going back to the conversation of the coordination piece and the next phases in terms of, I mean you've already called it out, right, it should be emergency coordination center. We're starting to look at the epidemiology of emergency management and emergency management has, depending on who you talk to, either four phases or five phases, some people call it the preparedness cycle. Or, if you’re in FEMA, which is kind of stupid by the way, because you don't prepare to respond, you actually respond. Other people say it's for, you know, planning, mitigation, response recovery. You recently wrote about this. Tell us more about your thoughts on that.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (19m 5s):

Well, I lived through the whole thing of the first change that happened, and this is how the pendulum swings is after  9/11, FEMA got inserted into department of Homeland security and we took as a profession, a hard right turn because 9/11 towards terrorism only. The initial push was to replace the word mitigation with prevention and there was a lot of pushback from emergency managers just across the board to do that. Finally, the acquiesced and prevention and mitigation was allowed to co-exist if you will.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (19m 49s):

But then they brought in this word protection, which I don't know when that came in, but substituting preparedness with the word protection. I don't see the connection there at all, and my big thing is I asked emergency managers all the time, what are the phases of emergency management? They give me, you know, planning and mitigation, planning or preparedness, response, and recovery. I asked FEMA people what are the phases and they gave me the four phases. Yep. The doctrine that's written today has five, prevention, and protection, but nobody knows it. I think in this case, ignoring it is a great idea.

Host: John Scardena (20m 34s):

Well, you know why it's in there, the true reason, right? I mean, when we folded under DHS, DHS basically said, well, you're in our agency now and so if you're a sub, then this is one of the things you do. The problem with that is, and speaking of culturally, depending on who you talk to, some agencies are actually starting to require emergency managers to carry a weapon, that's happening in Philadelphia. So, we even talked about it at a federal agency I had in DC. I actually know another emergency manager who was on this show, who is the emergency management coordinator or director for another federal agency and they hired him because of his special forces background and they wanted him to implement the security aspect to emergency management. Again, going back to an earlier point, our field is driven by both internal and by political, and the people who hear about emergency managers expect us to be also responders. They set the precedence of, we want somebody with security background, then that's what they're going to focus on because that's where the money's going. So, you have all these conflicting ideas and methodologies. Our field is still so much, you say twins, I say infancy. I think by 2030, we will kind of have a really good foundation of what should be. Then 2040 universities by then, we'll catch up to like having a standardization of what.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (22m 14s):

That's another long conversation. You know the thing that reminds me of, I took over exercise planning in State of Washington, I'd started there probably in 91, but became a supervisor and then unit manager. But it was the first director of the meeting where local directors came and we had the local emergency manager, didn't like stayed at all. This particular person, well, what is the status of our exercise and training program in the states, which had happened none actually none, zero. I said, well, there's a crawl, walk run. Right now we're kind of sitting up, sitting up straight and drooling on ourselves. That's our current status. So when you're talking about infancy, starting from the bottom, there wasn't a public education program either in 1991, Washington state.

Host: John Scardena (23m 19s):

Every federal agency in the United States is required to have a designated emergency coordinator by law. Most federal agencies, that designated emergency coordinator is not the emergency manager. In fact, some do actually have emergency managers. It's usually the head of maintenance, that person knows the facility so well that they should be able to talk to first responders. I'm like, hey, by the way, maybe the emergency managers should know the facility so well and speak the language of the first responders so that if there was an incident, they do direct coordination. But even then, there's so much methodology and personal opinion that we need to flush that out. I think it's time for our field to start saying, hey, this is what we do, this is what we don't do. It's so hard to do that, especially because we deal with politics so much, but it’s kind of the name of the game. When we can't define it as a field, then it just opens it up much more to, well then I'm going to define it for you.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (24m 22s):

Yeah and I always say that if these well-meaning people came in or come in to a new administration, political appointees, which are okay, that's how the system works, but they all want to say, well, what can I do that's new and different and what can I change? Because they don't want to do, what's been done before. I think that leads to a lot of the change we see as I've listened to a podcast about UFO, I listen to New York times the daily and the guy would saying, well, they're not called UFO more than UAPs unidentified aerial phenomenon. You think that's going to catch on with the public. I think it's going to be UFO. If you start talking about UAP, nobody's going to know what you're talking about. It's nice that you came up with the term, but ditch it, folks use terminology people can understand. Yeah.

Host: John Scardena (25m 17s):

We had that problem with technology and depending on the generation and their level of technology use every company out there wants to put like their own, like we're so freaking play button, it used to be a triangle facing, you know, facing right. Now you got to figure out, is it a circle, triangle, hexagon is a four dimensional creature, you know? Like you just try to figure out what things are now.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (25m 43s):

See. That's the same process that you described. We're going to make a difference because I'm being paid to make a difference. So, I have to come up with something new.

Host: John Scardena (25m 52s):

Yeah, in fact, one of the two Patrick McGinn’s credit has been on this show, he's the director of salvation army for Northern California, Nevada. He's definitely a thought leader in the space and he's like, hey, as much as humanly possible, the emergency managers benefit from using other emergency managers templates, like don't think you have to reinvent the wheel. Start creating standardization so we can all just increase.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (26m 20s):

Monkey see, monkey do is fine as well. That has lots of thing about our profession, by the way that I really like that emergency managers in general, you can never say always right, but in general, are willing to share everything they got. If I walked into a city or county and other states said, hey, I'm doing research on, I'm trying to figure out how to do it. Can you show me what you do? Can I get a copy of that document? We give our information away. We don't hoard it, there's no foil of what we're doing. That's a great cultural aspect of emergency management. I think I can tell you a quick story on that is we have in the Squali earthquake happened and we rapidly put out an after action report on that. I heard from another county saying, hey, we love that, could you send us a digital copy of it? So, we could use that format and we did, hey, we're happy to share. Anyway, when we got it back, they did a jurisdictional name change, but everything else the same exactly our time. But the thing was, this was exactly what we did. So, we don't copy something perfectly.

Host: John Scardena (27m 37s):

Yeah. Templating is okay, yeah. Well, it's funny, I'm okay for templates. I'm not okay for cookie cutter. This is the problem, so I run a private emergency management group called Doberman and we  are hardcore against cookie cutter because I've gotten so many plans where it's like a brick, like half of it's just definitions. Going back to that Philadelphia, I reviewed a FEMA region three, I'm super calling out FEMA region three right now, I reviewed a FEMA region three strategic plan for disasters. They hired a contractor. This is when I worked for FEMA and it was 2000 pages and I opened it up and half of it was definitions. I'm starting to go through the definitions and I'm like, okay, they have a definition for a volcano in here, like in Philadelphia first of all, we don't have volcanoes in Philadelphia. Second of all, the fact that you're even bringing that up and having to define this really basic stuff, I'm sure that got seven figures this company, but it was worthless. So our company is like, okay GIS, we're going to pump in data. We're going to be pumping all this stuff, creating a template that's really clean, but all of it should be unique to the region. I like how you said that region earlier, by the way, what are your metrics on working populations? Really fascinating to think about one of the map products I would always have to make or choose to make as a daytime versus nighttime population, because it allows you to see how many people work in that area and also allowed us to see the scope of how far they would come. A family would come if a family member was impacted, you know, at a school or something. So really fascinating you brought that up.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (29m 22s):

I'll give you the example of that actually there's a project going on you know, we could talk for days I think John, but there's a project going on down here called pod, maybe the points of distribution. This would be an orchestrator for an eight county region, regional accounts, traffic preparedness grant, and the homeless county, which is north of King County leading this effort. They hired a contractor, includes a lot of mapping, but one of the key dynamics they looked at is a daytime/nighttime population, because you're going to be praying an earthquake kind of trapped wherever you are when that happens. So, we're looking at food availability stores, that type of thing, based on the different population metrics. So that's the exact type of use of the information we just talked about.

Host: John Scardena (30m 13s):

That's awesome. It shows that coordination and learning how other people use it, the same data can really impact so many different areas. Well, we're running out of time here pretty soon, but I just want to call out that one Disaster Zone, another pitch for Disaster Zone, and everybody should tune into that, but really fascinating topic to think about the holistic approach of emergency management. What are the phases? What do we call it? How do we approach it? How does that coordination piece and you and I just started scratching the surface on this conversation. Maybe we'll continue it on onto your podcast for sure.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (30m 51s):

I got something I'd like to share before we go closing thoughts. Just on this whole issue of regional, as I talked about, it's invitational, you can't compel anybody. I could tell you another 20 stories, but I won't,  no. Working with a large metropolitan city here in Washington state, wherever that could be, but I'll eliminate that, but you can't compel people. So, all you can do is invite. I found one of the ways you can engage people, it's just keep giving them the information. They're not giving you anything back, but give them information to establish a relationship to the thing. Yet sometimes you can't burn through that. But I tell folks, well look, there's a lot of movement for people, quick jobs or they change jobs. They get fired, they get promoted, they die, you know, you can wait them out. You know, maybe the next person will be much more receptive to working with you. That the one. The other is it's a military maneuver called isolate and bypass, is you can't Ram yourself through someone who you have no authority so just go round them. I'd always tell my staff go where there is energy, if they're not interested then fine, you're good, we're good. We're just going to go around and work with those people want to be, and you can't be confrontational because a lot of those personality types, they love the confrontation. So, the other thing I used to tell my staff is friends come and go, enemies you keep forever. So, go along, get along, but there's that. Lastly, I've seen it work where you can use other people supporting your effort to convince them that they should be participating. So, you're not doing the work. They see the positive nature what's going on and they convince the other person they should be involved in it. So those are just some tips when you feel frustrated on trying to work regionally.

Host: John Scardena (33m 3s):

Okay. Well then, I got to ask you one more question based off of all that. So , talked a lot about where the field is going and you just talked about how to work with people. In terms of the future of the emergency manager, what would you like to see in the next 10 years in terms of our field?

Guest: Eric Holdeman (33m 25s):

Big things here? One is on a state level, I do not think I'm pleased. A lot of people hear that emergency management being aligned with the national guard is the best alignment. People make that decision and make that alignment because they think disasters are all about response. But if we're talking about disaster resilience, resilience is all about mitigation. That's not in the national guard or military culture. I came out of a 20-year industry officer career. I thought emergency management was all about planning and response from that standpoint. So, having that alignment under the chief executive officer is the best place to be.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (34m 10s):

Can you be functional and successful in other places? Yes. But when you have a culture of response, that's national, you know, we're here, we've got specialized equipment. We're here to save the day and they liked that attention. You're going to end up being trapped in the response cycle. I think that's one climate change is going to change our world. You know, more frequent, more severe, those apps. It's I gotta do this. Look, when we say it bleeds, it leads. Well, if it's flood, if it burns, it's in the news and so we're going to be much more critical to the functioning of our communities and our states overall. There's much more awareness now, the cost of disasters, and that will help drive more attention towards mitigation. I think mitigation is going to be huge. We got some money coming forward, but a billion dollars spread over the United States for the building resilient communities is not a lot, even though it sounds like a lot, but we have what we can and make lemonade out of it.

Host: John Scardena (35m 17s):

I like that. In fact, I always add my 2 cents on here, here’s my 2 cents to both two comments. I believe that mitigation is the most focused thing that we should be. We will be working on meaning spending most of our amount of our time. Yeah, that's a better way to say it. Mitigation is the thing that we should spending most of our amount of time on. However response will always be the most important function of emergency management. Because if we can't stop everything, then you have to be able to save lives when it comes down to it. Nothing's more important than trying to coordinate tools in a response.

So, if we can pair those two thoughts up, they are not conflicting, spend most of your time mitigating disasters and the ones that you can't, you got to be really, really good at response. So mitigation should be king, never forget response, and you'll probably be successful. The other end of that spectrum, here's, I'm going to say it on this show. So, if anybody else comes with this idea, I can say it, I said it on the air. Here's my super radical idea to deal with the major droughts. Okay. East coast gets way too much water. In fact, Maryland was taxing people for the amount of water that ran on their property, which is really corrupt idea, by the way. Anyways, if we can create a system where we trap all the water from a hurricane and move that water to the west coast, through giant canals, then everybody wins. That's my big grand crazy idea. So somebody appears out of that, do that.

Guest: Eric Holdeman (36m 51s):

I'm going to give you my 1 cent reaction to what you said earlier, and then we'll go down to a half a cent. Now I have to think about what I tell local emergency managers and state people, but more local, is if you don't want to get fired, you have to have a plan. You gotta be able to respond because that's the expectation that's there and the other biggie is don't screw up a warning because warnings that are screwed up are very public. So, keep your job, have a plan respond well, they'll screw up a warning.

Host: John Scardena (37m 30s):

I love that. Actually, that's probably the quote for the show. So, I will say this. Thanks again Eric for coming on the show, check out Disaster Zone, I will be on Eric’s show as well, so you can check out there. We're going to continue the conversation. If you like to show, which you should have, you can do a couple of different things. One, give us a five-star rating and subscribe to, if you have a question for Eric specifically, you can do a couple different things. Unlike most of our shows, you can actually reach out directly to the Disaster Zone and through Eric, and we'll put that in the show notes how to do that, but you can also tag Eric and the Disaster Zone in our social media feeds, whether it's a government emergency management or Disaster Tough you can also send us an email. If you don't want to, you gotta be shy. That's fine.

Send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com, we'll forward that on to Eric. He can reply to you directly, but check us out each week, we have great content. If you want an emergency manager to help you out on a project here you're working on, contact us at info@dobermanemg.com and we'll see you next week.

#68 Emergency Management In the National Capitol Region - Interview with VDEM's Andy John

How the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol highlights the need for regional emergency management response, with expert Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) Regional Coordinator, Andy John.

The National Capitol Region is an interlocking complex web of jurisdictional boundaries and priorities. Success comes when emergency managers are able to identify who they role players are in their regional perspective of disaster management. Andy John is an expert practitioner at identifying and working with regional partners to find success through the Disaster Lifecycle. On this episode we discuss his role and responsibility in the emergency response of the January 6th riot attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Andy John has served in numerous emergency management capacities, including the National Strike Team. Since leaving FEMA, Andy has taken his skillset to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management to lead regional efforts to create Disaster Tough communities.

#67 The Salvation Army Disaster Response Team - Interview with Director Patrick McGinn

Patrick McGinn is one of the busiest at The Salvation Army because of his multiple roles with the VOAD, overseeing feeding missions, and directing response staff within Northern California and Nevada disasters.

Expert emergency manager, Patrick McGinn serves as the Regional Disaster Services Director at The Salvation Army for all of Northern California and Nevada. He talks about his response experiences and shares lessons learned on emergency training exercises. Patrick also served the elite National Incident Management Assistance Team (N-IMAT West) for FEMA with our host, John Scardena.

Patrick is truly a well rounded emergency manager with both planning and operational experience. With his current role with The Salvation Army, he has developed axioms that push emergency managers to have a one-team, one-fight mentality.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.

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The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech distributed by FS Global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre-screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs, this is a disaster tough technology. For more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.

Host: John Scardena (1m 33s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your host John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode, the repeat offender for coming onto the show, Patrick McGuinn, one of my best friends here and I served on the national team. Have you heard the previous episodes? We have a lot of experience working together and he has moved on to great things himself, working at the Salvation Army as a director there. He's going to be talking about that for Northern California and Nevada and emergency operations today, we're going to be talking about PSPS, public safety power shutoff plans, and some other fun topics for the day. Patrick, welcome to the show.

Guest: Patrick McGinn (2m 22s):

It's great to be here again.

Host: John Scardena (2m 25s):

Again, I feel like Oprah, you get another show with Pat, you get another show with Pat. It's always fun to catch up with you on the show, man. I'm really grateful that you're able to make the time. I understand that Salvation Army is doing a ton of stuff with fire season, starting to ramp up here, you know summertime, trying to get everything together. We have a unique southern issue in California as noted in the intro public safety power shutoff. You've been involved in that. I've been involved with that at Doberman. So just kick us off, man. Can you just give us what you've been working on with Salvation Army and kind of like what you see moving forward?

Guest: Patrick McGinn (3m 7s):

Yeah, sure. So, fire kind of updates their stats comparing last year to this year and already this year, we've had 700 more fires compared to last year at the same time and more than a hundred thousand acres or more than 130,000 acres more burned compared to last year around this time. So, we're screwed, Cole Cook is drier than it has been in a long time and there's new fires every day. Every day there's new fires. I know because I keep a map that shows me when all the fires were that were in the last 24 hours. So, it's been ramping up and luckily because of last season, because it was so chaotic and Salvation Army received so much funding or you know, donated funds that we've been able to buy enough supplies.

After doing after actions and determining how we can do things better, buying supplies that meet those new needs. So, we've delivered those out to all of our local offices in pretty much every medium to large sized city in California. So, we're prepared already in that way for our local groups to respond. But also, we've had two responses. We're averaging, we're going to average, I think probably two responses a month. So, we'd had like the salt fire and the lava fire up in, no there was not a volcanic eruption of and 50th county north of Redding. Then this week, and last week we had the Beckwourth complex fire that in Lassen county. So, we've been feeding at a shelter and Susan bill.

Host: John Scardena (4m 49s):

Okay. So, you've already been.

Guest: Patrick McGinn (4m 51s):

With the help of Southern Baptist.

Host: John Scardena (4m 53s):

Okay, that's awesome. You know, talking about collaboration by the way, which is a huge part of the experience, right. Pulling in all these seven resources, people parsing that out, salvation army, for example, working with Southern Baptist, that's amazing. We've already had 700, you said 700 more fires this year. You know, by the time this airs, there'll be probably a hundred more, right? So, it's just amazing that it's just so dry here in California, dry on the west coast, that trend is going to continue. I keep on kind of making like this like dark joke of like, well, eventually we're not going to have any more fires because everything will have burned right. But for a while though, you got a job at hand you've been focusing on. Well, we both have been focusing on PSPS for a while now. Doberman is just wrapping up a contract with a Tribal Nation on the coast that we feel very honored and lucky to work with them. They reached out to us for PSPS. So, we've been involved really heavily in that process. We've worked with a couple of universities now, but in terms of your perspective and PSPS, just for our audience sake, because we have a lot of people who are not in California, obviously. Can you explain what PSPS (public safet power shutoff plans) are, where they kind of came from, and then maybe you and I can just talk about the applicable information that can be applied across the country, right? Like Texas, for example, that just had a major power shut off.

Guest: Patrick McGinn (6m 39s):

Sure, So PG&E (Pacific gas and electric) has been responsible for several huge fires in California. And because of that, they have been now for the last year or two since campfire, I believe in 2018. So starting in 2019, they started doing what they call public safety, power shutoffs, which means that when there's red flag warnings or when there's dry vegetation, low moisture, possibly high winds and really hot temperatures, that there's a highest likelihood that there's going to be a fire. So, there's a red flag warning in a certain area of California, PG&E if they work in that area, they work in most of Northern and Central California, they will turn off the power to that neighborhood or to that portion of the city or the county could be wide swath across, you know, dozens of miles or it could just be centralized to certain neighborhoods. When we were on the federal team and even at the state level, their first priority when disasters happen is getting the power back on.

That's the thing that causes the most amount of trouble for people in their everyday life. Well, with PSPS public safety power shut off, that's how we'll refer to it from now on that is happening without a disaster happening. So, they're creating disasters by trying to mitigate starting bigger fires. So, we can just turn off the power to this neighborhood here that hopefully when the winds come through and our lines, you know, slapped together and create sparks, that it won't create sparks because the power won't be on. So, they're trying to avoid starting another fire because they almost went bankrupt the last time from all the lawsuits that they got.

Host: John Scardena (8m 37s):

Huge bailout, it was pretty messed up. But part of the problem is that their systems are just so outdated too, right? Like they're really outdated systems.

Guest: Patrick McGinn (8m 49s):

We only have a few companies, power companies, utility companies that are providing mass power. PG&E is one of them, California Editing is another one in Southern California and they also do public safety power shutoff. They just don't call them that. But they've been doing that for a little while now, but what we found is that it causes the biggest problems and this should be obvious, but for those who have access and functional needs, people with disabilities, and people who have medical needs, like they can't sleep without certain machines. They can't, they're on dialysis. They need a charger, they need whatever it is for whatever medical device that they need to live or they needed to charge their computer so they can communicate with others so that they can talk so that they can move around.

So this past week I was on a call with 2-1-1, which is social, a number you can call in California and maybe in other states as well, if you can call, they can connect you to social services. So, it was the meeting with them and a meeting with a group from PG&E to talk about how we can, how they can fund local community organizations to potentially provide people with hotel rooms when there's a PSPS, only people with access and functional needs. There's another big issue with food when that happens.

Guest: Patrick McGinn (10m 21s):

So Kincade fire, 2019 at Santa Rosa, there was a like 200,000 people evacuated in Santa Rosa, but also there was PSPS. So, everybody has food and it was for five days. So, everybody food in their refrigerator or freezer went bad. That's something that affects everybody. The PSPS kind of levels, it doesn't matter. You're just like disasters. It doesn't matter your class or your income or anything kind of levels the playing field for people. But for AFN, specifically people with access and functional needs, we're now in the planning process of figuring out, okay, when that happens, can we get them a hotel room?

 One big part of the conversation that I brought up was, well, that's a Band-Aid. Putting them in a hotel room is Band-Aid and that costs a lot of money over time. They're going to keep doing PSPS for the next five to ten years. At least maybe they'll just keep doing it, yeah. So, I brought up the idea of, well, the good mitigation strategy, why don't we look at getting these people a generator, they run, you know, a thousand dollars, the ones that we usually get for people. Well, why don't we get them a generator and teach them how to use it that way they don't have to leave their home. When you remove someone from their home, it's already a stressful environment if they have to evacuate, but if they have to leave, they don't even have to evacuate, they have to leave because their power is off and you're an able-bodied person, that's still, you know… Did I grab everything from home kind of stressful? Well now you can't fully take care of yourself on your own. You rely on other people and it's a much scarier, stressful environment. You have to go to a hotel. I just don't think it's the best solution, but it's something that we want to be part of. So, we're talking about being part of that and getting reimbursed by those by PG&E or by the, by the sub grantee for how to do that. But yeah, I'm hoping that they got me in contact with a group that focuses on alternative energy sources to keep people at home, whether that's giving them extra battery packs, whether that's giving them cell phone chargers or those big blocks that can plug a USB into and charge anything.

It doesn't last forever, but I've got one that has like four cell phone charges on it, which is awesome. But maybe, you know teaching. Yeah, I mean, not giving the purchasing generators for people, because if we really are thinking about it, if it's a thousand dollars and they had a PSPS in their area and it was over the course of a couple of years, it was over 10 days. With the average cost of a hotel being $125, well, within a couple of years, you know.

Host: John Scardena (13m 8s):

Like even with discounts, a lot of people aren’t even aware the discounts that they can get. So like hotels right now are just insane because of COVID right. The cleaning fees and everything else. You're talking like maybe you'll hit that thousand dollars max in just a couple of days, the motel eight, there was, a friend called me a motel eight and motel six. They were both charging $450 a night. My friend was like, so what we did, we usually went to Walmart. We bought a tent and some air mattresses and our family just slept on basically on the ground because we did not expect the motel eight to charge us $450 for the one night for one room.

So, there's stuff like that too going on where there's other constraints that are happening because of COVID. And because of other things you talked about, yeah. You talked about training people, right and that was highlighted for us for two reasons. Hurricane Laura, the number one killer in that disaster was people using their generators inside of their home. So, creating fumes and therefore, I think there was a heat desk just called S caused by that. So, what we did is when we went to our contract and we said, hey, you have to buy these generators.

We looked at the scope, we looked at the size and we're like, hey, let's make sure we give you training on this too. So like making sure that you can keep fuel inside of some generators, but you sat there during the lines, you have to put stabilizer there, where do you store them? Can we put them in a permanent location outside of the home? So, just that training piece is so important, even on something like, hey, go buy this smaller generator. That's going to help you have one appliance or be able to charge your wheelchair or whatever, to be able to hook that up for people is a process in itself.

Guest: Patrick McGinn (15m 12s):

Oh yeah, absolutely. It has to be a whole campaign with preparedness procedures on how to work it and to go to those communities and talk directly to those people, not providing them with a pamphlet that says, here's how you do it. Actually going places and instructing people how to do that. The model that we're doing all of this off of is my counterpart, the disaster services director down in Southern California, named Nick knew when he did this in San Diego already. So, we're trying to mirror the success story of San Diego, where he was providing hotel rooms for people during PSPS events last year in San Diego, because that worked well. They're going to upward. We're going to try at other places as well and see how that works. But I've gotten calls from the California department of social services just last year asking, hey, we've got people up near where the campfire was up in Butte County and people with medical disabilities, they need medical devices. They need power. What can you provide? It's like, well, when do you need this by tomorrow? There's no planning for this, we were not ready for this. However, the approach and they were just struggling in the moment, reaching out to whoever they could, because this is causing a really big issue for those people.

So where in evacuation, a fire is a huge deal and it's a disaster. It's the worst case scenario for everybody losing the power for people who rely on the power to live every day, that is catastrophic. There should be inflation for those people for PSPS. It's a serious issue. So right now, yeah, there's lots of community efforts to try to figure this out and try to plan for it and we put them in hotels. When we put them in hotels, can other organizations provide them with other social services that they may need? Are there organizations that donate medical equipment? And there are, let's reach out to those, let's reach out to crisis counseling or mental health services or emotional spiritual care and kind of get, it's starting to like build the puzzle together, putting it together. So, it's not just Salvation Army. It's not just 2-1-1. It's not just the PG&E. It can be lots of different organizations to help cater to these people. But it's something that I know that struggle with as well.

Host: John Scardena (17m 41s):

Yeah. Highlighting a lot of things to the point earlier in the show about how can this apply to other emergencies around the country, we got a rude awakening in Texas, it wasn't manmade, like intentionally turn it off, but it was man-made cost, right. Without fuel the long story long, they didn't have power for huge swaths of Texas for a long period of time during a winter event, which they were unprepared. So, they had like this dual thread of like hey, it's cold plus you don't have power. What are we going to do? That's when I was like, okay it's not like a public safety power shut off, but there is a power outage.

What do you do when extended power outages as you and I both know hurricanes caused them, tornadoes caused them. There’re so many things that cause power outages, like the grid is actually truly vulnerable. I was reading a report about you know, there hasn't really been any thought process into the mitigation of manmade threat to power in the US like you can literally walk up to a substation and put your hand on it, basically you can. There's just so many vulnerabilities around it. There's the man-made caused, intentional, some unintentional, there's acts of nature and so on. We had to deal with power outages all the time and that's not necessarily like this. People don't think of a power outage as like the doomsday event, but you're right for people who rely on that insulin or other medications that have to be kept cold. Yeah. That is lifesaving COVID tests, or, you know, the vaccination, the vaccines, they have to be kept in minus 70, minus 80 freezers. There’s even lab research that I had to deal with in DC. I worked for a campus that if they lost all the research from a lack of power, then that's pretty much gone.

Goodbye cancer research in the US, so lots of reasons why we should focus on power outages. I would argue comparing that to like a hurricane or something else. It's fairly straightforward of what you need to do to mitigate that. A generator is one thing I'll give you another one before you might want to jump in is if you are dealing with that research side or trying to keep things cold, especially from the emergency management perspective, MOU (memorandum of understandings) for dry ice, keeping things cold for a really long period of time. What would you suggest to those emergency managers outside of California? You've already started to hit on it, but like, what are some of those planning constraints that you have to think about and how do you start mitigating the threat of a power outage?

Guest: Patrick McGinn (20m 40s):

Okay so two things, I guess this is more for like city/county sitting in county emergency managers, but it's a whole community. Whole community doesn't just refer to the whole community response where it's your private sector, public sector and your nonprofit. It also is responding to the whole community, including those people who are marginalized. Those people who have disabilities minority and the minority demographics in the population. How are you planning for people who maybe they're not English speakers, but aside from that, the price from planning for those people, you don't need to be the expert on that either. Often people emergency managers think, oh, I need to know everything about every demographic. No, you don't. There’re organizations out there that do. You need to reach out to them and find out where they're at. If you need to include that in your planning, if you don't, I would still suggest reaching out to whole community partners to solve issues that you alone cannot solve. So, another thing you're not expected, and the county emergency manager, city emergency manager, to solve all the issues, you're expected to know the people who can solve the issues. You're expected to coordinate those people and facilitate those meetings to come up. They come to solution. So, reach out to your local VOAD and reach out to the power company and reach out to find out where the grants are at and reach out to those.

You don't know who could help you. Maybe it's Salvation Army, maybe it's Southern Baptist. Maybe it's Red Cross. Maybe it's the Mennonites at LDS, whoever it's going to be, it's going to be a group effort. So, you don't need to be the expert. You just need to find the experts and start having those discussions, because those people would be happy to have those discussions with you.

Host: John Scardena (22m 24s):

The emergency management expert is a somebody who is an expert in understanding how the spider web is interconnected, right? That's where I find like the most competent emergency managers. When they're able to say, I took all this time in the planning of a disaster to say, who could be anybody who could touch this disaster? So by the time you turn it on it, you're not trying to figure that out, but you're literally calling Patrick McGuinn at the Salvation Army like, hey, I know exactly what you do, and I need some help here and you already had that relationship. We always say its relationships. So really what it is, is understanding the spider web, understanding how everything's interconnected.

You said this mic drop moment. It's going to be the quote for the show. So, I'm calling that out right now, but he said the whole community equals responding to the whole community. I threw the equals in there for you, but that’s true. We think so much about the whole community of response or the whole community of the people we work with, but it truly is about the people and when you start, I've been doing this thing at Doberman quite a bit. We've hired, we've had this really great year. We've hired quite a bit of people and they come up with projects. So, they want to work on different things. I keep on finding myself, asking the same question, what is the outcome that you want?

It's amazing to see the thought process change of like, how they think they should accomplish their goal or their project. Because lots of people think like, oh, I started a race thinking like, you know, when I hear the gun go off, but if I want to be the last, if I want to be last, or if I want to be first at the finish line, thank you. That's the word I was thinking about. That I want to think of the finish. You got to think of the finish line first, right? It's like fast and furious is a fun moment, fast and furious when he always goes too soon. Then he hits his novice after, right? Because he's seeking to the finish line as part of his objective. That’s a big plan planning tip there, responding to the whole community.

You focus a lot more on that with Salvation Army. In FEMA, your whole job was basically figuring out like what the disaster was in the scope of the disaster and when things can turn on and all this stuff, and you start looking at lifelines and everything, especially there at the end. But now you focus much more on the local and you brought this up last time. I thought that was really interesting, you're talking about what catastrophic disasters are and for the people who are impacted, they always are catastrophic disasters. You brought that up again today of like, hey, a power outage might not seem like a big deal, but it is for people when they're on that lifesaving side of it, right. Or that the life sustainment side of power. To your final thoughts, maybe, because we're going to be wrapping up here soon of what would your advice be to emergency managers across the country who have only worked in either local or only worked in federal or state, large scope versus localized. What is the gap? Do you think is between the strategic level and that I would call what you do tactical level? Is there something that here's a miss between the two that we could do better on?

Guest: Patrick McGinn (25m 49s):

I think there's a behavior that can be adopted from both that benefits both. I like what Joe Delamere has said in his show about when they were becoming more innovative of how to connect the supply chain. When they ran out of certain materials companies that traditionally make those materials couldn't make anymore. So, the behavior that everybody runs into including emergency managers is, well, I'm going to do it this way because it's always been done this way and I'm comfortable doing it this way. This is the way the government's always done it. But when I say whole community, whole community is not the way things have been done, but not in a very coordinated manner when you're trying to think of solutions to how's our local government going to pay for salt trucks when it snows every seven years.

Well, if it happens every seven years, you don't pay for salt trucks because you don't have storage. You can't afford it. What you do is you reach out to the salt truck company and you make a deal and you sign a contract and you work it out with them. That's the power of whole community. That's the power of well, we didn't ever do it this way before, but okay. We can make it work. They're willing to work with us on this. That's how you create innovative solutions to help people in unique problems, yeah.

Host: John Scardena (27m 9s):

I liked that too. I liked the idea of the salt truck company because if you try to do that in the moment, it will be exponentially more expensive for you to do that and it will be, it will be ugly and it'll be messy. It'll be stupid. They'll walk away like, oh, I got the job done. You'll pat yourself on the back and you'll be like taking a shower and half your hair's falling out. Right? It will be super stressful. It's like, hey, once every seven years, or it's going to be a long time before we have a snow venue, put that MOU in place. All you have to do is, I'm going to pull up my handy-dandy cell phone here, hey, enact the MOU and enact a memorandum of understanding here, contract on, you know, oh cool, great done. You can move on to higher priorities, which is getting to people who need the lifesaving help, right. So, I think that's a great call-out we're going to have you back on the show because we always have you back on the show. Woo. Yeah, do you have any closing remarks or thoughts that you've been thinking about lately that you would like to share with our audience?

Guest: Patrick McGinn (28m 23s):

Yeah maybe just one. You don't have to do it alone, whatever you're trying to do, whether you're trying to write a plan, whether you're trying to come up with actual sustainable solutions or response solutions, recovery, whatever it may be. You're not alone. You’re part of the community, whether you are with a business with government, with nonprofit, philanthropic, your part of a larger community of people that also want to help their community. So just keep that in mind every day.

Host: John Scardena (28m 52s):

I think that's a great call-out and Patrick's not allowed to do this cause he's with Salvation Army, but I can do it for myself. So, don't do it alone, work with Doberman Emergency Management. If you're an emergency manager trying to get something done and you have a gap that you've identified, or you need to know where your gaps are, that’s a great, that was an easy segue, easy pitch into Doberman. You can reach out to us at info@dobermanemg.com there.

But the whole perspective of things. This was a great episode talking about the whole community, talking about PSPS (public safety power shut off), and really like power shutoffs in general of the constraints that emergency managers have to think about pulling in the experts from where they are, wherever they come in, get those contracts in place before disaster happens. You made a lot of call-outs there. You also made a lot of call-outs about hearing about the individual and the individual needs. You know, starting from the outcome, what is the outcome you want? You want those people to be taken care of so you call that out. You also called out training and helping people and actually going to them, not just coming in on pamphlet, which is a hundred percent endorsed. So great call-outs, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, Patrick. Thanks again for coming on the show.

Guest: Patrick McGinn (29m 53s):

It's an honor to be here.

Host: John Scardena (29m 55s):

Good, so if you liked this episode from Patrick and myself, Patrick McGuinn with Salvation Army. You got to give us that five-star rating, you got to subscribe. We want to see you next week and if you have questions, you can reach out to Patrick and a couple of different ways. You can contact us on LinkedIn at Doberman Emergency Management. You can contact us on Facebook or our Instagram, kind of Twitter with Disaster Tough Podcast. I say kind of Twitter, because we don't really use it, but if you want to use it, hey, might as well reach out to us. We'll pass it on to Patrick, we can see it and we'll see you next week, bye.

#66 Qualifying Emergency Managers - Interview with FEMA's Kevin Coleman

Kevin Coleman is working on addressing the qualification process of emergency managers at FEMA and provides insights on how you can increase your own career footprint.

Kevin Coleman is an experienced Federal Response Official with years of experience and countless deployments to large-scale disasters. During the COVID-19 Federal Response, he worked on a joint agency taskforce to recommend and build federal capabilities around the county. This task force was responsible for testing over a million people by the beginning of the summer alone.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.

Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P, is the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating, 1700-degree blast of heat, repeated three-meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it, the XL extreme series by L3Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.

The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech distributed by FS Global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre-screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs, this is a disaster tough technology. For more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.

Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your Host: John Scardena and I am so excited for this episode. I think it was maybe back in March, maybe before that February-March timeframe, we had Kevin Coleman on the show. It was a great episode, obviously. Very well-prepared, he's very well prepared now because he's been working on so many different things in FEMA. If you recall, from our last episode, he and I served on the national team together.

He went over to FEMA headquarters he's he was working on that vaccination mission. He's going to give us an update on that. He's also going to be talking more about qualifications of emergency managers specifically within FEMA, but you can apply that to your own sphere of influence, right? If you're a local emergency manager, state, or federal, there's things that are going to help you be more qualified and you can add to your career. So, Kevin can talk more about that. Kevin, welcome to the show. Hey, so let's give an update real quick vaccination mission. Are you still involved with the vaccination mission? Is that now wrapping up? It's kind of weird cause we're still in the pandemic and we have to worry about the Delta variant, but things are all opening back up. Nobody wants to like want to focus on COVID anymore, so what does that look like in your world?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (2m 58s):

The backend, probably January, February, I was spraying the vaccination efforts. I had an activation campaign after Biden was inaugurated. I asked them, he tapped a FEMA to deliver a hundred million shots first a hundred days. So as part of that effort, ran out of the gate and served out of the NRCC a headquarters. My role is to make sure that we were getting the nonmedical folks to those federal vaccination sites. It was very interesting experience for me because it wasn't just FEMA staff that we were deploying. We worked with a bunch of different agencies to fill those non-clinical roles. So, it was just an interesting experience,

Host: John Scardena (3m 44s):

Probably a mixed bag of experiences and competencies probably in that team that was the most emergency management like life ever, right. When you have everybody coming in, you're like, okay, what do you do and what qualifications do you have? So, we've had Joe Dellamura on the show a couple of times and he does more of the logistics side of like vaccination sites where you coordinating with him at all, or were you completely in different wheelhouses?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (4m 15s):

Sure. So, we sort of had two wheelhouses, it was clinical and nonclinical. So, my puzzle piece, the non-clinical piece. In order to stand up a federal federally supported vaccination site, and depending on the size, it required X number of medical folks doing, you know, these different things. It required Y number of nonmedical folks doing, you know, these different things. So, we started with both, had to align our efforts in filling those needs on the same timetable. So, you know, we're not deploying people to a site where, he hasn't found medical folks or vice versa yet. It was a big coordinated song and dance to make sure that as if there's so many of the requests, especially at the beginning we were staffing positions that we were making up.

Right, I mean, there were no federally supported vaccinations sites. There's no playbook. We wrote the playbook as we were doing the mission. So, going back to your point about understanding what skills that we needed to fill these undefined positions with what we were learning offline. But yeah, so those are the two tracks that we took and it was a whole old government effort to get folks to fill those little slots.

Host: John Scardena (5m 39s):

Talk about writing the playbook. Dublin was hired in February to work with a group that was trying to reopen up a sector and that's like the most generic I can make it, but we went in there and said, you know, what do you have now? I said, well we've been working on a playbook and okay, let's see the playbook. It wasn't really a playbook, it was basic definitions like book. It was almost like a guide of what these terms meant. I said, how long have you been working on this? They're like, well, we're almost done. We've been working on it for three months. I was like what data are you using? We're not using data. It's literally on your website right now, this information.

They were like blown away by that. They're like, oh wait, we didn't know that. I'm like, how do you not know it's on your public facing website? I came back, I said, well, let's look at it. So, a week later we came back and said, okay, you can reopen your entire sector with these parameters with CDC guidance in three more months. Actually, that wasn't three months. Sorry, I apologize. So, it was six weeks. That's right away, it was six weeks. You could reopen everything in six weeks with the CDC guidance. This is what you'll have to do that. They said, that's impossible. I said, t's impossible if you don't know the data or if you don't have a playbook, but here's the plan and they were going through it and they're meeting. They're like, oh, this is possible. This is possible. This is possible. That's what emergency planners do for a full-time job. So, my biggest takeaway for the pandemic was just, I don't think most people understand what an emergency planner can do for them. Did you find that for yourself? Or, what were some of the major takeaways from the vaccination mission? We were like, okay, if we have a vaccination mission again, X, Y, and Z must happen immediately. What were your takeaways?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (7m 34s):

Yeah for me it was understanding how to utilize our available workforce in the most efficient way. I mean this was like most, or a lot of response situations where we have demand that exceeds our supply right. So, decisions happen, how we prioritize resource allocation. We want to make sure that our capability, that our supply we add matches with, to the best extent possible, matches with the need on the ground so we're not under deploying or underutilizing, under optimizing the resources that we have available.

Host: John Scardena (8m 13s):

Okay. So, you said a phrase there that I absolutely loved. You said demand sucks, demand exceeds supply, and in a response that is as always true. I mean, Rodney would always say if we get behind the snowball, we're never getting in front of it again right. I remember him banging his hands on his head because he was so frustrated and in Florida I'm like, oh my gosh. Then I kind of figured out like where he was coming from and talking about response and emergency management has, this is like my very smooth segue, by the way, response has a key placeholder in emergency management. It's not to like degrade mitigation or it's not to degrade, preparedness, not to degrade all these other things that must happen, but response does have a place. I'm hoping that you can come on here and talk about qualification and what response does. And then if people don't have response experiences that they're able to attach to, what can they do to bolster their own career or their own capability? Can you talk to this for a few minutes about that?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (9m 19s):

Yeah so for me, when I hear that and I look at it, first of all, I think you can strip away, response, recovery, mitigation. Like if you strip away those terms, you know, you're presented a problem to solve within some parameters, right, and you do it. Those parameters are different depending on the life cycle of the disaster, that’s your robbery. You’re going to be resource constrained. You're going to be time constrained, all those things that inherently go with response operation. So, for me it's sort of, it's the same approach, right? Again, some of it though, you're making decisions in minutes and hours, they're going to have direct impacts on life safety. Whereas in a recovery mitigation, you know, you might be spending weeks or months to do analysis and make decisions that are going to have, maybe cost impact or infrastructure impact over the course of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. It's sort of just a different mindset, a similar approach, but different mindset and how to apply those different capabilities. So that takes different capabilities, right? Just on both of the problem sets, but in both situations, you're given a problem set and you're asked to solve it. Can you remind me what that thing question was?

Host: John Scardena (10m 41s):

So, if you don't have the opportunity for response, then what are some of the things, because let's actually talk, that's a good way to actually bring this up. You are specifically looking at changing or possibly changing how the qualification process is at FEMA for those who are not in FEMA. Can you tell us like how that happens and like the pros and cons of that process?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (11m 5s):

Sure. So, government change inherently takes a little bit longer than other sectors. But for me, I think varying perspectives are crucial. So, no matter what those perspectives are, I think they're very helpful. So, in my current role, I'm supporting FEMA's workforce development division. I'm looking at the FEMA qualification system, which is a system that tracks, monitors, and defines what it means to be qualified and different incident management positions within FEMA.

So, the way that it's structured, I'm sure, you know, you remember pieces of this. I hated it, but every incident management person so that the majority of FEMA's workforce has a specific title assigned to them. And with that specific title comes with a position task book, which outlines the requirements that you need to meet in order to be deemed qualified in that position. So, you know, those requirements might entail tasks you have to complete or trainings you have to complete, or maybe certificates you have to complete. I think GIS, there was some sort of technical certificates.

Then some of the other specialists’ positions like our lawyers, they need to have that bar, you know, proof of bar and those things. But for the majority of our positions, again, it's a list of 50, 60, 70, 80 things that you need to demonstrate and then a handful of training classes. Once you demonstrate proficiency, we knight you in, do you need qualified in that position? So, that's kind of round about answer to some of your questions already, but I think that there's an argument to be made on capability-based requirements. I think that’s primarily what our current system does, but if you're out in the field and you request 10 planning specialists, you know what you're requesting when you ask for that, you're expecting a certain skill to show up.

You're expecting people to show up, to be able to do certain things. I was always taught, you know, remember I was on the IMAT, but if you ask for something, you know, don't ask DOD for a specific helicopter say, hey I need you to do something for me. Like you figure out what that capability is, but I'm sort of defining the need and you're selecting the right tool to get the job done. So that's kind of the approach I'm taking and how I think through building capability and understanding workforce capability. Again, it goes back to the vaccination efforts. You know, we think of people as having position specific qualifications, but if we can understand the capability, so they go into those positions, then maybe we could deploy our people differently to better optimally use their skills.

Host: John Scardena (14m 16s):

Yeah, we are going to go back to the original question about like, if you're not in a response, how do you get qualified? But yeah, these points that you're making, I had this problem, maybe it was a pride problem, but I had this problem that I was brought in from the outside, from another federal agency. The way I looked at it was if I was getting hired in that position I should be qualified for the position that I'm immediately walking into. The plan to be qualified should be qualified for the next position or for like the next ring up or how to expand it from there.

So, like this idea of, you go in at this level, but they gave you a book one or two, two levels below, and you're working to the system and it's like, give me a break. You should have been able to demonstrate that you can get it up, especially on a national team, like national team should have the best people on there. I would argue that one of the best options for leading FEMA is Diane Criswell, former IMAT of course, right. That's like the best. So, and even to your credit, I mean, look at you, you were on the National IMAT, you did all these amazing things and even over headquarters and you keep on making these really positive waves because of all that experience and walking through the process, you've gone through the playbooks, you've gone through the task books.

I mean, you've gone through that whole process much more than I have, but on the other end, like terms of like capability and like having people go into new roles, it reminds me of my economics days. That's where I studied in school and there's this idea that resources are not exactly transferable. If you say A can do A over here, it actually won't be as proficient. So, there's this capability gap that happens. You'd have to figure out like how much of a degree you are losing in skill set as you move people around so the idea of like addressing capacity and capability, but what you already have is actually really smart in terms of an economic outlook. Man, I could go on forever talking about some of those things. I'm a talker. That's why I do podcasting right. But to go back to the original question then, okay, if you're looking at saying, hey, let me ask for the need and you figure out the tools and you're developing training based off of that, or you're developing qualification based off of that. Let's say I'm a local emergency manager and all I know this happens so much, all I know is that a local emergency manager, I'm supposed to go get my ICS classes, or I want to learn about like, oh my gosh, there's one called flood flight management and you take that course and you think you're going to learn how to fight floods.

Like the entire course, like from an emergency management perspective, but then you go to the course and like the entire course teaches like how to do sandbagging, like that doesn't teach you anything about the emergency management perspective. Right. So how do you balance, like what somebody outside of FEMA is going to do and what advice would you give to them? I guess, wow. So many questions, like 30 questions. There you go, go for it.

Guest: Kevin Coleman (17m 41s):

Yeah. I mean, I think all experiences, any perspective that you can gain. And again, you know, we as emergency managers, we don't want bad stuff to happen. We don't want to have to respond, but we want to send the people to respond that have responded before, or have shown, you know, response capability. Right. I think there's a whole bunch of avenues that people can take to make up that gap in response experience. I think part of it is thinking about response differently. If you take all the characteristics of a response to then, you break that down high stress from limited resources, all these things and apply that like event management, you know. Like if you're planning for a concert or a sporting event or something, you might be operating under similar constraints on different scale, but similar types of thought processes and similar types of like decision-making processes.

I think I backed into the experience can be used to at least think through and like put yourself in a mindset of what a greater response could look like. And then I think there's also supplemental experience you can get exercises and trainings, reading books, listening to podcasts, talking with people who have that experience. Right. I mean, I'll be the first to admit to you John, I don't know everything about emergency management shocking, but I can almost guarantee you that I know someone who does, and I think leaning on those networks is absolutely crucial.

Host: John Scardena (19m 14s):

I would argue that you're probably wrong. Actually, I think you know a ton about emergency management. In fact, I'd be highly confident that you could probably step into any role at this point and probably figured out what that, within a reasonable amount of time, because you've been trained to do that and you've shown that. To your credit, you have, you've obtained constantly new skill sets and new capabilities. That’s really what's most impressive about you is that you've fulfilled all these major roles now it's because you do keep alerting. Like, I remember you going through task book after task, after task book or skill set. I'm like, man, this guy is like blowing through it, but it shows that it's like helping you out.

It's allowing you to gain something and you know, maybe even going back to your statement of, but I know somebody who does that again, shows you that you're teachable, that you're able to keep growing. Steven Johnson who was on the show is world renowned expert in biochemical counter-terrorism operations, he is a true expert. He says, as soon as an expert tries to stop learning, they're not an expert anymore. So, that's why you're an expert because you do keep learning. That's probably the biggest takeaway for our listeners that if you want to come off as somebody who knows what they're talking about, you have to do something about that. You have to keep learning.

I had this opportunity every week to learn from an expert and to see these different perspectives on top of everything else we're doing and that's a lot of fun too, right. Moving forward then if you're applying all these different concepts to emergency management, you're applying the constant learning, the constant growth looking at, okay what’s the ask versus what's the tool and you're looking at okay in disaster, you have to open up new, different realms? Like real talk, in your perspective, what keeps you up at night about emergency management? What do you be like oh, I wish we did X in our field, what can be applied there?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (21m 24s):

Yeah. So good question, I think it goes back to make my varying lenses that I've experienced emergency management through, right? So that experience brings management through direct survivor interaction. I've experienced emergency management through response on the national IMTAT, I've experienced it on program delivery and Porter's level and now on the workforce qualification side. So, I think at the end of the day, I'm a big preparedness person.  I haven't directly worked in preparedness with, you know that P word in the title of my job. But I think everything that we do in the field can help educate or raise awareness to a preparedness because the more prepared we are, the less need there is for response and the more lives and property that we can save in the future. So, I think it's a culture of preparedness, I think it would be ideal. I think it would be a culture shift because preparedness was hard, right? It's hard politically and financially, but after the fact, I think what better time than now, right? Coming off of a pandemic where every single person who has been impacted to preach, talk about, and focus on preparedness.

Host: John Scardena (22m 58s):

Yeah. That's like me talking about mitigation in the same way. The more you can mitigate, the more you are prepared. I don't like the idea of preparing. When we say the five missionaries of preparedness, I don't prepare to respond, I actually respond at one point, I actually recover. So, in terms of the past tense, the more you can have preparedness, the more that process is complete, the state, the staging is complete, the resources are in place, hundred percent agree, I call that readiness. The more they're ready. You are the least likely, you're not going to have to have a catastrophic response scenario. I a hundred percent on board and it is hard to change that culture.

One thing I've been thinking about a lot is I get questions from people of like, well, how do I actually implement what FEMA is doing? Sometimes my response is stop. A lot of people look at an IAP, an incident action plan. Like how do I do an incident action plan for my campus? We probably wouldn't do an incident action plan. I walked through like it's a legal document between FEMA and the state and what that implies for a campus. I've been working on this train of thought and just follow me. You can correct me because you're the man. But I think most emergency managers outside of FEMA are on boats in the ocean.

They look at FEMA as driving on land and they're like, how do I put wheels on my boat? And when they put wheels on their boat, trying to do an incident action plan, when really, they should do an emergency operations plan, which is different, or they do an occupant emergency plan, which is definitely not what they do, they get into this part, this spot, where they're spending a lot of time and resources have like how to figure out how to put wheels on their boats. Then what happens in the leadership who is not involved in emergency management for their campus, the deans, the university directors, the CEOs look at that and like, why are we spending all this money, putting this thing there? And like, oh, it's super important.

Well no, it's not to us. Well, FEMA is doing it. They have their wheels, but they have a car, you know, their mission is different. I think there needs to be a cultural shift as well of understanding what the mission of each group does. FEMA's mission of emergency management is very different than somebody who works in a sky rise, their mission is going to be much more cyber and physical security related. Just to understand the differences of that is something I've been trying to work through, or what do you think about that?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (25m 55s):

Yeah no, I think I agree with and I’ll argue with you on some others. So, I think that to me, like the concepts are the same, right? We all want the same thing at the end of the day. It's life safety, property, property preservation, all that good stuff. Right. We want the lights come on and we want to stop the work. I know you said it in past shows, emergency management, you know is emergency coordinating, right, so it's coordinating efforts and it's, problem-solving. I mean, that's what we do. We coordinate, we problem solve as emergency managers at any level. I think you apply those concepts differently, depending on the situation you're in.

I'm going to coordinate with different people, if I'm responding to the BP oil spill, then I'm going to coordinate with, to some other events. But you might use a different planning tool, but I'm also a big process over product person. So, I think that the process of getting there is incredibly important and the process drives the product. By following process, the process can be tailored, it can be a little bit different that's okay. Going through a process that's designed to develop common objectives and understand what resources you have and assign them to meet those objectives in some capacity, it’s important.

Host: John Scardena (27m 24s):

Yeah, I liked that answer a lot. Basically, what you're saying is you take what's applicable and apply it to you. My fear is that people try to replicate and to your credit of what you're just saying is like, hey, remember the need versus the tool. The need is the same, you know, saving life, property and continuity of operations, the tools are very different. I hope that know as people think about, okay, how do I take the tool, you know, or what tools can apply to me. So, some things are going to be applicable from the FEMA training and some things you should probably look into the private sector for.

That CEO, you know, oh my gosh, it’s like a burden to bear for, especially the private sector. But I think even federal agencies I saw that a little bit too, of like, there's a cost problem. Hey, you want to add what level of physical security to our federal agency. This is directly related to my experience in DC, we wanted to add X, Y, Z. I'm like, how much does that cost? What's the benefit? We always talk about the benefit of saving lives, but we have to realize that we work with people who don't really get it sometimes, their objectives are different and to understand that. I don’t know, it's something I haven't like fully formed yet, but I just keep walking through this idea, trying to figure out the right tool for the right audience, because people keep asking.

I'm going to go back one question, a question that came up in my mind was related to you. I want to see if we think the same way here in following leadership in emergency management. If you know the leader doesn't have any response experience, does that not effect, but does that weigh on your mind a little bit of wanting to follow them?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (29m 23s):

No, I don't think that way though in wanting to follow them. If I trust them and I know that they trust me, then I think we're good. I think that goes back to my comment earlier on, if you don't know everything, make sure you know the people that do know the things that you don't know. It's the kind of leader that's willing to say, hey help me out on, like you're an expert in what you do. I know I'm the leader on paper, but I'm following you in this scenario. I need you to show me the way you do, kind of thing.

Host: John Scardena (29m 54s):

Yeah. That's the mic drop moment, it's the quote. When you say, hey, if you can trust your leader and your leader trusts you then you're probably going to be successful at least in some degree. That's really great. The last bit, this is all about like QA today, QA with Kevin Coleman, working through thoughts of the concepts of emergency management. That's really what it's turned into, that's why its free form conversations. It's like, what’s on the cupboard for the day. But everything that you've acquired, we've talked about acquiring, we talked about learning different skills from different people, we've talked about a little bit of Rodney in there about process over product.

Can you tell that I actually had Nino DiCosmo on here from L3 Harris, a for-profit company, one of our sponsors, we really like the radios. I asked him that specific question and he was like, at the end of the day the outcome is what drives success in his business. I think an emergency planner gets the idea of, if you have a really great process, if you've already connected with all the stakeholders, then your response is exponentially better. So, it's just different mindsets for sure. But in terms of like everything that you've acquired and the everything you're trying to go for, what do you think it will take? Like the pandemic is so easy to like a point in time. What do you think it will take for emergency managers to get to the next level of maybe authority and respect in our field across different sectors?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (31m 30s):

That's a good question. I mean, emergency managers are the people that others go to solve problems, right? I know I keep saying this, but emergency managers are problem solvers. So, maybe it's that educating the public on what emergency management is what it is and what it isn't right. Emergency manager, not first responders, but emergency managers are, or can be the people that understand how different things are connected so they can bring people to the table to say, hey, did you know that if you talk to them, then we can quickly solve this as opposed to both trying to work in their siloed lanes. So, I think it's an education piece.

Host: John Scardena (32m 21s):

Yeah. Gosh, you just named everything in emergency management. The biggest problem I've found is kind of along the same lines of our job, is problem solving. I was trying to think of a problem solver, there's all these different parties and I think the best emergency managers, to your credit, know who those parties are. If they don't know who those parties are, things suffer as a result. I think emergency managers and the future should be hired as the think tank people to go in there and be like, hey, let me figure out how to do your problem set.

Based off of all the different parties who would touch our problem like they do that in economics, they do that with finance, they do that with all these different sectors, emergency managers also do it, but in very different ways because it's all about people and resources, not just capability. If those parties actually came together to collaborate on how to build a program off of that, man, the skies would be limited in terms of like a chess match with a major hurricane because demand will always succeed supply. Where do you move the puzzle pieces to be most effective? Gosh, I'm talking a lot.

Guest: Kevin Coleman (33m 42s):

Yeah, there's a lot of things that are going through my head and it goes back to the patient and standardization and what does an emergency manager do and what does it mean to be a qualified in a position or a qualified emergency manager? Talked about that topic on some of your past shows as well. I guess you can take it back to the beginning of what is an emergency manager defined? If they're, you know, problem solver or coordinator, or if they're a leader, it's building a program that enables someone to have those skill sets so that when in the van someone's ready to be able to respond, regardless of if they've had actual experience or not, they've been trained to think a certain way to be creative.

This is where I always contract myself because I never thought of myself as a creative person necessarily. I like checklists and I like following those things, but I also like going outside the checklist and outside the process when needed. I think that's what it's all about. I want my pilot to check off every one of those pre-flight boxes, but there's the manager, you know, we can skim a box and be okay because it doesn't apply to our particular situation. I think that's where the creativity comes in and knowing how to be a critical thinker because a lot of what we do is novel.

If you asked me what the typical disaster is, I don't know how to answer that. Maybe a couple years ago I would have had a better answer, but after some of the responses and things that we've dealt with over the past few months and years from vaccinations to, Southwest order migrant surges, to the Surfside Building Collapse, I mean, you name it, right. Like I would have normally called these things, abnormal response events, but it just seems like my surprise is dwindling for each new thing that happens or each new thing that emergency managers are tasked to do. So again, I think setting that standard or understanding what it means to be a qualified emergency manager is getting more challenging because our field seems to be expanding.

Host: John Scardena (36m 8s):

Expanding rapidly. I would have never thought if somebody told me in January of this year, that I would be directly helping USR operations in Miami, I would have been like, that's not my, like that's not even close to what I do, but then all of a sudden, I'm in a USR training in may, and the same people I know are at the Surf Side building collapse. Now I'm working on the background trying to help those guys out. I mean, we didn't even talk about the Southwest border, we could have talked about that today. Maybe we'll have you back on, but there's just so many things. In fact, you've done that now twice right? You did that once with the IMAT and then now you're doing it again with the headquarters. Were you with the IMAT when they did it, when they went down

Guest: Kevin Coleman (36m 56s):

No, no, I just did that back in March. I did some things at quarters.

Host: John Scardena (37m 3s):

Yeah. It’s like the world is expanding in terms of our need and perspective. I think at one point we're going to have to define like what we do and what we don't do. I do hope response is always one of those things. I mean, you never want to have a response, but coordination is never more important. Process has never more important than in the direct life-saving mission. I got to see that this month with a Surfside Building Collapse and even the equipment that they needed to be able to kind of help out with that. I'm still kind of reeling over it cause it's just heartbreaking to think about, but in any case, Kevin, before I let you go, I want to ask one final Q and A with Kevin Coleman.

Host: John Scardena (37m 50s):

Right. What are your final thoughts to the audience, to emergency managers around the country who are listening in right now, what message would you want to share to them?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (38m 1s):

Yeah keep learning. I think the more we can learn and grow as emergency managers, I think the better off we're going to be and the better prepared we're going to be for the next level.

Host: John Scardena (38m 14s):

Gosh another quote. We're going to have all these quotes that we're just going to try to figure out how to put it on social media. So, Kevin, thanks again for coming on, talking about qualification, talking about an update with vaccinations, answering all my random questions surrounding the concepts of emergency management even. Thank you again so much for coming on the show. We're going to have you come back on again I'm sure in the future, you have really good insights.

If you like listening to Kevin Coleman today and wanted to ask him a question about the concept of emergency management or qualification or how you can kind of up your own game, which you can do, you can do it a couple of different ways. We would love on social media for people to be brave enough. I do say brave enough now, I've kind of learned my lesson, to put your question out on social media for people to see whether it's on LinkedIn or Doberman Emergency Management Page, or on Instagram with Disaster Tough. You can also send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com, which we will forward on to Kevin there so he can look at that question. But if you liked this episode which you should have, give us that five-star rating and subscribe. Tune in next week and we'll see you then.

#65 Surfside Building Collapse: Response After Action Review - Interview with Joe Hernandez

As response operations sunset on the Miami Surfside Building Collapse, we review the strategic actions that were taken in response with USAR legend, Joe Hernandez. Joe was on scene during the incident.

The Miami Surfside Building Collapse Incident required local, state, and federal assets deployed as well as a complex system to support responders, family and friends of those missing, and potential survivors. This was an urban search and rescue operation with support across the emergency support functions.

Our host was invited and instructed at a USAR conference in May, many of the participants were deployed to this disaster. Joe Hernandez leads Disaster Medical Solutions, the group who put on the training- he self-deployed to support teams on the rubble pile. His perspective improves our next mission.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.

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Host: John Scardena (1 min 41s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your host John Scardena. I'm back with a frequent guest, I've never been able to say that until now, a frequent guest, Joe Hernandez. He's an urban search and rescue expert. I've been to his training, he's been out there at the Surf Side, Miami building collapse, economy collapsed. We introduced it a couple of weeks ago, right before Joe went out there. He actually spent several days on the site with a lot of people we both know and he was actually on CNN for several days as a correspondent there. So, he's providing some perspectives now that the response has been officially been called and we're moving into recovery. Joe is going to come back on here and he's going to be talking about some of the after actions that he observed when he was on site and to help better coordinate in the future. Some of the winds that he saw and just kind of walk through the process, Joe, welcome back to the show.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (2m 33s):

Thank you so much, John and thank you for having me and I hope everybody is doing well.

Host: John Scardena (2m 39s):

Yeah, I hope everybody's doing well too. Especially the responders who are on the site and you know, I've talked a little bit about that. Hard to make the call, that response needs to end, recovery needs to start, you know, my perspective and we were talking about this before, but once they dropped the building, it was like, okay, they're moving away. So, can you walk us through that decision? And what do you think about the decision and the timeliness of it?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (3m 9s):

I think the time factor for being a realist is right about that time. We were going into the 13th day, the factors that were involved from start of the disaster to basically making that decision, including, as you mentioned, bringing down the rest of the building that was left, occupying a good portion of the pile and enabled, leaving them unable to search that particular area. Again, creating a really unstable piece of it. But it was a decision by the folks that were there, the engineers, as well as the command and supported by the mayor and finance through the governor and the state.

I think they made a good decision and the dust impaction that creates, even though they did try to cover most of the pile is significant, the shifting underground, et cetera. I'm okay with the decision that was made as hard as it is for not only the victim's families who you can't even imagine the feelings that they're going through, but the rescuer themselves now changing their mindset to go from a rescue to a recovery.

Host: John Scardena (4m 23s):

Let's talk about the dust dropping the other building one. Do you think that was necessary to drop the building when they dropped the building?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (4m 34s):

It was, if they wanted to continue them working in the area, if not the closure would have been a lot harder. I believe that that controlled bringing it down allows for another area to be searched for belongings and foreclosure. Even though there will not be a DNA for human remains, there are items belonging to those people, but it had to be done so that they can continue closure. Even though recovery sounds gruesome at times, there still is the procedure of collecting tissue bodies and the conditions that they are and bringing closure to that family that there is an answer.

Host: John Scardena (5m 15s):

Yeah, I think you and I talked about this back in December, but just to re bring it up because it's a question that's brought up frequently, is in large-scale incidents like this, you find a limb, you find a toe, you find a thumb. At what point do you tell the family, Hey, like you got to cut it off. That's kind of the worst terminology ever, but you know what I mean? Like, Hey, we found one body part, this is your closure. What happens in four months? If you find a bone or find more DNA, do you notify the family? Do you try to get them to not be notified? What do you think is the best course of action?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (5m 57s):

I think that, and I'll speak from a personal experience from a personal friend who, one of my sons, while he was in Afghanistan, close to gold star mother, one of the platoon sergeants who stepped on an IED and of course, tragically took his life. Six months later, they did recover his leg. It was a question of back to the, the mother, do we send this back to you? Do we assume the body and add that to that? There goes the mind, did I even need to hear this type of information? Would it have been okay if I was never told the rest of that now hearing it from her and the emotional scar that rekindled. Was it really going to make any difference in her life and her in her family's life of finding part of Brian's body? Again, that it really mattered if she didn't hear that, would she have been okay with that news as well? She said that she would have been okay if they would've just not mentioned it to her at that point in time, because it wasn't going to change anything.

Host: John Scardena (7m 6s):

Do you know if in Surfside they had the family sign a document saying that if you find a body part, your window closes? Did you know that?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (7m 16s):

No, I did not know. I know that they were going through a multiple step confirmation on scene and then send those remains again to a lab to confirm. Again, take swabs out to my knowledge. Would they, again, contact that family member if they were able to check them off the list, I'm assuming that there's so much going on, that they probably wouldn't reach back out to that person to tell them that they found more. They would already assume, that was a closure for them.

Host: John Scardena (7m 49s):

Got it. Yeah so, in terms of the after-action perspective, your personal preference and it sounds like as a professional and also from the personal experience that that encouragement should stem from, hey, once we find some DNA, it's time to close the conversation, just to help people emotionally, that mental first day we've talked about that before, we walk through that process. So, you were at Surfside for several days, you actually sent me several pictures of like Walt that you saw. You saw Walt worked on the pile, you saw some other people. I actually talked with Armando, he was out of town when it happened, so he wasn't there initially from an after-action standpoint, coordination and collaboration, that kind of stuff. What did you observe? The good, the bad, the ugly, what can we improve in emergency management?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (8m 55s):

From start to finish while I was there, they did a really good job. I believe that the incident commander who was given that scene from Miami Dade County Fire Rescue, it's a 2,500-member department, one of the largest in the entire east coast. It has plenty of depth within that agency and technical savvy within that agency. If you add to that, all of the neighboring departments within south Florida, all a kind of dual role cross trained fire rescue, EMS, fire-based system, he had everything that he needed in the Christmas tree, along with the city of Miami, being the host agency for another federal task force that made it to federal task force each carrying a $3 to $4 million worth of equipment that's federally owned. The state really was just waiting for the federal nod of a declared disaster for those assets to be used. And again, utilize all the members in a different role from a fire rescue and department base now to a deployment within a national response system deployment. If you add the state teams that he had his stands available to Florida having eight total teams to be in federal and the other six being state assets as well, maybe not as large as the two federal teams is not as heavily equipped, but surely have the manpower, resources, knowledge, and train side by side with those federal members, as you are well aware of that, they do just as well of a job just don't happen to be part of a federal system. So, he had enough manpower, he had enough equipment, he had enough savvy and everything that goes along with it on that scene. Little people know that each team has several structural engineers that federal teams carry, two structural engineers on each team, but states usually have one. However, they doubled up on those structural engineers, the state itself, their structural engineers. So, there were at least close to probably 20 structural engineers over that time, making decisions, whether they came from the FEMA office, or local engineers that want to lend a hand with multiple deployment experience all the way from the Oklahoma City bombing all the way up to now.

So very well-orchestrated, having close medical infrastructure, still intact. It didn't affect any of the community. So, it's one of those maybe easier scenes to control from an emergency management point of view of saying is kind of localized instead of spread across my entire city. Even my health infrastructures that are there, University of Miami came through and just stopped all the physicians that have really belonged to those teams from a lot of those. Anyways, they had everything that they need, canines as well. I believe that he held on to his command as he should. There was no need for him to have a point of weakness. He was well-educated well-trained and had the resources at his hand, and he did a great job at it. Some of the other stuff we know we can take a look at after actions, IE the booth set up a base of operations, where they set up the tents. Did it take a while for fences to get put up and keep people at bay, keep even the family members that they just because of how it pulls on everything and make a corridor coming in and out? Not so much the responders who were looking for victims on that piles job, as you know, it's more for that law enforcement and emergency management to make those decisions of where are we going to pick these people and how well can we make it accessible for them to get every day from where they're staying to the pile from the pile back to where they're staying?

Host: John Scardena (12m 58s):

Well, you were talking about that for the Oklahoma City bombing, you guys call it like the Hyatt or something. It was a little box that was built right next to the site in terms of; I mean you've already shared several times, hey, it's very important where you put up the shelter or where you put up the facilities for the responders and the direction it faces. In your opinion, was that followed this time? Or was that a lesson learned this time?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (13m 23s):

Oh boy, here we go. 1995, and here we are 2021 and you know what, the lessons didn't get learned very much. They still put the responders almost caddy corner across the street in a large tennis complex, had an open area, hard ground, easy to set up what we call Western shelters. However, it was within the distance of smell, sight, and sound of what they were doing the entire week. To me, it compounds, it goes from PTSD. You call it complex PTSD is, why add to the pile in somebody's emotional tank when there's no need to. It bothered me at that time.

Some of the teams of course, would put a little bit further down the street. I think it was a decision because of space in the area. If there was space that they might've made the same mistake with the others. So, they play some of them further down the ID, a waltz task force, Florida task force four was basically on the beach at a park, those members woke up and got to watch the sunrise and the ocean rested. Trauma timeout as we call it huge working through that disaster tough emotion of what's going on for them and to see how much that decision wasn't correct to take the building down, they had to move the boot. They had to take both taskforces, Florida task force one and Florida task force two and move them further down the street because they were going to get impacted by the dust as controlled as explained it was going to be.

Host: John Scardena (15m 7s):

Well that's the problem with responders, real talk, you're used to wanting to be either in scene or on scene to be closest seen as possible just in case something happens. So, the idea of a multi-day response, if you're not trained for that, if you're not thinking about that all the time, then it kind of changes the mindset, right? People are shocked when they hear that the national strike team, when they get deployed for emergency management, they're typically not in the disaster. We're at the Capitol. It's much better to coordinate with the governor's office at the Capitol than to be actually in the zone.

But why would you want to be in the zone? It's starting to impact you? The idea of the dust was impacting the responders is just like, man, that's one-on-one, you said it right. Sound, sound, sight, and smell those three things. So those are your three factors of where you should put up a shelter and so that's a really good after action. Those people will seem to show when they're doing their emergency plans for where they put up other responders, great call-out for the logisticians setting that up. Yeah, I mean, that brings in so many thoughts in itself. Okay.

So you talked about the federal response, really interesting of the location, because if this happened in 90% of the country, there's not a federal team, literally right there, let alone two, let alone a huge department that as you noted it, tools, equipment, training expertise, even to understand how to operate in a large multi-agency or a large group function, having 2,500 people in your department, it really helps understand scale. But in terms of the federal response, I was reading reports that for a lack of better term, frustrated me on the timing of those responses, not getting into details too much, but in terms of an after action of timing of state assets, federal assets, who's in charge, that kind of perspective. What do you think that we can learn an emergency management or a leadership capability? I keep calling emergency management. What I'm talking about is leadership in emergency services, that's strategic level. What do you think we can take away from this disaster that can be applied to any disaster in terms of time and coordination?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (17m 49s)

Instead of a reactive, take a possibly proactive approach with emergency management and IE, the fire, chief police, chief city administration, and talk about those plans because depending on whose incident it is, IE in this fashion, it was that fire chief's thrown basically. From there came out the decisions and he held onto it pretty tight. IE, if we go over to the shootings and Orlando, it becomes a law enforcement scene. If you don't see the others in charge, they're basically part of that organization. So, what your capabilities are locally, and then within the state, I think is massive.

Being able to work those coordination’s out. I know that the state teams, the incident was rolled upon as a state asset before the 11-hour mark of when it was declared a federal disaster by Washington. So, for those 11 hours, of course, it wasn't only going to be a local event, the local job as we call it within their agency, but they were going to reach out and use mutual aid agreements within the other jurisdictions, city of Miami Hialeah, Miami beach, up all the way up into Broward county, Broward Sheriff's office, and bring all of those resources into health and then reach out to the state.

The state began its mutual aid system, which we have where they will now begin contacting the state teams and get the state same IST, IMT, incident management teams, into the support team from within the state. They were already beaten feet on the ground before it was ever declared a residential disaster. I really felt kind of blessed and lucky to know that our state had those capabilities and that it was able to be called upon that that was the best part. Then everything else was just kind of in the weights and was able to work out the kinks afterwards, even the political kinks.

Host: John Scardena (19m 58s):

The political kinks are always, in my perspective, usually the biggest kinks of every disaster. It's usually a holdup for lots of reasons, but they have the weight and they know it. I would say the cleverest thing an emergency manager or a leader could do is to figure out the difference between the law and rule and to figure out where, what rules you can break and what laws you should never break. Because when it comes down to like saving lives and responding and getting the job done, he has to be able to be sometimes pretty tough, right.

He had to have tough skin and be able to say no, we're just going to do it. But at the same time, if you're not clever and you do that, if you're just bullheaded and you're dumb and you rub everybody the wrong way, they're not going to want to work with you and you're just going to slow down the response. So, you have to be clever at figuring out how do I be most effective and help without pissing everybody off. That's kind of the name of the game, right? Yeah.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (21m 6s):

And that's not always going to happen here. It's always going to make somebody angry.

Host: John Scardena (21m 11s):

Yeah, and again, that's part of the game of like how far you can push somebody's button, but you also have to be able to roll with the punches. You know, people are going to do that to you. I've been in plenty of disasters where, you get in a, let's say a yelling match. I don't really yell at people, but a disagreement one way or the other, I felt like I was usually right. That's why I was arguing with my point. Other people view what they thought was right, a decision will be made and you move on and. You know, I've had great dinners and great conversations with those same people two hours later and I think just like understanding that chess match the test match of a disaster. Going back to that political point is not only the responder standpoint of like, how do you deal with a rubble pile, but how do you deal with people?

People are kind of your biggest issue, right? The people who want to get a picture, the people who are distraught about their family, of course, the politician who wants to look good or make their opponent look bad, you have to deal with like all those different things. I think a lot of those things came out in Miami as well. So, when you were walking away from this incident outside of the shelters, what are your top three things that you think, okay, if we're going to have another building collapse, this is what we need to absolutely make sure we implement so we can find success based off of this event?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (22m 51s):

I would say not only preparing as they did for the rescuers and the responders and possibly where they were going to stay. IE ground zero, they were actually busting and we got to stay a couple blocks away at the Java center. So, there you are removed every day and then came back to that area every day. So, you had that break along with that is corridors keeping the public away as far as you can. That includes the coverage of the media, even though they are there for a good purpose at most of the time. If you are going to allow them to be there or centrally locate them and prepare the area before you start allowing them to come into that particular area at the same time, be there for them, they did a great job.

I believe in bringing those family members one time by bus. So, the emergency is setting up parks and recreation, transportation, whatever bus system you do have in your community, whether they're small buses or large buses and bringing those members over to the site and allowing them to be there one more evening and say a prayer for those family members that they possibly have lost in that pile at the same time capture what the rescuers are going through firsthand and watch. I did believe that they did a great job in bringing that. I think they also did a pretty good job from what I saw on individual decision-makings, not sure if it came from an EM side of the responders also going out and looking at the Memorial that was being set up for those persons that were still missing. Whether that was an emotional trigger, it somehow gives them a sense of meeting that family member, meeting someone else, giving them a sense of purpose. It was good, I think, from both sides of what was done in that exchange of persons.

Host: John Scardena (24m 50s):

It’s an interesting point you're making in terms of, I mean, big picture, you're talking about big picture essentially right there. Right? I saw a report from, or something that came out from the mayor about the frequency of contacting the families who were asking questions in terms of staging, did you get to see an idea or how they were interacting with the families at all? Were they putting them in a facility nearby where they were there? How was that coordination piece happening between them?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (25m 30s):

To my understanding, they were in a facility close by. However, some of the family members just lived in the certain areas. I met a daughter of one of the women that was missing, who her and her husband lived in Jupiter, Florida. They both worked for Florida power and light. I was able to speak a little bit with the husband and then with her later on. So, some of them traveled back and forth and just kind of wanted to be generally in the area. They weren't really a problem, they weren't really trying to approach the rescuers in any fashion.

However, that's not always the issue. So there still needs to be some type of a coordination effect to make sure that that doesn't go in a certain way. Emotions can run really deep and family members. At times they can even become aggressive. We've seen that in calls and just in EMS, in ordinary situations, let alone knowing that your loved one is somewhere in the rubble pile hasn't been found yet. So that needs to be strengthened up. Of course, the biggest scene was having a member of the city fire department, paramedic firefighter well-trained, however, wasn't exactly rostered to be on the task force. However, met all the qualifications and because his daughter seven-year-old daughter lived in that building with his ex, the task force felt this is extremely important for him to be part of the mission and be part of the search as well. Ironically, he was part of the team that found out once they started finding the remains of what he was used to seeing in her apartment and in her living space, he knew that she was around.

Host: John Scardena (27m 20s):

I have conflicted thoughts. Okay. First of all, that's heartbreaking. It's hard to talk about logistics when you hear a story of like that. But in terms of the professional experience, I don't know how I feel about somebody looking for their, even a professional looking for their own family members. It is in one sense, almost the irony, but it is amazing that he was part of the team that found his own daughter and kind of in a weird twisted way, the peace that comes from that. I was part of the team that found my daughter, but at the same time, the emotional impact that we talked about, mental impact. A lot of potentially mistakes could have been made because he's working through a highly technical process of removing carefully and to be able to keep his composure and other people are aware, I have to be aware of his. Did his team know that he was looking for his own child?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (28m 33s):

Just the task force, none of the other task forces. No, none of the other people knew, the media doesn't even know his name yet. I understand the feelings and thoughts on the other side, however, because that's what he does for a living and that's where he has been trained to do, to not let him at least have that opportunity to do that for his own daughter would have been I'm over the fence on the other side. At the same time, we could say that his mind was in a different state maybe than the other rescuers, but at the same time, we could say maybe he was even more focused than everyone else because he had a mission that meant more to him than anyone else. It was a driving factor.

Host: John Scardena (29m 18s):

I can't even, I don't want to imagine what that is like. I will say though, that my now two weeks, because I've had basically two drains, but basically my one week of training with you guys, it wouldn't matter if I had no training. I don't know if I would be one of those people that everybody meet would need me to be on that pile. I would do absolutely everything. I would probably break 30 laws trying to get onto that pile, to look for my kids and my wife. So, I understand that, especially with training. But like I said, it's a conflict of thought because in medical, at the hospital, you can't work on a family member for that reason. You don't want to make mistakes, but.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (30m 7s):

Never in my career, early in my career, I was on a unit with two other individuals who rode three in a truck. Well, some people call an ambulance. We call a rescue truck, three paramedics and in the back of the truck, we go to call that cardiac arrest. The Lieutenant makes a decision and tells a friend of mine that they were not to mention his name, but it was okay that he got permission from the hospital called the code and he didn't fit, he didn't stop, he continued on. I was driving the rig and we were almost arriving at the hospital, kind of repeated it to him. Did you not hear that? We could call this code but he goes yeah but this is my dad. Changed a couple of things inside that truck and on that day, so understand totally things are always so ironic.

Sometimes we just don't understand why, you know, what the BDU jacket looks like and to cover all that they're wearing in those rubble piles to keep themselves protected, almost just like an army jacket that a soldier wears. You were around that scenario that we call the daycare and the bus. So, you could imagine that a seven-year-old, then you take off your jacket and draping it over that child or your own child, leaves without work for a little while.

Host: John Scardena (31m 33s):

Yeah. Man, I talking about lack of words in our line of work. We deal with death and some emergency managers, luckily enough, but some emergency managers had to deal with response and the way the world's going, they're going to be dealing with a lot more response. Those who are on a response and coordinating directly with DSR, make the decisions for life and deaths. Where do you send resources? Knowing the other people are going to be impacted, kind of like a call on ending response, knowing you're essentially changing your tempo. You're calling it. But because of that, because I've dealt with a lot of death in the field, it usually doesn't impact me because I feel like I've been desensitized a little bit to it, but for whatever reason, when you texted me that, because I found out from you what 12 hours before the news. I was distraught, I ended up calling a good friend of mine, Patrick. I was like I don’t know, weirdly, not weirdly, maybe it wasn't even so much that he was like, oh, it's because you're a dad. I was like, I don't think that's it.

I think lately I've been so focused on learning how much sacrifice a first responder has to give, a lot of the first responders in 9/11 have cancer. That's still a possibility for you and that scares me. But when you see a rubble pile like that, you know they're putting themselves in harm's way, they're sacrificing time for their family. They could get cancer. There's, widow makers hanging from there. They're putting their lives at risk. So, they already are sacrificing so much and then you had to get your own kid out of the pile. Then later on barry your child, you know, it's beyond not fair, seems wrong. The one solace that I get from all of that is that in terms of an eternal perspective, life is a blip of a moment eternal.

Obviously, I believe in eternal perspective. So, the idea of that, you're happy for billions and billions of years. Okay. You have a horrible moment for like a blip on the radar, then that makes up for it. I'm also grateful for everybody always talks about mercy. We're grateful for mercy. I'm also grateful for justice because that's not just basically manmade, whether intentional or not a manmade incident as you know. I'm trying to say it sucks.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (34m 34s):

Absolutely being grateful for that static, that eternal clock that we all get to focus on and enjoy it. That's where we are, what we believe in. I truly believe in that same way too. It kind of strengthens everybody and has a place to pull their strength from. I tend to be strengthened by that as well. Their family backs that up a hundred percent. So that kind of is my drive and your drive to continue forward and doing what we're doing and teaching that next generation enables us to teach, deliver this information to those that will be responding in the years to come, who would've thought at all, John, that May 24th to 28th, we were doing a FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Medical Team Specialist Class and half a dozen, a dozen of those individuals would be putting their skills to practice in a disaster that had over 159 people.

Host: John Scardena (35m 36s):

I've said this multiple times, disaster medical solutions, your company has the best training I've ever seen. The instructors, everyone was a top-notch. I said that a couple of weeks before the disaster, I'm so grateful. I mean, I already had a ton of respect for search and rescue, obviously, but I'm so grateful to know that half a dozen people who are on that pile happened to go through the best training in the country weeks prior that's the mercy side. The justice part is that I'm beyond belief at this point, there is a God in heaven and there is an eternal perspective, and there are ways to figure that out if you had to put in the work.

That's a whole other thing outside of emergency management. But the mercy part is that people went to the best training in the country weeks prior. The mercy part is that these people, men and women are sacrificing, are willing to sacrifice that much. The mercy part is to allow a father to go look for his daughter that that's mercy justice might say, hey, probably shouldn't be on the pile, but I can't imagine robbing somebody of that, especially if they're trained as your point.

So, I mean that's a great call out. You and I always do this on each of our shows. We start talking about the details and then we get a heart. The heartstrings part starts coming out a little bit, but I think it's because you and I have, you way more than me, but been around the block a few times and know what it's like. You know, we feel for the survivor refill for the responder, what we want to do on shows where you come on, especially because you're a tactician is to be able to help out from the strategic level to make sure the tactics run more smoothly. So, what we've been calling out today are things like, hey, where do you put your temporary housing smell, sound, sight.

Those three things to be aware of when you're putting people up, things like they're surviving family members, how do you give them closure? That's something really important. When do you call response versus recovery? That kinks of the political perspective in terms of like an after-action on initial after action, based off of your perspective, you've already highlighted so many things that if I was in Hoboken, Wisconsin, or if I was in Columbus, Ohio, or Sacramento, California, or Miami, Florida, those things apply everywhere. So, I really appreciate you coming onto the show and sharing that we always do this. Next time you come on the show, it's kind of has to be ended on a positive note because this is like breaking my heart right now.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (38m 46s):

There will be good times for that too, when we can really encourage everyone to focus on some good things and keep their mindset. Unfortunately, we went through the July 4th holiday, it’s a different event this time around. Ironically, on this side of the coast where I've retired to from east coast to the west coast, I had to prepare for Hurricane Elsa.

Host: John Scardena (39m 10s):

We would talk about that. Like the rain was impacting, this is sounds miserable. That's the problem with disaster services is like, oh man, it is kind of becomes kind of doomsday preppy. When you think about like, oh man, we didn't even talk about that. In terms of the after action, the actual weather impacting a building collapse, it basically turns all the dust and debris into like mud and concrete, right?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (39m 38s):

Yeah. Well like building a sand castle and taking that bucket of water to create the wall. Gosh. Yeah, it's just me or making just a solid mud pile most credible. Then the irony as we just kind of mentioned here, these guys are the ones returning to North Florida, the panhandle team, the Jacksonville, the Orlando and Tampa, and saying, are you kidding me now? I got to go home and board up my windows. I have to cut my grass. If I even can make it before the rains come and I got to pick up everything around the yard, it might be a direct hit up in north Florida.

Host: John Scardena (40m 18s):

Hey, here's a question for you. Are there groups out there that take care of the families of the firefighters?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (40m 26s):

I'm glad you asked that the answer is yes and no. So as an emergency manager from that community, IE you are the emergency manager for Pinellas County and the Clearwater area, Tampa area, Hillsborough county. You know that your teams are over there. You know, you've got 80 responders over there. If the fire department or the union of the fire department or the benevolence of the fire department doesn't do something, it sure would be up to those emergency managers to stir up that pot and say, how can we help get someone out there to go take care of these loose ends while these members are on a deployment for the last 10 to 14 days because we know it is an incredible situation. You should bring my wife on and call the show wives of USR because if anything could go wrong, when you're on deployment, it goes wrong. The refrigerator breaks down the car doesn't work anymore. In case someone's sick, you almost need powers of attorney for them to fill out the paperwork and pay bills. You're gone and you know, it's crazy on either. If it's a man or a woman deployed it just throws everything in a kink. Then the funny part is when you come back home 10 to 14 days later, and someone else has been in charge, you try and take them out.

Host: John Scardena (41m 53s):

Oh, I know sometimes they want you to, that's a hilarious thing. Hey, you just got back. Hey, welcome back. We’re putting you to work and you're like, ah, you don't know what I just went through. I will say this on the FEMA side, I'm going to call out FEMA here really quick, they don't do that. I deployed for months at a time. I had deployed for months at a time with a two-hour notice, not knowing what I was going to come home, no support. You're talking about people, everything that could go wrong. My freaking wife, I'm like in a tornado response and flood tornado and flooding response in Georgia. My wife was young, healthy, beautiful, the whole deal. She like texts me and says, hey, I got shingles and I'm like, what? How did you get Shingles?

So now, I'm worried about her and how she's doing. She had just started a new job, right when that happened. So, then you you're gone for months without notice. Of course, you don't like we have this rule on social media, I never tell people when I'm deployed or not, because my wife's at home alone you know, with kids. So maybe you and I can collaborate on some ideas on, even your wife, you know, wives of USR, she just started a podcast, but yeah. Thinking of resources for people who support the responders, you know, my wife is kind of our family emergency manager for when I'm deployed. Right. You know, she has to make that those coordination calls. So, yeah, she's my incident commander at all times, but absolutely.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (43m 26s):

Agreed a hundred percent. I've got one of those two and I rely heavily on it now trying to carry that load too while I'm here and taking care of our daughter really presents an incredible load, but I love the way that you're thinking. I do agree a hundred percent that FEMA does not fulfill that role. I know that on my personal department, it was fulfilled to a certain degree by our benevolent. So, the guys would take turns to come out. Would you have you said, dude, I'm busy going around all the trees, can you cut some trees for the next time? At the same time, for some reason hurricanes changes directions and our home got impacted. So, our city task force sent units up to take care of the check on the welfare of our houses and our spouses and make sure if they needed a roof put back on because the hurricane actually impacted those homes as well and it was a welcome relief to those individuals.

Host: John Scardena (44m 25s):

I think that's a kind of a mic drop moment. I just want to thank you again Joe, for coming on the show for talking to me about the after-action of response of the Surf Side, a Miami condo collapse, and walking us through your own personal experiences. I know you because you've had so much personal experience, it was really hard for you to be out there. I just want to say again, we're thankful for everything you've done on a very positive note, Disaster Medical Solutions, big fan of your organization. Thank you again for inviting me out to that USR training because I got to understand perspective before this building collapsed and I know you're doing another training on November 30th through December 3rd, I'm promoting your company.

I should start getting paid for it, but no, but seriously, if you're a firefighter, you're listening to the show right now, or you're a paramedic and you want to get more USR training, there is a FEMA course that Joe puts on his, him and his company. Again, just the best in the country. It's absolutely phenomenal. It's a medical perspective and they go all out. You really get to walk out of there as a true expert. We're grateful that those people were on the rubble pile. I'm glad that they were trained by you. So, Disaster Medical Solutions again November 30th through December 3rd and we'll see you next week. Thanks.

#64 State of Emergency - Interview with Todd DeVoe

Happy Fourth of July! This week's episode with Todd DeVoe, we talk about the major disasters and potential threats happening in the World right now, including an update on the Surfside Condo Collapse.

We have a BIG announcement this week! Make sure to listen in to find out what it is!

Todd DeVoe from EM Weekly returns to the show to talk about the major disasters that are happening right now, the potential hazards we face, and the need for greater mitigation.

Happy 4th of July!

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Episode 64

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. I'm your host to John Scardena, owner of Doberman Emergency Management and former federal emergency response official who's responded to some of the most extreme disasters. Disaster Tough is our mantra. It combines experience, training, and analytics in order to be successful at any stage within the disaster lifecycle, it means being a professional in emergency and disaster services, Doberman Emergency Management lives by this. If your organization needs to fill a gap, please contact us we can help. Contact info is in the show notes.

We also support other products and organizations that will increase your ability. For example, if you fight wildfires, hurricanes, a pandemic, any disaster in the field at a hospital, or command center, listen up. You're missing out If you do not use L3 Harris for your radio coms, they are secure, portable, mobile and scalable, which is great news for us in the field. A truly disaster tough radio system. Check out the XL family of radios by clicking on the show notes, or simply go to L3Harris.com.

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Host: John Scardena (1m 52s):

Welcome back to the show, everybody! It's your Host: John Scardena, man this is a great episode for several reasons. First of all, happy 4th of July, Happy Independence Day. We set it up in real time, it's pretty exciting. We have lots of good things happening. The world seems like it's on fire between what's happening in Surfside, what's happening literally like in Canada. So, we're going to be talking about different kinds of stuff. But most importantly, I want to talk about, he's officially back on the show with EM weekly, he has the EM weekly brand and then weekly podcast. All just kind of stuff, Tod welcome to the show.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (2m 30s):

Thank you and everybody got to see me mess around with my microphone, trying to get the right position.

Host: John Scardena (2m 39s):

Like I said, we're real time. This is emergency management, this is real time emergency management. Absolutely. So, should we wait until later in the podcast to make this big announcement? Or should we tease it or should we just tell them now? What do you want to do?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (2m 53s):

We’ll, wait.

Host: John Scardena (2m 56s):

Okay. Yeah. So, we got a big announcement, everybody. We're pretty excited about it, but yeah, we'll hold it off. Maybe like every three minutes we'll just remind everybody there's a big announcement and we just won't mention it and wake up like four or five episodes. Okay. So, Surfside, let's talk about Surfside really quick. What I know, what you know, and we'll kind of go from there just for a reminder of our listeners who was on our show, Chief Walt Lewis, Joe Hernandez, he, our legend and several of the student participants from the Urban Search and Rescue conference that I was at in May are actually responding to Surfside right now. So, our hearts go out to them.

They've been sending me all kinds of contacts. Joe is actually going to come on the show next week once a response is finished and he's going to be talking about after actions. So, we'll kind of hold off on that there, but they still have a hundred and what 40ish people missing, they've pulled out at nine deceased but there is a sliver of hope. They still got a couple of days if you know, they happened to be getting food out of the refrigerator. As Joe was talking about it came down on him, then they got the food, they got the pipes with the water. So hopefully they're in a void wheel for their success. So, there's that. But Todd actually mentioned something that I kind of saw. I looked at it, he probably knows more about it. Talk about the 3d modeling that they're coming out with what you know about Todd.  

Guest: Todd DeVoe (4m 26s):

Yeah, I mean, what I know about it is basically out to the media, so I don't have any like super insights on it, but it's really interesting. Using one of the things that we're seeing in the future, and I say the future today is the 3d modeling and then using artificial intelligence and augmented reality, both in the fire response, and in, obviously you've seen this here at Surfside. So, if you want to check out some really cool video and pictures, they're available online right now and in a very super publication. But the part of it I want to talk about though, is using technology today with in response.

So, I mean, I don't know if this is what they're using necessarily in this particular instance, but we have the ability with smart cities, with smartphones, with you know, these things. But to say, we always carry with me over there by their desks, our phones to triangle people, right. We have apps, right, for instance, that are on your phone, talk to each other, you know, there's apps that you can put on your phone, on purpose for your children, how to track where your kids or your family members are. Right. These things like this exist.

We in first response and management can actually use those to find people that are missing as long as they have their phone on them. And so, I think that's really kind of a unique way of using this. I don't know if they're using that technology, because what I found interesting was effectively tented a bunch of different locations on that 3d map. They didn't specifically say where they got that data from, but my guess would be probably from a cell phone data or other electronic devices that are putting up a signal.

Host: John Scardena (6m 17s):

Yeah. That's like almost in Batman where he uses a cell phone signals to like create like a 3d image, so if you're really curious on that topic and the difference between augmented reality versus artificial intelligence, I actually love the fact that you're like, Hey, let's talk about tech because tech and emergency management, emergency services like changes everything and everybody knows that because you know my experience with the drones. If you take the listening devices and you're starting to do sonar, and then you add for grad and you're doing like heat maps and you're doing point cloud, basically for those who don't know, when you look at an Xbox, you can do like a hand gesture. It's looking at all the different shapes that are associated with your hand. You're like, okay that's what a hand looks like. There's a hand gesture and that's the kind of stuff that they're talking about as point cloud. One thing that's really cool is the state of Texas got a grant to use Google's point cloud. Google has if you look at the Google or a tab, like the 3d images, right? So, they have billions of shapes already identified. This is the shape of a shingle, this is the shape of a door handle is, the shape of whatever. They're now using that in search and rescue drones for fields to look for specific shapes that look like body parts. So, they're able to find deceased persons or maybe hopefully alive. So, applying it to the rural environment, to the urban environment, hopefully there they're able to find people and they did identify pockets where they could there, they can guess where there's voids, right?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (7m 60s):

Yes, absolutely and like any other collapse was always going to be a voidin pockets, furniture or heavy-duty equipment, like a freezer, refrigerator, air conditioning, it's things like that connects you with Stan, the collapsed great pockets. Now, you know, I want to stress this as well because all of us in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska and the quick countries, if you will, there's always that rumor, don't go under your desk because there's going to be a pocket and you can live in the pocket. Well, the idea here is it's going to your desk as well. Most of the time, these are going to be able to withstand most of the stuff that's fallen off the roof, right.

So, we still want that duck cover and hold on portion of earthquake. Right. But yeah that's the thing is that if you can't get underneath an item, right, then we say, go against the wall or along something, or along the bedside, something to create pockets. Hopefully, that's what we're looking for. These void spaces, we teach that for CERT, right. You know, in a certain program on the collapse and things like that. So yeah, absolutely that does work. But like I said, you really need to stress out, don't go, oh, there's going to be a void here because of another refrigerator. Yeah, I wouldn't risk my life on that, but for sure, it's something that you can do.

Host: John Scardena (9m 24s):

More often than not, if you're eating at 01:30 in the morning, like when that came down, it's actually probably more life-threatening than the fear of a fear of a building coming down. But it is insane to look at it. You watch the video and I mean, you're talking about seconds, you know, if it's the spine of the building goes away and usually the spine is associated with the emergency stairwell that collapses everything else falls. And that's exactly what happened. You see the one main column go down and then everything falls on top of it and you're just, oh man, this is nuts.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (9m 59s):

I want to talk a little bit about the pre-collapse. Right. And there's been a lot, I don't know, again this is the stuff I'm reading. This is all open source. I don't have any inside information. You can find all this stuff on various different news media outlets that are asking us to do some research, but there's been some concern about these buildings since they were built basically. Then I guess a maintenance worker was taking photographs of some of the walkways and starting to see some of the shifting in the concrete, reported it and what happened when they reported it. But this just kind of goes into things that we should be doing.

If you're an emergency manager or risk manager for a facility or something like this, you have to start doing risk assessments of the building, I suppose, of the building, there was a great piece in Forbes magazine this morning, talking about the fact that there are some real risks that are out there and our infrastructure is older. Right? I mean, think about, think about some of the bridges that have collapsed just out of nowhere. Well, no, these aren't out of nowhere, you know, they have a D and F rating on the infrastructure rating and then they go deferred maintenance on it. Right. We have met multiple buildings that have deferred maintenance on them, even in the governance side of things.

Oh, we'll maintain those later, deferred the first different. Then all of a sudden, the roof collapses or, you know, we we've seen this happen time and time again. Right. But this really shows that we really need to be paying attention to these risk assessments and what they say.

Host: John Scardena (11m 38s):

Well, I was immediately thinking of hitting on all in all positions, they're like the assessment that's been done from Army Corps of Engineers that 90% of the dams in the US do not have an evacuation plan for the base of those dams. Dams are only typically built to last 50 years, every 50 years that there should be a major assessment done and, or, expected repairs. It was something almost all, again, like 80% plus of dams and levees are beyond that 50 years. But I don't hear major plans of updating levies and dams and hearing, even in Sacramento, it's the worst levy system in the United States because they have so many lovely levies that are just crumbling and like makes you think, okay, this is what happens when you don't take care of the man-made stuff.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (12m 39s):

Well, let me read this to you really quick and this was Ford's magazine as of this morning, it says the lane assessment report that in 2018 found major structural damage to the Florida condo that collapsed last Thursday is a wake-up call for business leaders to act quickly to help prevent crisis situations for the organization. Well, the cause of the bills and classes, you have to be determined, best crisis management practices to address any problems with the issue before they can spiral into a full-blown crisis. Don't wait to find out too late, what you should've done that could have been prevented a disaster scandal or any of those other emergencies. I think this is definitely, I hate to say this because we say, it seems like a broken record, right?

When a crisis happened or along the spine, oh, this is the wakeup call. This is the wakeup call. This is the wakeup call. You know, it should not be a wake-up call. This should be, oh yeah, this is something that we should have been doing a long time ago. I say to my class in the day, or talking about the fact that there is a price, unfortunately we always say, oh, every life is priceless, but insurance ledgers have put schedule that said, should say, have put a price on human beings. Right. The thing is, is that price too much to pay? I think it is right. So, we need to go through here and take a look at these buildings. We've got to stop doing that for maintenance. Yes. It's going to be costly, but this think of the lights and everything with this has costs. United States, which cost, the people that died, the people that are missing, the families that are grieving, you know, it's the 4th of July weekend. They should be celebrating. Now their grieving is sad, and it's just because it's been done by proper maintenance. Again, I'm talking a little out of turn here because I don't know what the cause is, but just from what reading some of the stuff, it looks like a proper audit, proper maintenance. For the condo association to know that in 2018, found major structural damage to this building, this could have been prevented. I think we're going to see some lawsuits and whatnot come out of this.

Host: John Scardena (14m 50s):

This is the problem most people, right and this is kind of a cultural thing too, to be honest, if somebody says, oh, there's major structural issues with this building, most people are going to respond with, but it hasn't fallen yet. They don't understand what they're saying when they say that. But what happens if it does fall? One of the most heartbreaking stories for me is the family of seven that came in for the funeral for somebody else and they were staying, the funeral of one of eight. Yeah. Plus like the family who's living there so there's a lot of that going on.

The first responders on it are exhausted. Right? I mean, I guess we're talking pretty right now, but here's a lot of mitigation is like the key to success on so many different things. You know, the really hard thing for an emergency manager, if they're doing a very honest hazard vulnerability assessment, they do have to weigh the cost. Sometimes saving a life is the most important, in fact, most of the time is saving a life. But there are systems out there that if they go down, everything goes down. I think of Fukushima, the 21 men that said, Hey, we have to stay in, we will likely die.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (16m 19s):

It wasn't even likely that they knew they were going to die.

Host: John Scardena (16m 21s):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They knew they were going to die by staying back, but they knew like how much worse it was if they didn't. That's kind of what it is, but I'm kind of tired of first responders having to take an insane amount of risk because of the incompetence of others. It happens every day, man. I know but I'm saying like emergency managers to be able to bridge that crap gap. Right. So, I don't know how do you fix a system where people are designed to not do anything until something major happens? Like that's how we're built?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (16m 60s):

And that's worldwide though. That's not just here in United States.

Host: John Scardena (17m 4s):

The human race, whatever. Yeah. Like we look at problems and we're like, eh, is a really a priority emergency manager has to convince somebody else that it is a priority before it's actually a problem and that's a very hard sell to do. It was funny.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (17m 19s):

I'll give a personal example. So, I had to buy an iPad for my son the other day because he needed a new one and it's for school. Right. So, it's not just to suffer games or anything like that. So, all right. You know, good deals going on, I'm like, okay that's fine. Right. At the end of the day, oh, and I got a pair of Air Pods or whatever this is called, right because they're only 90 bucks, normally 250 bucks, you got it for 90 bucks. Long story short, you know, I'm dropping what $699 or whatever it is on apple goods. Right. I call, you know, and then I go to Costco and I'm looking at a generator because I need a new generator or I want a new generator. At least I'm like, oh, it's 550 bucks. That's a lot of money. But I'm like, what new iPad, generator? Oh man.

Host: John Scardena (18m 20s):

That is so messed up, I did that. So, our business needs another computer. We need a better basically for our podcast studio. And we were operating on good stuff where obviously we get the job done, but it's not really great. It makes some frustration stuff on the, on the backend. To get like a really nice computer, it'd be like $2,500. Right. My wife's like, yeah, that's great. But you're spending eight hours on this and it's taking away from the business on that. You’re hiring somebody at, you know, this much and you're doing all this other stuff that costs all that stuff. But this is just like a one-time cost for the next five years. But I'm like, oh, but I'm spending that like daily on everything else. So, I don't know.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (19m 7s):

You know, I mean and to go back to buildings, right. We can bring it back to buildings where we're talking about roofing. Right. So, the other day I was this Ruby company in Orange County, California with ANSYS roofing, but not a sponsor by the way.

Host: John Scardena (19m 23s):

Not a sponsor. Yeah.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (19m 26s):

Right. But he's a big slap at this though. Right? I mean, he's one of the largest roofing companies in Orange County. You give so much money back to the community, Charles Anderson. And he's a great guy, right. If you don't follow him, then you should, because he just does some really cool stuff. Anyway, long story short, we're just discussing roofs. Right. You talk to a roofer, he's talking about roofs. Right. He was saying like, how people will skimp on a roof. Right? Like they're going to buy a new roof and they go for the lowest there he says, so then you ended up buying. So, a roof should last a long time, 30, 40 years somewhere. That's not like, what did they skip on the roof?

They bought a roof and only last 10, 15 years. Right. So that means they're going to pay double the roof costs that they would have paid if they got the good roof the first time around. Then, when it rains or whatever, you know, we're talking about less house Sandy, and you had George on the show here. I had him on EM weekly as well, talking about, how that building was built, it was built about the roofs. Then on my other podcast, prepare, respond, recover. We actually had a fortified, which is an organization that task, these ones, this is a really cool job. That's a job, actually. I want you build a house inside of a structure, and they have these huge fans on there and they blow the fan.

Host: John Scardena (20m 50s):

It's fun, but wind tunnel. Yeah.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (20m 52s):

It's like a wind. It creates a cat three hurricane. Yeah. So, they throw things up these homes and the ones that have the fortified roof on there, which is three more nails than you'd normally put in these home stand. The ones that go with one now fall apart. So, the roof is the most important structure on your house. Yet. We skimp on that every single time when you're looking at, because it's not sexy, right? No, one's like, Ooh, you have a nice roof you know.

Host: John Scardena (21m 21s):

We did my roof and I was like, dang, that looks good. When George actually shared that same style with me about the nails. I looked into it and I watched his documentary that talked about that too. And I was blown away by the level of effort it takes to fortify your home after a tornado or a category three, whatever. And it was just like looking at that. In fact, I was looking at the tornado side because we're moving to Missouri. I was like, oh man, what would it take? Oh my gosh, they figured out, it was something like they spent $300 more on materials, nails and whatever included on homes. They could withstand an F three tornado. You're like, okay, I understand that, that you multiply that over a subdivision, but still you can easily build that into the cost of the home. Like, oh, here's my $300/400,000 home, I guess it's now $400,300.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (22m 23s):

Yeah. I mean, that's less expensive than the other, I've kind of just taught myself. Just think about that.

Host: John Scardena (22m 30s):

Right? Yeah like you get a two I-pads for the cost of your freaking home. Yeah, Holy Cow.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (22m 41s):

You know, speaking of this, I live in California for now, but we live in fire area and we think about that. We think about the heat that's happening today throughout the specific parts of west, which also includes British Columbia. Right. Canada and village.

Host: John Scardena (23m 2s):

No, I think today is Canada day. The day we're recording. Oh, it is Canada day. Yes, it is. But I saw the American flag. So, suck it.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 8s):

All my Canadian friends, happy Canada day Canada. On the 4th of July, happy 4th of July, you guys could come join us by the way.

Host: John Scardena (23m 17s):

Yeah. They could have had greatness. People always settled, man.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 20s):

Yeah. The Canadians were like, screw you because it was all the French Canadians were like, we're not going to fight with you guys because he just fought us.

Host: John Scardena (23m 27s):

You know, if it makes you feel any better, the French Canadians don't really like the Canadians either. So, if you go to Montreal, that's like division.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 36s):

Look at my last name.

Host: John Scardena (23m 38s):

DeVoe, you're French. Are you French Canadian? Are you French? French Canadian. How many generations?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 44s):

Three.

Host: John Scardena (23m 45s):

Okay, nice. And then who came to the U S grandfather? So, he was the smart one.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (23m 56s):

Yeah. I mean with my family up from upstate New York, you know, Saratoga area. Yeah.

Host: John Scardena (24m 8s):

So, by the way, I love making fun of Canada because there's actually nothing to dislike. It's like, it's beautiful up there. Oh, is that a moose or a bear?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (24m 26s):

Can Canadian mountain man. Bear.

Host: John Scardena (24m 30s):

I see him. Nice. I'm like what? Okay. But I mean…

Guest: Todd DeVoe (24m 38s):

Okay back to Canada, right? I mean there's some serious issues here. I mean, it's very sad by the way. I don't want to make light of it by any means. So, they get the heat wave up there it's 120 degrees. Right.  I don't know what started it, but a fire starts in this town and the brush fire burned 90% of the village. So yeah, today, wow. Yeah, it says the Brad MIS as the prime minister or mineral minister of parliament said the fire had caused extensive damage to Leighton and British Columbia and the surrounding critical infrastructure.

Jan Polderman, mayor of Leighton, told the BBC he had been lucky to get out of his own life and there won't be much left to late. And he says, there's fire everywhere and the video is just very, it reminds me of paradise. Right? So yeah, 120 degrees Fahrenheit, temperatures and Canada has recorded 486 deaths over the last five days compared to the average of 165 is normal days. So yeah, it was heat. Terrible.

Host: John Scardena (25m 54s):

Yeah. You're thinking about a building collapse of 151 people you think of heat waves, you know, killing people like people don't really ever think about. That was like one of the things I would have to like constantly remind people like heat waves, kill people, straight up. It's not like just like people playing in the sun for fun or like, you know, swimming. Like there's some real impacts there. In Vancouver, one of the reports that I was looking at just from the other day was when I was 18. They were complaining that even though they were on the river, most of them didn't have air conditioning. So, they were having major problems with that. So, things are changing. Things are changing and it's causing a lot of problems for a lot of people.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (26m 37s):

Oh, I want to share a picture if I can. Yeah so check this out. This is a picture on the left-hand side here. I'll describe it for those that are listening to the podcast. Not watching it. It was a very, just like a fall sunny day buildings up main street, you know, looking there, the picture on the right-hand side is what happened after the fire. It's just complete devastation. It looks like a bomb went off and just knocked everything down. The trees are burnt. The building that was right there on the right-hand side is completely gone. It's just, it doesn't look like the same place. I mean, if it wasn't for that little walking center there, I wouldn't have said that was the exact same place. You know, it's just amazing how that looks.

Host: John Scardena (27m 20s):

One of the ugliest fires or one of the ugliest disasters I've ever been to was Napa. I don't know, down south was pretty rough too, but Napa was insane. The coffee park I've been to all kinds of disasters and is a horrible watching people having to like literally scrape nine feet of mud out of their home after a hurricane or a major flood. But I've never seen anything like that. When up to that point, at least it was, like you said, like a bomber and it was like a nuke. I thought I was walking into an apocalypse, everything was white Ash, everything was gone. Engine blocks had melted.

Like how does an engine block melt like an engine block melted? And it looked like a silver river, dried silver river on the ground everywhere. The most bizarre thing ever was as I'm walking down the streets, serving data and the national guard was there sifting for bones before the families got in there, there was one house that was totally fine. Well, I was asking why that happened? And apparently the homeowner on his way out took his sprinkler. Yeah. It was on a hose and he just intuitively took it and threw it on top of his roof. And when he threw it on top of his roof, you know, wildfires burned top down, not left. Right. And so, as the embers were hitting the roof, he had just put it out. So even though it was thousands of degrees around his house, it was essentially unscathed. It was like a video game, it was. Did it make sense?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (29m 2s):

I mean, I've seen this too, like on the fires that I have responded to throughout the years and one that I did the TEDX talk on was the Blue Cut fire. It burned down a very famous restaurant on route 66 and same thing you'd go through. The fire hops bounced over homes and burned some down, some were burned completely. This one guy has two homes on the property. One he was renting out and the other one was his dream home, was a log cabin and the log cabin was burnt to the ground and his other house we had on the same property. I mean, very bad smoke damage to it obviously, but no other damage to it. So, you know, it's just amazing how these things work. Mother nature is a fickle beast. Right.

Host: John Scardena (29m 54s):

I actually think we're really the beast because one of the problems are man-made costs. Like we build systems and we don't think of the impact. Then we're surprised when we're impacted by it.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (30m 11s):

There’s a movement right now that's out there. The idea that there's no such thing as a natural disaster, there's only natural hazards, but disasters are all manmade. The argument there is that this man made, because it's the built environment that really is causing the disaster. Right because if you think about it this way, this was a wildfire in the middle of Yellowstone nowhere, right? Yeah. I mean, there might be damaged smoke things within the environment and things like this where suddenly a disaster. So natural phenomenon actually has to happen to clear out the underbrush. Right. I mean, the fire is a natural thing that happens in the forest. Right. We just happen to build a host in the middle of it and then when that burns down, then it's a crisis, which I agree, you know, I'm just as guilty. I live on the WUI you know, so.

Host: John Scardena (31m 8s):

I mean, tell that to Australia. What was it like six or seven times the state of New York burned in that fire? I mean, it's just wild to think about just size of that.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (31m 22s):

Right. But think about this, the homes that burnt down on that huge swap of fire, the homes that burnt down and the human death were very low. Right. Absolutely. Very low. It didn't impact because it was not a very built environment. Now we had tragedy for the animals, you know, like a little qualifier that they are rescuing. Absolutely. And yes, this terrible, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm going to say it's not bad.

Host: John Scardena (31m 52s):

My analogy is, I actually used a hurricane, the ocean, nobody cares about like, it's not going to really impact a lot of things. Seeing you can move ships around them. Hopefully it doesn't impact a lot. It's not a big problem until it hits land and then land really, it's a problem for everybody else. So yeah. I mean, there's a lot of truths in that, like hazard. That's why, like think of disaster tough as being tough enough to be able to deal with the hazards. Some people think as disaster tough as like you're having a tough day or a tough luck or, you know, preparedness even. But for me it means mitigating everything because, you know, I don't want to bounce back. I just don't want to have to have the problem. You know, that's what it means to me. That's kind of the behind a shell, right?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (32m 40s):

No, absolutely. I agree with that premise and you're not going to talk about this a lot. Right. The idea of resiliency versus the fragility and what that really means and what fertility, I'm just kidding. Yeah. So, but you know, the idea, and then the side of it though, is what's the difference between preparedness and readiness, right? And it's the same, or the words don't matter, but they do, right. They do matter because it sets the tone of what you want to do. Right. So, I think that we need to, as I think readiness and creating an empty, fragile reorganization or community or disaster tough community is what we really need to be striving for as emergency managers, as practitioners.

You know, if you think about the fire department, right, the fire department has building codes and whatnot has pretty much put themselves out of the job of fighting fires in structures these days. Right? Matter of fact, there was a fire at the studio at the security of studios and the fire was out by the time the fire department got there, their job was pretty much just mopping up and making sure it didn't spread. I mean, they did a good job. Right. But it was pretty much contained to the one room where the fire was sprinkler system turned on to this job. It was more water damage than it was fire damage.

Host: John Scardena (34m 15s):

I actually remember when you text me all those pictures and you're like, there's a fire. And you got up to the studio when the fire alarm was going off and everyone's just waiting. You're like, isn't that a fire alarm? Shouldn't we get out of here. That's so crazy, man.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (34m 29s):

So, my point about it though, is not that we humans are knuckleheads for the most part. So, you know, we hear the fire alarm go off, we don't leave, but the fire department's job was pretty much done for it by the sprinkler system. Right. You know, if that was 20, 30 years ago, there would have been fire burning from the seat. It's not necessary, it doesn't happen. We've seen this happen time and time again. But realistically they do mostly EMS response right now, wild land fires, a whole different story. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the fact that, you know, your structural fire, right.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (35m 12s):

Now with new construction going on in single family homes, they're putting sprinkler systems, you know, which is great, right. So, you're seeing less and less of single-family homes burning down now, which is awesome. But at the end of the day, fire has moved their focus from firefighting and fire prevention, which is still key, but to EMS. So maybe as emergency managers, if we can move away from managing the large-scale disaster, right. If that's something that we can make everybody disaster tough, if you will, right. Can we manage others? Can we do other things like mitigation issues and making things stronger and better?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (35m 53s):

I think that's one of the things that we could do to improve as a disciplined professional.

Host: John Scardena (35m 59s):

Absolutely. I love that statement. Hey, let's make everybody disaster tough. Like by the way, let's just talk about the things that you have teased so far that you've teased after action reviews, which is something that we're working on, you've teased antifragile, which is, I know a very specific project that you're working on, you've teased, updating the field. You've teased the podcast with all of us in the last two minutes, by the way. You teach something else. You teased the work in general and you teased podcasting.

So, I think its time to tell some people announcing on here too, because this is pretty exciting. Then we're going to get one very serious point at the end. I'm going to ask you a question. What about readiness? Oh, that's what it is. Readiness. Yeah. So, you nailed that one. So how do we want to do this? I'm going to let you, I'm going to announce one part of it and then I'll let you actually know how do I want to do this? I want you to announce it. Yeah. We'll go from there. Then I'll build off the top of it. I know this is exciting. There's lots of parts. Everyone's like, what are they talking about? How about we talk about the lab first? Let's talk about the lab. Second. Let's talk about what you just signed. Oh, where are you going? What are you doing?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (37m 31s):

Well, that was a couple of documents. I just find today and a formalized agreement relationship. If you will like a song, John earlier, I felt like we're going through prenups. So, EM weekly and Disaster Tough and Doberman have formerly combined forces and yeah, that's what we're doing. We are now one big happy family. Although John did not walk me down the aisle.

Host: John Scardena (38m 4s):

No, I have a wife. I love her dearly. My true family of one family of one wife. Oh, you have

Guest: Todd DeVoe (38m 11s):

Your child.

Host: John Scardena (38m 17s):

To clarify that with I that yes. So, our business is Doberman Emergency Management is officially joining government emergency management, and he's going to be leading our west coast operations. So, we're really excited about that. As I've alluded to times at the show talked about, we're moving to St. Louis for our companies move in there, but we have a lot of good things and we have good people, even better people now with Todd joining us, or at least a larger grasp on good people, they'll be with us. So very excited for Todd. Congratulations. In fact, I'll be the audience here for you really quick. Nope, not that one.

No, there we go. Yeah. Everyone's cheering for you right now. I'm really glad to have you part of our team, you are going to be one of our advisors. So, I'm the owner of the company we've been doing this for a while. We are emergency managers exclusive and we work with emergency managers. People who are very experienced, obviously very experienced in emergency management. He's actually first responder, former military and now is in emergency management and actually teaches emergency management, let alone leading his own podcast and brand. So really excited to have you on board time. So as mentioned, that leads us into the other thing. Okay. Now that we have EM week let's go down the list of what you brought over EM weekly podcasts, EM weekly webinars series, EM student podcast, which if you're newer to emergency management, definitely wanted tune in there.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (39m 54s):

A great series going. I want to talk about EM Student for a second, but Franzie Economy, she is amazing. First of all, but she is doing a series right now for the summertime. It's a seven, maybe eight-part series on various different interviews. She’s coming from the pure side of curiosity of what emergency management is and what you can do with it. She's really working hard on that. Then Dan Scott, who you may know if you guys watched, you know, EM weekly, and he's also been through it as well, he was a student for a while. He's actually working on two areas. One is the core competencies of emergency management. What does that mean? And bringing in the people who've actually written the core competencies for FEMA are going to be discussing that and how we can bolster the profession of emergency management and what are the core competencies and why are they those core competencies where we're at? So, I think there's two series right now. I'm excited about, I don't have any previous on them. I've been doing editing for them, but that's about it. So, I can't wait for the out as well.

Host: John Scardena (41m 5s):

You know, and speaking of Dan and Franzie, and even John, he's got a guy who walks behind that works fine, the Siemens. I met all them. I'm very excited that they were associated with and now they're going to be associated with Doberman in this aspect on EM weekly, you know, material and yeah. Highly depressed, especially all three of them are very impressive, but as you noted, Franzie, I mean, she's newer to emergency management, but she's doing everything right. As you would want to do with the person who's getting into our field. I'm excited to listen to what their materials and Dan provides another great experience. He also works at a university. It's just a great team that you guys brought over and I'm happy.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (41m 49s):

Finishing his PhD in emergency management and leadership. I got to tell the front of the story though, and I'm probably going to embarrass her a little bit, but I think it's important. So, she reached out to me, this is a powerful, this is the power of network. She reads us up to me on LinkedIn and says, hey, I want to learn about emergency management. So, she shoots me a direct message and sustains us for a while. I said, sure, absolutely. Let's set up a meeting. We got on a zoom call from Google meets or whatever we got on a call. We talked for a bit and I said, hey, look, I'm teaching an emergency measure program at UCI. You should get involved with it. Right. Take your pick the course. She said, okay, she registered for the class and she's going to finish, actually, this is our last class this semester. She'll have her certificate in emergency management. She has a degree; her last name is economy and she has a degree in economics. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, the school name, and second of all, the disaster economics is really something I'm very interested in. You guys can't see it right there. There's a next to the duck head. There's an economics book sitting right there. Two of them, three of them economics is very, I find very fascinating, especially disaster economics and what that really means and how to recover from disasters and things like this. She brings that perspective and she's very methodical and inner thinking thought process she looked at trying to see what this was all about. I think she likes it.

Host: John Scardena (43m 20s):

She likes it because something you don't know that I was going to tell you a little bit later, but it's fun to tell you now we were going to wait to tell you. In fact, she hasn't technically signed it yet, but she gave us the verbal this afternoon that we are actually hiring her to do some of that stuff for us. So, she will actually be working on some of that. We're calling her an emergency management analyst because I'm a data guy with a data background. She has definitely data background and an analyst background. I was like, oh, this is going to help out Doberman a lot. So, we're even able to bring into that atmosphere more about data and technology into our offerings. Man, talk about an awesome person.

Kudos to, oh, wait wrong, kudos to you again for identifying her as a great talent. We totally agree. But we have to, we have to name your last one, very important one with speaking spark, the EM Speaks webinars series that comes out every quarter. Really cool stuff. They identify, basically thought leaders to come on and to be interviewed, it's come more like an NPR style kind of stuff. So, the company and Holly and her company is speaking spark. So definitely big fans of them. They identify some of those people and EM weekly of combined forces on that webinar, it's called EM speaks.

So, the way our listeners, if you're listening to the podcast right now and you're like, oh my gosh, you just named like three or four different things, how do I find it? Well, the other part of the announcement is Doberman emergency management in collaboration with our new friends here from the EM weekly podcast, and some of the other friends that we haven't talked about yet, we're creating something called the Readiness Lab. The Readiness Lab will be the readinesslab.com. We'll put it in our show notes. It's going to launch here in the next couple of weeks, that’s going to house all of our content on there for all of our different shows. You can check out any show, you want check out EM weekly, obviously is a great speaker himself. He has a lot of insight that you can use, but you can go there, check that out. Then in the future, as we get into other things like training and certificates, and maybe even conferences, I'm working with different partners, different groups, as our podcasts are growing for you. If you have any in podcast or emergency services podcast, and you're listening, hey reach out to us. We might even showcase you on our lab. So, the readiness lab, big, fun stuff that's happening. We just went from on the Disaster Tough’s side, dormant side, one podcast, two in September. I think it'll be eight, which is really exciting, including another one that we can tease right now, man. It's like all about announcer. Yeah. Our Movie AAR is movie after action reviewed. You want to give us a preview?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (46m 22s):

Absolutely. I have to give some credit where credit's due and Charles Lane, Chuck lane, he is an awesome guy. He had a podcast that I'm kind of sad that went away, I'd like to bring it back. If you want us to do it, you can be on a Readiness Lab, absolutely state of emergency. He had me on a Halloween episode and we basically spun the wheel of death and Optus thinking the idea of how do you respond to the state? Puft marshmallow man exploding in New York city from Ghostbusters, right. I thought that was brilliant and I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I told John this story, he's like, oh, we got to do it. So now what we're going to be doing is looking at movies, not necessarily disaster movies, movies that have a disaster image or things like it, the same football exploding, and we're going to break it down and we're going to take a look at it and say, what's real, what's not real and what would you do in that situation? We're going to a lot of fun with it. This is the day we'll talk about some serious stuff too. It's about having a little fun with our professional.

Host: John Scardena (47m 34s):

Yeah, I'm really excited for the in fact, our third host on that show, it would be myself and another individual, he's actually been on this show twice, Patrick McGuinn, he's a lot of fun. So, the three of us looking at it from the different perspectives of the nonprofit world, from you know Patrick's world, to first responder, up kind of his background there and my background of like that strategic level, you know federal level. So, all of us are emergency managers. All of us also have a different background and perspective and we like to have fun. We can poke fun at it a little bit because it's what we do for a living. So, when that comes out, we'll probably get Patrick on this show. The three of us, we'll talk a little more about it then, but a lot of things are happening together, it's all coming together. We've been working on this, I think since March right, which is kind of fun. Even before that I think when I talked with you in December, I kind of put it in my head. I was like, oh, I want to work with, so how are we going to make this work? So, you're looking at potentially seven months here that we've been kind of working the kinks out on this and it's coming together. I'm really excited and yeah, stay tuned for more from the Readiness Lab. Okay America so, I'm going to ask you, speaking of America, it's a July 4th episode. This is a really serious question, but you know, I want your honest feelings on it and I might share my feelings on too.

There's a lot of problems in the United States that are being addressed right now. Some are real concerns and some don't feel like real concerns based off of the party who you talk to right. But what I find fascinating is the flag is used on pretty much every angle, whether you're for or against whether you are for one topic or you're from an opposite viewpoint. I'm one of those who I'm pretty hardcore and thinking that what happened on January 6th was despicable. They are carrying the mag, the American flag, but the riots in the summer over, you know, over protests, they were also carrying the flag two totally opposite perspectives, carrying the flag, but the flag means something. It should mean something, and so outside of political use, as a veteran, as a first responders, you as an emergency manager, as an American, what does the American flag mean to you?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (50m 1s):

Wow, that's a deep Verde question. I first have to state that I do not belong to any political party. I actually believe that the political parties are bad for America I just want to seek that out. So, the George Washington, by the way.

Host: John Scardena (50m 17s):

I agree, George Washington, I'm a George Washingtonist, which would make me politically affiliated, which ruins the thought process anyways back.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (50m 27s):

So yeah, I don't subscribe to the party politics, you know. Again, like I said, I really truly believe that that it ruins it anyway, but let's talk about the record flag. So first of all, the American flag does mean something. For all those people who I'm going to stand on my soapbox for a minute here, for all those people that say, oh, when you burn the American flag, you're just burning a piece of cloth, it's whatever. First, you know, absolutely. You know, it's your first amendment rights to burn that flag. I say this, but the symbolism, what you're doing, right. And then just burning a piece. You know that, right? Otherwise you wouldn't do it. You're trying to incite anger or messages that you're putting across to something and that's why you burn it. You stand on it, poop on it, pee on it. You make it, you know, disgrace it. You're having people today say that we need to change our flag because it stands for something that does a stand for, and that others have picked it up in the banners of racism and all these other things. The flag has meaning you should learn what it means.

You know, we used to have a day, what was the base till there June 14th? I believe it is flag day, right? Where, when I was a kid, we used to have a day where we do flag stuff, right and we were still in school in July 4th or June 4th. You know, the day we would honor the flag and talk about the flag and what it means. The fact that the white means that the purity, the red is the blood that spilled. The blue is a field that we're on. The stars obviously stand for our seats, right? Those seats stand for all the seats that are here and all the people that are inside of them. It doesn't mean that they're white in the sense of the race of anybody. It really burns me to hear people say, we should change our flag that doesn't stand for America. It does, because if it didn't stand for America, if it didn't stand for what you're saying did, you wouldn't be burning those, you wouldn't see that Iranians burning it. You would see Hezbollah burning that and stepping on it and spitting on it and do one of the things they do to it. Now I honestly believe that if you feel that you need to do that and you want to stand in the public square and you have the right to do so.

If you purchase up, like you need to steal from somebody and if you want to burn that flag, do it right. I don't agree with you. I don't agree with that. The fact that you're doing it, but you have the right to do it and I defend your right to do that. Right. But understanding that you do it for a purpose, not just a piece of cloth, but it has meaning, that symbolism. We drive, we put that flag on top of those who died for our country, right. So, serve whether it's first responders and whether it's military veterans, you know, we raised that. We lower that flag to half mask when, in the honor of people who serve our country, right. When they've died, or for those that have been, you know, grievously killed with like mass murders and whatnot, right. There's a reason why we will lower the flag in their honor, that flag does mean something, right. This 4th of July, you'll see the American flag. You know, it's not a symbolism of racism and you can't make it that way and I won't allow you to make it though.

Host: John Scardena (53m 42s):

Yeah. The that's a powerful statement, right? The way I feel about the American flag is that I'm sad when those who disgrace the country wave the American flag. I think the reason why some people don't associate the American flag with the symbolism that it does represent is because you see hate groups using it. You know, I can understand what the perspective of, like, I don't know if I can trust that symbolism because one, they don't know the history behind it, but they also just, they see the hate group. So, I actually get infuriated with like you are not, you're not acting like an American. You're not acting like a person that I would want to be associated with, so don't carry that flag because that flag to me means, it means everything, right? It means doing better, it means not recognizing you're not perfect, but you want to do better. It's called the American experiment for a reason, they knew that they would always have to build on the constitution. They always knew that they would have to do good things that they laid a strong foundation and that foundation is represented in the American flag that people should be free, that they should have the ability to choose their leaders that they should, that they were all part of this, that there's been people that have given their lives for this and we need to respect them and honor them. The symbolism, just showing that you know, other flags don't show all their provinces on their flag, right. We show every state on the flag for a reason, because we're all in the same fight. I think when we start segregating ourselves and we start separating and we start looking for ways to say, like, I could be offended by that, even though you didn't mean to offend me when we start doing all those things in deteriorating, what it means you have a real problem. The American flag is the symbol of hope for America.

So, if you burn the symbol of hope, then you are essentially giving up on trying to be a part of this. You want to be something else and something else is scary. We see scary all over the world, we don't want to be like that. So, on our July 4th episode, I just want you to know, Hey, there's two, at least two guys out there who still remember what the symbolism means. We respect everybody else's decision. Actually, I really respect their decision, not at all, but I recognize that it's protected and I respect the flag because of it. I respect the constitution because of it. So, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the flag.

I'm kind of a Debbie downer way to end the show, but Hey, yeah. It is an important way to remember, Hey, like I'm proud, I'm really proud to be an American. Like, there's a lot of stuff out there that makes me like think oh, you shouldn't be proud to be American. I'm very proud of my country and very proud of our history because our history shows people can change. Our history shows people can improve. I want to say one more thing about this because you and I both traveled outside of the United States, right? I've traveled throughout Asia, tremendous Australia, I've been to the middle east. I've been to Africa, you know, and as you go there and people talk to us as Americans, they always want to know what it's like to be in the United States and that they dream one day to go now, do they agree with some of our policies? Probably not. Do they agree with our politics? Probably not. But the idea is that what I mean by politics is the way we do things, right?

Guest: Todd DeVoe (57m 39s):

But the idea is that we're a place worldwide that is known where you can come and you can better yourself, right? Even our poorest support the homeless, right because that's a whole different issue. But the poor support those, that's our minimum wage earners, those that are struggling in every day are a hundred times richer than the poor, the poor in other countries. I've been in developing nation where they're literally living in dirt, right. We helped build a school. I want to be on building a team, the school, the Navy and Marine Corps team built the school in Malaysia. You know, going through a project, they were so grateful, right. The kids are so grateful because we're building the school and it was really nuts, much more than some wooden walls and it wasn't, it wasn't a school the way we think of a school year, it was pretty much a one room. We did put cement down on the ground and stuff.

Host: John Scardena (58m 57s):

Yeah. The one problem I have, because I've seen the same thing, right. Not just like, just nothing. The problem is as a kid who grew up super poor in the US, stress is real. So, we have a lack of gratitude problem. We have a problem with self-lack of gratitude, right? We need to be grateful for all the opportunities and things that we have and a hundred times, a million times better than other places and anyone in the United States. There's a lot of BS out there. Anyone in the United States has so much more opportunity and so many other people at other places, I mean, you should be grateful for that. Doesn't mean it's perfect.

Now, does it mean we should improve it, probably, but we need to be grateful for it. But at the same time, those who are listening to the show and they're like, I'm worried. I'm not going to be able to make my rent, I don't know if I'm going to be able to buy gas, I don't know if I can buy food. You know, stress is real. So, always our call out on the show is mental. First aid is real and you should, you should get it. You should talk to people and you should make a plan, planning will help. From a guy whose kind of been there, it took forever. But you know, now we're kind of in a place where, it took a lot of grinding, but we're in a stable situation. So, I don't know, there's that call out too, but that's the American perspective, right? Show a lot of gratitude. Remember what the flag means, I think that's basically what you and I were both saying, have gratitude for what this nation has done for people. What it does for us to dissemble the country is the flag. You know, move on and be better, be a good person, help other people around you.

Guest: Todd DeVoe (1h 0m 47s):

Well, one other thing, too, this is my last piece of advice just in life, I think I'm older than I look before. I always surprised all day, but the idea here is surround yourself with people that care right. I think it's one of the reasons why John and I get along, you know, you have to care. I think those of us that are in this business, right, you're listening to the podcast because you are in this business. I think most of us can say, all right, we're going to paint with a broad brush, but say most of us care, right, that's why we got into this. That's why we became first responders, that's why we became emergency managers is because we don't like to see human suffering, right. I think at the end of the day, we have to take that into consideration and what we can do to help stop human suffering. I think that's what that flag stands for too, is the ability for us to stop human suffering, the best that we can. It's not perfect. It never will be perfect. Right? We're all human, we're all firewall, right? But we can strive and to work hard, we can put our best efforts and I think that Canada gets the reputation of being all the kind of cool people, which they are right. But I think at the end of the day, when you see us and when disasters occur, I've seen it firsthand. I've seen people come out to help people, come out to help and they care. They come up with a hug and they come out and they cry with other people who have lost and I've seen it today in Miami when people come in from across the United States, in the world to help with that, with the response to that. I think as much as we think that we're inside a bubble and that no one else matters when at the end of the day, our communities’ matter, right? At the end of the day, we do this because people matter. I think at the end of the day, as emergency managers can do this, because we all have that soft spot, our heart we're caring. Otherwise we could be making millions of dollars, making microchips somewhere and spying on people, sorry.

Host: John Scardena (1h 3m 1s):

Well, I think that's a good note to end on. I really do like full circle. Now we brought it back to the surf side. We talked about, we talked about the iPad. You ended up with the microchip. So, everyone, hopefully you got some good things to have the show. Hopefully you're excited about that. The Readiness Lab and with EM weekly, the brand definitely check it out, some really good content there. If you like the show as always, you got to give us that five-star rating and subscribe. We appreciate ratings, yes, the big five. Hey, check out our YouTube channel some time, check out our Instagram Disaster Tough. Check out our business Doberman Emergency Management, would love to be able to help you out and we'll see you next time.

#63 Miami Condo Collapse: Urban Search and Recue Sitrep - Interview with Joe Hernandez

Recorded 6/24 @ 11:00 - USAR expert and legend, Joe Hernandez, talks about the Miami Condo Collapse response and recovery mission from the tactical perspective.

Operations are currently underway in Miami, FL. due to the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South Condo. Only a few weeks ago, Joe and his company, Disaster Medical Solutions hosted a medical urban search and rescue certification conference in Orlando. Several of the students & instructors are based out of Miami.

Joe walks us through actions they are taking, provide advice on next steps, and explains strategic level operational control.

The Disaster Tough Podcast and Doberman EMG are proud to support our USAR counterparts and hope for their success and safety in this major incident.

Mental First Aid:

A portion of our conversation involved addressing the need for mental first-aid for responders and their families who deal with catastrophic events, such as this building collapse. If you are experiencing high stress, or you have been involved with an incident- talk to someone about it (a friend, a relative, a professional). One of the most brave and tough things you can do is to seek help. If you're looking for an outlet of resources, please contact info@disastermedicalsoltuions.com or our podcast parent, info@dobermanemg.com. Do not hesitate to address this lifesaving, life-sustaining issue.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders, and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons, and tips are provided by field experts. I'm your host to John Scardena, owner of Doberman Emergency Management and former federal emergency response official who's responded to some of the most extreme disasters. Disaster Tough is our mantra, it combines experience, training, and analytics in order to be successful at any stage within the disaster lifecycle, it means being a professional in emergency and disaster services, Doberman Emergency Management lives by this. If your organization needs to fill a gap, please contact us we can help. Contact info is in the show notes.

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Host: John Scardena (1m 53s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it's your Host: John Scardena! Man, I am excited for this episode, but I'm excited in a different way than I probably have been before in the fact that we kind of have a legend back on the show, Joe Hernandez, to talk about implication of world events. The reason why it's an excitement in different ways, because unfortunately why we are having Joe back on the show is to talk about a real-world event that’s happening right now. We cued this up with everybody yesterday on social media with talking about the Miami condo building collapse or partial collapse. We're going to be talking about that from the urban search and rescue perspective as if you've been listening the last couple of weeks, we've interviewed two fire chiefs. We've had Joe on the show before, we're really interested in that cross-sector collaboration, especially with our partners on the tactical level. So Joe, welcome to the show.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (2m 56s):

Good to see you again, John, and thank you for having me on.

Host: John Scardena (2m 60s):

Yeah, absolutely. Hey, I said this two weeks ago, and so I need you to make sure that you hear it. I was blown away by the flawlessness, by the tempo, by the professionalism that you provided at disaster medical solutions at the conference. What I call, I'm in naming it for you guys, the 2021 medical USAR training and certification because I thought that's really what it was and my perspective, and the 20 instructors there, everybody was pro, absolutely to the max. The students watching their progression throughout that week and all that credit, all the instructors actually, namely Walt, who was on the show who appropriately did this, and I'm going to say it as well. Everybody comes back to knowing that Joe Hernandez, you sir, are the reason why that training is so great. Just hats off to you and I'm again, really impressed with that training that you provided. So, I'm grateful to have you back on the show and to keep learning with you and from you.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (4m 11s):

Thank you, and you're only as good as those that you surround yourself with. I am extremely grateful and honored to have those particular instructors that carry that mantle to teaching that next generation. It looks like John, you kind of build a new niche for yourself in helping those new generations understand a particular part of the whole arena. That just isn't, it's a missing link and really an important link as well.

Host: John Scardena (4m 38s):

Yeah, it's interesting like I keep on finding myself in these areas where I'm like, Hey, this seems really important, but we're not talking about it, like these gaps. I don't necessarily look for the gap. I just happened to find myself realizing, Hey, this is disconnected. One of the disconnects is the principles of emergency management, command and control, attacking a situation, span of control, all these different things and how to do that. We do that every single day. So, the communication piece that was happening with all the USAR students, you know, understanding that they were actually attacking multiple roles at the same time because they weren't there to do command and control. They were there to learn medical for sure. But I kept on going back to thinking, oh, what we do applies to what you're trying to do and trying to teach them those skills throughout the way, and then on the opposite end of the spectrum, I was inadvertently just gaining all week at that conference. I was like, man, this applies so much to what I'm doing. So, I'm on a huge kick right now of like, Hey, the tactical and strategic, screwed, like the separation, we need to coordinate so much better because we'll be more successful if we gain those traits from both sides of the house.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (6m 0s):

Absolutely train as you fight, fight as you train.

Host: John Scardena (6m 3s):

Bingo. I actually said that on one of the posts this morning, so that's awesome. Let's talk about the meat of the topic in Miami right now, literally right now, operations are underway. Well actually let me cue it up one more time. The students and the instructors that were there are from Miami, they operate in Miami. So, the skill sets that they were learning at the conference there actually could be applying right now. Can you provide us the context of what happened to the building, what we know of right now, and then start walking through the temple what's going on and maybe kind of help us see around the corner a little bit?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (6m 43s):

Sure, and as you mentioned, students that we've had the pleasure of having in there, and I don't even like calling them students because of decision that sits in the class as a participant, but their level of, so absolutely a lot of participants in previous classes, including a lot of instructors, both in B as paramedic firefighters within those agencies and medical directors coming out of the hospitals now to assist with those decision-makings. Should there be God forbid, a need for an amputation for somebody that may still be in trapped from underneath that rebel? Absolutely. A part of the urban search and rescue component, as well as just a local fire agency just happened to be lucky enough to have that type of an infrastructure within their own backyard. So, we can take it a little bit further up the coast that might not have had that infrastructure immediately available to them and now waiting for the Calvary to come, oh, it's not anybody's fault, but however just is with infrastructure and how well those communities and those agencies build up their civil protection for those citizens, you know, as high rises continue to go up and numbers grow. So, should their protection, both in law enforcement and in fire rescue protection ID, here we got a building collapses and say, what is fire rescue has to do with that? Basically everything.

Host: John Scardena (8m 11s):

I was going to say that is the response, right? It's a fire response. Yeah.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (8m 16s):

Correct and in that agency being what we call a cross trained dual role fire EMS base, they were able to bring in their own structure of medical control and set up a casualty collection points, et cetera, and triaged system within their own agency as victims were being brought out, walked out into a rescued out by elevated beings.

Host: John Scardena (8m 40s):

Yeah and I think it's Florida taskforce one and two that are deployed there right now. Right?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (8m 47s):

Correct. It is task force one jurisdiction. It is a section of unincorporated Miami-Dade County that sits between city of Miami and Miami beach a little bit further north, about five miles north of the craziness down at south beach and a little bit quieter community, pretty much the center of Miami beach, about 15 miles from where I grew up as a kid and where I worked for my career. They had the luxury of having local units. Then of course, the ability to call neutral aid. From my understanding over 80 initial units responded to that event.

If you take 80 units out of any type of city, then you would strip it citizens of any perfection. So, any smart dispatch center and commander that's there will begin to do what we call mutual aid. That's the brother from another mother, Hey, you saw her in USAR will you come lend a hand? We need this game.

Host: John Scardena (9m 49s):

So what information do we know now? Like, do we know any possible leads of like why the building collapsed? We don't think it was a terrorist attack. We don't think it was a natural hazard, it was just like age and competence of the building and the like what?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (10m 9s):

The building was built in 81, it's an older building. It's definitely on the coast and surrounded by the intercostal waterway and the ocean on either side, they have had recent construction within the building. Some of the units were for sale since it was an older unit built in 81 and they were building a new building in the surrounding environment. So, did any of the implications of hammering the ground, et cetera, have anything to do with it basically that's probably where their eyes are going to go. The dispatch recordings from the initial dispatch did have, one of the officers mentioned that one of the victims within the building said, it sounded like a bomb going off.

However, I'm sure 13 full stories of concrete crumbling sounds like hitting the ground. A friend of mine from the US department of Homeland security, Miami office, they're on scene as well, they kind of feel the same way, that it most likely looks like a possible structural event, which leads us back to saying it doesn't take an ugliness, but somebody doing some violence and it doesn't take a tornado or an earthquake, it just takes nature and construction. So, disasters happen when we least expect them. That one happened at 01:30 in the morning.

So those that went to bed and were able to say their prayers, we pray that were met very well during that evening. If it was their time, there are still approximately 50 plus people unaccounted for, you know, you might want to say they're all high value targets because to me, every single person within an entrapment is a high value target. However, we know that there are several family members of these, first lady from one of our South American neighbors who are in that building and still missing from that. So, you don't know who's living in a building and or what the intentions are. So, at this time, they don't think any intentions, it was just a natural event happening at that time. The responders and what they're doing, they're all rested, not expecting to get up out of bed, shake. I believe that first arriving officer did a fantastic job on not losing his marbles, was steady and falling out the units when you call a priority. He kept on going through the numbers for already four, five, six, a hundred, this might be seven things that we haven't talked about, things that you, as an emergency manager saying, okay, for a multi incident, we've got certain priorities. But man, for one incident at one time that we can have maybe a hundred victims right here, right now in a square block, that's a lot.

Host: John Scardena (13m 2s):

Yeah. Did the amount of resource it required just to, even if they were able to get out of the building, the triage that would have to happen. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we just talked about Pulse Night Club last week, incident commander, Chief Davis was on here. Same ideas, like the triage component is so complex when you have potentially a hundred people, plus where do you send them all? Can the healthcare infrastructure even deal with the inventory there of assets and people? So, it's 01:30 in the morning, building collapses, I would agree that 13 floors of concrete falling sounds like a bomb. That's kind of what we had to deal with in hurricane Katrina too, right. The local residents of the ninth ward thought it was a bomb going off when the levy blew and hundreds of thousands of gallons of water rushing in an instant. Actually, somebody asked on social media, if the saltwater in the air or the humidity in the air would have played in a factor of a building collapse. Is that something that you had to think about or is that kind of outside the realm?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (14m 26s):

I'm sure that the structural engineers are going to go in there and look at all the rebar, let's see what the conditions of that rebar is. You know, when it rusts and expand kind of crumbles, it's kind of there to help the concrete or the concrete from having big crack and if it does crack, hold it together. Possibly, I know that it's almost like a seawall, anybody that lives on a coastal area and has a seawall, they could see the damage, constant salt linearity within the air, really rusting out thing they have, eventually what they call a dead man, which holds that seawall back rusting out and having to be replaced with new technology. So, I'm sure that that will be heavily looked at. As you said that a lot of people will make comments based on certain ideas, factors of what they're seeing.

The one I keep hearing, and even from my own friends, family members, that are asking, why aren't they on the pile? Why do I keep seeing images on Fox news or CNN or whatever source they're watching, people not aggressively delay in the pile and looking at it, now, why. What I wanted to say is if you stood there and you looked up all those widow and widower makers that are hanging in suspended on rebar, they're going to come down. So, if you stand underneath one ID, a nurse with a lot of incredibly well-intentioned rushing into the Oklahoma City bombing, wanting to be helped to save somebody and was killed by a widow maker upon entering the building.

Now we saw the aftershocks and the Haiti earthquake and how some of those didn't feel comfortable staying within the secured structures at the rescue techs built by the shoring areas. They were running in and out of the building. The same thing kind of falls into this area of wondering that same thing. So even getting into the building that was already, like you mentioned, a quarter of it fell down, those victims that are still in the building and the pack or three orders that had to be rescued. So a command decision had to be made and I believe that it was, and they do it.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (16m 43s):

It's called life over light, versus limb by absolutely. So, the command decision was made before we can even get the structural engineers here to begin to make the decisions of is it safe for us to go in that building or not guess what they were doing? They were going in the building when, so why most people run out of a building during dangers and disasters. We had first responders entering a building saying, okay, I know that there's a risk that it could come down while I'm in there. I'm willing to take that risk to be able to bring down somebody and that's what they do it for, so hats off to them again. They're continuing and then, you know what the support from the emergency management and from their counter base to deal with the emotional support that's going to come out of that rescue that we know that affect certain individuals in certain ways, not only the victims.

I liked that decision of going in there and begin wrestling people with their high rise. It's one of the commanders decided to call out a full TRT component because they knew they would need to be technical roles, et cetera. As you saw, being able to bring people out of areas that aren't a norm, it doesn't fit a structure. It doesn't fit that wheeled stretcher, an ambulance can't get on scene. Everybody says, why aren't there firetrucks closer to the building? Well, if the building's going to come down, you can't lose all the firetrucks on fleet, people wouldn’t have an RV anymore. So, there's a lot of lessons learned and a lot of good information that can come and share within the different environments and saying everything is done in a controlled environment. It sure was that they handled it on dispatch, that four minutes of dispatch, and then setting up their medical staging. You can see how they knew there was going to be a need for medical spacing. Let alone first was the rescue and then was the treatment and a jam up job on that initial response crews and setting everything up.

Host: John Scardena (18m 41s):

Well at the conference, he talked about this too, and I'm going to kick myself for getting this term, but the idea that your cells start to break down from being…. crush syndrome. Gosh, thank you. Thank goodness. I didn't forget something, I had no idea about crush syndrome, you see these images of what happens in Syria, right? The building comes down, six hours later, people were just throwing the rebel out and they get this kid out and you see the image of getting the kid out and it's like, oh good they got the kid out. But now after I've learned about crushed syndrome and I'm like how?

When they remove the debris and the medical staff that have to go in there to make sure crush syndrome doesn't cause a life-threatening issue. For our listeners, there's going to be a lot of the listeners on here who have no idea what crushing syndrome is, can you explain? So, we talked about Widowmaker again for Widowmaker, for the people it's basically the concrete hanging off the rebar that they're just waiting for it to fall onto the rebel pile. But then there's the other component of, you have to be meticulous. It takes a lot of time to actually remove the rubble. What is crushed syndrome?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (19m 57s):

So mechanical manifestation, not so known as Rhabdomyolysis basically a cell being crushed potassium and calcium switching sides, the needs to try and get those two chemicals alone, replaced back to where they originally needed to be. Then what we know as the muscle hemoglobin known as myoglobin, a very large cell within our body need to be treated. Because of the amount of length of time that you're without hydration within that rebel pile, if it happened at 01:30 in the morning, crushed manifestations can happen as short as three to four hours. So, they had rhabdomyolysis settings of just on time. Manifestation, MP was unable to move weight on top of large muscle masses and that's where they look at that coming from. Those cells deteriorate, they immediately begin to, they're dead, they're dying off. There's a lot of ramifications from those what they call free radicals now floating in the system and causing other damages in depth in other tissues. But particularly with that muscle cell, that myoglobin and a change in pH levels because lack of hydration, lack of movement tends to plug our kidney system, our loop apparently.

So, we find ourselves being saved from the rubble and living for one or two days, however, dying within those periods of time at the hospital, it started the science came out of the UK during the London blitz screens during World War II. When the Germans were bombing the buildings in London, the victims were being brought out of the rubble, taken to local emergency rooms and a doctor by the name of Bywaters said, why do we have so many British citizens reaching the hospitals alive, but dying within two days of being there. So, began the study of Crush syndrome, brush actual what they call mechanical crush, crush syndrome and crush manifestations, depending on the type of wording you want to use.

So, brush mechanical would be at the actual weight of something being on that person and causing that and or the person themselves, if they're unable to move, they kneeling position, they've got heavy weight on top of their shoulders and they can't go anywhere from the floor. They're stuck there for several hours. The pressure that's on the back of their hamstrings, the back of their path of the back of their shoulders are large enough muscle mass create certain damages within the body itself, even death, if it's not treated aggressively. So, on the medical side, they try to do what's known as they try to return that patient to his or her free and trap status. So how were they before the initial disaster happened? We'd like to get them back to that state before it happens, and if we can reverse crush or anything like that, we'd probably going to save a lot.

Host: John Scardena (23m 10s):

Yeah so, the way I understand it, and please you're the expert here. Let's say something's on my leg, the idea is that if a little bit happens, it's not a big deal, but if you take the pressure off of that and all that blood rushes through your body, then it's all that toxin from the dead cells are going to go in the kidneys and that's what kills you. But the body actually does it a lot, right? Like if you sit in a chair for like an hour, you start feeling tingling, but your body's actually going through that process and it kind of signals your body of get up and move around. Right. But the problem is when. When you're at a conference, for example, now I'm like, but that's the idea, right? If you get up and you're fine, but it's when the pressure's released and that whole flow of blood goes in there and kills ya. It's like the worst to think about, you got somebody out of the rubble and then they're dead again. That's just awful to think about. So, it goes to show, well, thank goodness for the doctor in the UK, during World War II figuring that out, but even to use our teams, I was really impressed. Again, we're talking about the training more than the event, but I was impressed that they understood that and how that worked and that there was a lot of time and attention to making sure that you're pulling people out in the right way.

This incident is a little different though, because you and I have been listening to reports, I've been listening to a radio, a frequency app. You've been sending me dispatcher reports, and you've been providing Intel as well. From a person with your amount of experience and knowledge and hearing those reports, what do you think the reality of the situation is right now? What do you think the next operational period is going to look like? Or the next couple operational periods will look like?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (25m 6s):

Of course, the initial link on a search and rescue event is as quick as possible. Of course, the ability of the building, but entering canines as quick as possible into areas where humans can't go, IE the rubble that was sitting on the street, that everybody was focused on multilayers and multilayers of building floors. Really, they were all pancakes on top of each other, whether it appeared like humans, basically unable to get that weight. You don't want to send a whole bunch of people on top of the pile. There's a potential of people being under the pile because you're just going to create a smaller void space and that's not smart. So search canines are really important in being able to do an entire perimeter check through the pile, as deep as they can go, they are trained, but nominally they're certified in what they do. It is an incredible scene to watch them go to work and so with federal task forces in the area, task force one and task force two, they had an incredible resource to that canine component. That was one of the real good issues that they had. Unfortunately, they haven't had a lot of live buying back from those canines. Recently, a young boy was just removed from that rubble pile, not too long ago, which was a great save. He was more in an in tuned situation. So, he wasn't suffering from any crush injuries. He was basically in an area where he was able to get out and move around, but he was not able to out from that intonement.

Host: John Scardena (26m 48s):

It’s incredible to see that kind of fall and to see anybody being saved is just wild.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (26m 53s):

100% and so there, you don't just walk away. You stay in a rescue mode, as long as possible. Some recovery modes have to be introduced at a certain time. When you switch from rescue to recovery really goes by the time clock. You figured 24 hours, 48 hours, four days, how long can you go without food, water, clothing, and shelter. All of those factions fall in there, could there be the ability of fresh water from a broken pipe or a water bottle from a refrigerator that somebody happened to be getting a drink of water at 01:30 at night, with this pain down the steel refrigerator kept the concrete floor from smashing their heads.

But yet they're now about the size of the bottom of the freezer and kind of hanging out with whatever was filled out the he or she might have access to water. That would be incredible as those victims were in the Haiti when they were in the Caribbean market, having some access to something for those that don't, you know, you're looking at that time period again, without any water, they will bring in a force at the same time, cadaver dogs that aren't trained for lifeline just to be able to give an ID location and or even the amount of possible deceased victims that might be in that file again. But I'm hoping that they remain in a rescue mode at least for the next day as well until they do call that in and get more accountability for those that are still missing.

Host: John Scardena (28m 21s):

Yeah, absolutely. That missing persons things is always so hard for me because there could be a million different reasons that somebody doesn't even know that they are considered a missing person. I'm on vacation in Thailand, you know, three days later I hear about like, my building's been crushed, like what? You know? So, like there could be a hundred different reasons. I seriously hope that the reason why they're missing is because they were not there and it's amazing that they found the boy. I hope they find more people alive. The reality of situation is disasters are, I'll call it a disaster for a reason and we hope that not just the responders are safe and successful, but we hope that the people in that building of course are as well.

I want to switch topics a little bit because we talked about this last week. You and I have actually talked about this before. It's PTSD awareness month. As you brought up to me before we started recording, let's talk about what needs to happen. There you go. Supporting PTSD awareness, 2021. Joe is showing us that right now. In fact, huge fan of that. Let's talk about the incident is the response will end in 24, 40 hours, whatever, right? A couple of days get into recovery for those who have responded and their families, what do you think are logical next steps for them? What should they be doing?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (29m 55s):

Discussing it, definitely discussing it within themselves. I myself know that talking about incidents I just had, the brief texts with four friends of mine a couple of days ago over a complex PTSD issue that I deal with on a yearly basis as a gold star dad. So, you know, talking about it is the most important. Most people do have a significant other or some of them say, you know, I don't like speaking to them. I don't want to bring them into that world where you can share what you need to share, that they're able to the level that they're able to listen, but it is important for them to know how you're thinking so that they can understand the complexities that might come out of that and then continued ask questions and deal with that situation. Instead of just saying, why are you so angry? Like, why are you having such a problem sleeping right now? What's going on? And you just not even giving them a little bit of the piece of the puzzle, so start there. If you start with your colleagues, that's always available and don't ever think that you're weak, and just trying to find professional help. Sometimes it's just difficult trusting and or finding the correct professional help. Sometimes you feel that those that haven't gone through certain things can't, or don't have the ability to understand or listen to what you're going through and that isn't always necessarily true. There are some very well-educated people and you know, how they learn the most is by listening to the constant stories of what's going on by those that have had the trust in them. So even though they might not have personally been through that, just listening through the stages that they're good professionals that are out there.

Host: John Scardena (31m 44s):

I appreciate you saying that. I thought it was really brave and really cool that Chief Davis said he had received professional help. A friend came up to him two years after Pulse Nightclub and said, Hey, your turn. You always tell other people now it's your turn and the good thing about talking to people and keeping the dialogue open is they are able to see when you have behavioral changes. I married my best friend, and I'm very lucky to do that, to have done that. She remains to this day my best friend and she always will, but she is able to tell faster my behavioral changes than I'm able to recognize it.

There's all this different kind of stress and I was explaining this before, and I think even you and I talked about it, our first responders stress is unique in the fact that they're up there close and personal. It is also extremely stressful when you're thinking, when you're calling up for USAR and you have to determine which neighborhood do you saw. Our team is going to go to in a large-scale incident, knowing that everybody else in that other neighborhood is waiting for it to be rescued, and they're not going to be in, they're probably going to be hurt. I've had to deal with that decision-making process of we only have so many resources, which by the way, I found out that we actually have a lot more USAR resources than what get called out, which really pissed me off to be honest, but get a call for using state and local teams for sure.

But it is stressful, whether you're going 18 hours a day as an emergency manager and your job is literally how do I help people? How do I determine, you know, evacuations, or even if you're a logistics guy. I don't really consider logistics people, emergency managers, which is going to get a really a lot of pushback, but they're the guys setting up the shelter. They know people don't have a place to live unless they set it up. So there's a ton of stress for that, I guess they are emergency managers. I'll back that up really quick. But you know, any time you're dealing with a life-saving or life-sustaining operation, whatever your role is, it doesn't matter. You're not dealing with normal. I am actually in full disclosure, I am one of those guys that, it's really hard for me to talk to my wife about that because she didn't sign up for the really hard events, but it is very nice to be able to talk to a colleague where I don't have to explain what happened. They already know what happened. They were there and between my wife saying, Hey, there's a behavioral change here. What's going on? And colleagues that I talked to that's really helped me out a lot. I think you're saying the similar things, you know?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (34m 44s):

Yeah. I can think of one word that would be shared differently just as you said, I've been blessed to be married to my best friend, 42 years so it's awesome. The words you can share, the changes and the disruption of odors and smells during a disaster with your colleagues, but it sure as heck is something that would be extremely difficult to share with your significant other, just because they didn't sign up for that. They maybe can't handle that as they, you know, why didn't you let me know that particular little piece, that maybe could have been left off of that positive.

Host: John Scardena (35m 24s):

Sorry I cut you. I actually was agreeing with you, right when you said the word was the word.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (35m 28s):

Smell now, yes. Eviscerations, open refrigerator versus deceased body spoiled. We'd get the changes, a broken sewer pipes, a sludge, everything you can think of. Then the guy that has everything under his kitchen sink, mallet biopsy, the really bad bug killer’s outfitter that we're not allowed to use anymore. The mixture of everything you can think of, sometimes stays with you for a long time, even changes sometimes the way that you eat afterwards. You know, just really quick, why we're on this, the impact that they're seeing as they're going up those boards and bringing people down and for that period of time, listening to their cries, screams, moans of begs of please help my significant other, please help, you know, all of those things going through their heads. So. the responder is in only going through the person that they're dealing with, but all the emotions that person has, the person across the hall, who they've lived across the hall for 20 years now, it's suddenly all of a sudden gone because when they opened their front door, there was no across the street, across the hall neighbor anymore. A lot of significant impacts just in them dealing with emotional, even though there's not a physical injury sure, having to deal with emotional injuries.

Host: John Scardena (37m 0s):

This is kind of outside of, not related to our topic. So, I thought it was interesting after Kobe Bryant died in the helicopter crash, that Shack, there was an interview asking him how he was dealing with it. He said that he immediately went through this process of like, I wish, I had like regret. I wish I had talked to my sister more. I wish I'd done this, I wish I did that. I've actually seen responders do that quite a bit. Even though they weren't the ones impacted, they were close enough emotionally to the event. They're like, oh man, I wish I wish I wish. That's a really good cue that something's happening, you're going through that. It's like, Hey, somebody talked to their called a professional for a reason. If you're a professional, this is why I keep trying to change the topic of mental health. I like to call it mental first aid because we understand first aid fix, first aid is there to patch up something that was damaged that's normal that was damaged, you fix it, right. Your brain is normal, you went through something crazy. You got to put on, the first aid, which is talking to a professional sometimes and you're able to operate normally, you know? And I think that's a big call-out.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (38m 20s):

I agree. Strongly agree.

Host: John Scardena (38m 25s):

Cool Yeah. I’m glad I think like we talked about this quite a bit, right? Multiple shows, this idea of mental health, and I'm glad that we both keep calling it out because you're a legend in your field. I am trying to build my goat status right now, my greatest all-time status. But that's the reality, there's been some discussion about what disaster tough means lately and people keep telling me what they think it means. It’s fascinating for me to hear, but being tough for me is not like, oh, making tough luck. I'm thinking when I think of tough, I think of making the hard call, making the right call, being strong enough to make the right call and doing everything you can, whatever phase of a disaster you're in, that could mean for infrastructure and mitigation, or it can mean making the tough call to say, hey, I was just on a rubble pile doing amputations on people and we didn't have enough medicine for them to not feel it. You know, whatever it is, that's the tough call is talking about it anyways. We're going to beat this topic.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (39m 39s):

Absolutely not. As always, as you were talking about that acronym, that last phrase I was thinking about, the difference between people say PTSD and see PTSD or complex PTSD, which are well-known arenas as itself. Also adding to the arena. Where did that responder come from? Why did he pick this profession? Did he already have a bag and a closet full of skeletons that were in part of his life or her life growing up as a child and that's why they picked this particular being a hero, trying to continue to be a hero, as they say, and as you are doing it, dealing with emergency managers, did I make the right decisions last time? I don't know if I made the right decisions. So just adding to their PTSD constantly by not talking, by not seeking professional help.

Host: John Scardena (40m 39s):

Yeah one thing that's very hard for emergency manager because emergency managers especially in the future, the next 10 years, I really do feel like there'll become much more influential as social media compounds. The knowledge that disasters happen all the time. As we learn about the aftermath of the pandemic, that public health really was like the worst apparatus to use for response, it should have been emergency management because that's what they actually, you know, plan for and collaborate with multiple stakeholders as the public learns like what emergency management is. I do think though the risk, the authorities and responsibility are going to expand and will become more comprehensive.

It will eventually, I really do believe that the first responders, police, fire, EMS will operate truly under operations, planning will be something like more expanded. So just like the more you can collaborate between all the different groups that process will happen. The reason why I bring that up is because if that role is expanding and being more influential, then the topics that we're addressing right now, they will have to understand it more intimately. That includes search and rescue, man, I'm so grateful I went to that training because quite frankly, I always say this I'm a pretty arrogant guy.

I feel like I know my field really well and I don't like to be considered the guy that sits in an armchair and just like makes a decision while the people doing the work. I want to do the work too. But at the same time, like, man, talk about real heroes, search and rescue. I will say one hilarious and big problem between you, Walt, Brian Davis, who else? A couple other people, Cody, he was a student or a participant. All you guys are like trying to get me to become a volunteer firefighter or something. I don't know. Like I'm in like more and more ingrained the last six weeks. I'm like, oh I'm moving to St. Louis here soon. I already told my wife, I'm like, what do you think about me doing volunteer firefighting? She's like, you run a business, you have multiple podcasts. Yeah. You know, you have two little kids. I'm like, yeah, I know. So, I don't know. There's some mess of psychology there too. Okay. I think we address that topic really well. I think we addressed the topic of public health or of mental health.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (43m 14s):

One more. Last thing, if I can John, just on that simple shift change that's should have gone on this morning at 07:00 or 07:30, are you going to send these guys home? The new guys are buying that's a bit to get in there, but how do you tell somebody, Hey, you got to go home and that's a difficult pill to swallow as well. Inadequacy, the whole bit that goes on.

Host: John Scardena (43m 41s):

There was a responder or an instructor that talked about that. I can't remember which one it was, there was gray beard, which I called, I don’t know, it wasn't creepy thin dude, older dude glasses. There was him and then there was like Cuban or bald guy. Really thin bald guy. Oh my gosh. I feel so bad for not remembering any of their names, but there was, not Miguel. It might've been Miguel or it might've been the Mr. Gray beard himself. I don't know. Yeah. But one of the two shared a story about being on a rebel pile for eight hours and not finding anyone being forced out of there and 10 minutes later, they pulled somebody out and he did talk about that. I thought that was really good that he explained that to the participants. They're like, hey you have a job to fulfill on that eight hours of work determined that they could shift. Right, the more you clear, the more likely you can find somebody. So, it does matter. Yeah interesting thought. So, you know, what do you do? How do you get those people out there who are so invested, but also are exhausted, right? I mean, adrenaline can only last for so long.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (45m 5s):

Here comes adrenaline fatigue.

Host: John Scardena (45m 8s):

Yeah. Right. Like your, and your body will start craving it more, more, right. Here's a question I have for you. Do they really go in for 15-minute periods at a time? Or was that part of the training?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (45m 21s):

That's part of the training to understand that because you're trying to rotate them and all get part of that training. So, they're going to stay in there for that longer period. However, they're used to a timeframe of around that 30-minute mark, just because of being a firefighter and having CBA tank on them and being tagged out, knowing how long they could be on a single bottle before coming out for rehab got them. They're doing a realistic and interesting that you say that, that we did some training up in Wisconsin at the React Center and there was still ice frozen ground water on big ground. So, 15-minute rotations became a real incident because you needed insulation between you and the ground. Interesting. I know Miami beach definitely is in a Wisconsin in January. Could imagine the heat presently, you know, we were at 86-degree temperatures with about 70 to 80-degree humidity, soar temperatures in the morning. We're already feeling close to a hundred-degree mark.

Host: John Scardena (46m 29s):

Yeah when I was helping just for the listener sake, I was helping with some of the filming at the training because, Hey, I'm not a medical guy. Would participate somehow. I was in the rebel piles for four or five times longer than the crews work because they were learning and they were switching in and out. I get out of there after an hour and I'd be like, sweat, just pure sweat, it wasn't even that hot. I was like, this is a burden. I was surprised to learn the lack of gear that they have when they go in there. We're talking long shirts, I will say that 5.11 is one of the sponsors of one of our other podcasts. They're not a sponsor of this one, but they were making a killing at that conference. They had no idea. I look around, everyone's wearing 5.11 left and right. I was like, man, this is 5.11 wheelhouse right here. So good for them.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (47m 30s):

We tried to get them to come out and look at what all the responders are wearing and do some RNB in that level pile in rescue environment, open some of their eyes in that too as well. Yeah.

Host: John Scardena (47m 42s):

I started man, knee pads changed my whole life. I went out there, I was like, I'm not really going to be crawling around too much. I don't need the need pads. I got there, I was like, oh my gosh. I went to like Lowe's or home Depot that night got some $12 knee pads, life-changing. I'm like gardening in our backyard, I like bend down to the pool, now my wife's like really, you're putting the knee pads on to clear out the pool. I'm like, oh man, you have no idea. This has changed my whole life. Pretty soon I'm going to start wearing a tank on my back and try to find fires. I have to like pump the brakes there real fast, but Hey Joe, thanks again for coming on the show. We're talking about what's happening right now in Miami and walking through the next steps. These things really do apply all across the field and people need to hear about it. People need to learn from each other. I'm glad as an emergency manager, I get to learn from you or urban search and rescue. I really hope urban search and rescue starts learning from the emergency management side. We don't just deliver water, oh my gosh.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (48m 42s):

Everything that has to go on now with infrastructure, I mean, routes have to be changed, streets, sanitation, garbage lodging, for all those victims, everything needs to get reworked. Electrical infrastructure has to change. There's a lot of work for an emergency manager and staying busy with that event for days to come after the recovery mode is cleared up.

Host: John Scardena (49m 12s):

Absolutely days and several weeks. I mean the insurance claims the, just everything I would assume that right now, red cross has an MOU in place with a hotel chain that they're trying to put survivors in. The Salvation Army is probably providing some kind of food assistance and they're trying to get deities involved in clearing that those areas. Then they're going to have construction crews. Hey, here's a question for you that I have to deal with on the emergency management side is at what point can you trust a construction crew to go in there and not accidentally find a deceased person?

Guest: Joe Hernandez (49m 54s):

Yeah and that is really a touchy subject. They probably will keep someone there during the recovery process. They may bring in certain structural engineers because the USAR components, does have a heavy equipment operator in there. They may bring in their own equipment and do their own digging and do what we call the layering of that file until they do have an accountability just to keep those that might not be familiar with that type of work in that file.

Host: John Scardena (50m 27s):

An emergency manager and in terms of my side of the house, we would be the ones coordinating resources, being sure that the budget's there to be able to do that you know, those MOU’s that get them put in place. The debris trucks that get hauled out, all of that stuff starts.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (50m 42s):

And the need to go and ask for more money because it's just, they just didn't give you enough to operate it. So, you having to go back and fight with the city administrators, so that emergency management, I'm definitely not a podcaster, but back at you on the emergency management side, the difference of having to scramble and you yourself getting called at 01:30 in the morning, start planning, you better have what you're doing versus knowing that a hurricane is coming a week out right.

Host: John Scardena (51m 8s):

Now, there's a system out there. Right? Sure.

Guest: Joe Hernandez (51m 11s):

So as an emergency manager, you’ve dealt with the same slap in the face. Holy smokes. Wake up at 01:30, honey, I got to go, I got a lot of work. If you don't already know your business, you're going to hit a brick wall fast. Yeah. That's a whole heck of a different hat to wear as an emergency manager versus saying, all right, I got five days to figure this one out. I'm going to start moving my chess players into place. You've got some leverage there, but being woken up just like everyone else did at 01:30, you're asked to get put on and you probably better reach four, five different hats that, like those you're going to wear five different hats during that. So, it's a challenge again for you guys. Do I have some time to build this out or did I just get slammed in the face also? Yeah,

Host: John Scardena (51m 58s):

For sure. Like I said, there is a disturbance right now in the Atlantic. Something else pops up. If you know, that's a hard call. So, for an emergency manager, a lot of USAR guys don't know this, but like, if there's a hurricane coming barreling at an incident, we might not be able to, we might be saying to them, you are evacuating too, your mission is over. It's very hard for people to say, I'm right in the middle of response, I can hear people screaming. Nope. One of the best exercises about I keep going back to your training disaster medical solutions, obviously a big fan was we were in a pancakes garage and halfway through it, the inject came in of the building is another after shock happening in 10 minutes, you have 10 minutes and they were scrambling we're at nine minutes, nine minutes, 30 seconds. They were like, you have to get out. Now, there is no other option. There were participants who didn't want to do it, like, well, you know, blah, blah, blah. They start giving excuses. No, get out, get out, get out. Those who didn't, I think they caught it said, well, you died? You know? There there's some of that too. So, the bullheadedness is a good thing. It also is not a good thing for our field. You know, always a catch 22, but it is always a good thing having you on the show.

Again, thanks for coming on Joe and talking to me, for talking about PTSD and see PTSD on those next steps. If you've been listening to the show, if this stuff has been resonating with you, you need to do a couple of different things. One, if it's starting to click that you need to get some help, get some help. If you don't know of an outlet for that you can reach us at info@dobermanemg.com, we'll point you to a right resource. Or you can reach out to Joe at info@disastermedicalsolutions.com, they can help you too. We'll actually put that in the show notes so you don't have to remember it. You can just click on it and it'll send you right there. Seriously. Like don't allow catastrophic events to be catastrophic in your life. If You're a responder, you're an emergency manager, humanitarian, like that's your job, right? Don't let your job affect your personal life. We're grateful you are in the field. If you're the praying type, be like Joe. I pray for the success of the responders, pray that the aftermath does not impact them or their families so that they can keep helping people and still stay safe. We'll see you next week.

#62 Pulse Nightclub Shooting AAR - Interview with Incident Commander Chief Bryan Davis

It's been five years since the horrific Pulse Nightclub Shooter. The Incident Commander for Fire, Chief Bryan Davis, walks through his experience, lessons learned, and current initiatives to help reduce impact of active shooters.

Chief Bryan Davis was called to respond to the active shooter in progress at the Pulse Nightclub Shooting. Unlike other active shooter incidents, there was no question - this catastrophe was a terrorist attack. An attack on all Americans by a coward shooter who took hostages, remained on site for hours, and even called news stations. It was an active shooter like we haven't seen before. Chief Davis had to act swiftly and with precision to control the triage and life-saving mission for those impacted by the shooter. We talk about his experience on our show to help those in the field gain leadership skills in times of crisis.

Now, Chief Davis is focusing on another crisis- the impact of disaster on first responders. Keenly aware of these impacts, Chief Davis is an advocate to care for first responders and their families who experience catastrophic events.

If you have experienced a disaster, choose to be Disaster Tough by talking to someone about it, don't bottle it up. Processing these events in healthy ways allows us to keep doing our jobs. If you are looking for ways to manage and move on, please contact our show and we will point you in the right direction.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders, and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons, and tips are provided by field experts. I'm your host to John Scardena, owner of Doberman Emergency Management and former federal emergency response official who's responded to some of the most extreme disasters. Disaster Tough is our mantra, it combines experience, training, and analytics in order to be successful at any stage within the disaster lifecycle, it means being a professional in emergency and disaster services, Doberman Emergency Management lives by this. If your organization needs to fill a gap, please contact us we can help. Contact info is in the show notes.

We also support other products and organizations that will increase your ability. For example, if you fight wildfires, hurricanes, a pandemic, any disaster in the field, at a hospital or command center, listen up, you're missing out If you do not use L3 Harris for your radio coms, they are secure, portable, mobile, and scalable, which is great news for us in the field. A truly disaster tough radio system. Check out the XL family of radios by clicking on the show notes, or simply go to L3Harris.com.

The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech distributed by FS Global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre-screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs, this is a disaster tough technology. For more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.

Host: John Scardena (1m 53s):

Welcome come back to the show, everybody, it's Your Host: John Scardena. Man, I am weirdly excited about this episode because it's one, a super horrific topic, but a very important topic to cover, especially on Father’s Day weekend and we're going to be covering some of that, the mental health side in a second. But before I introduce my guests here, I just want to preference this episode, on our show we cover actual events as I've talked before with other guests. Some of those events of course are manmade, and we don't want to turn it into an entertaining thing. We don't want to turn it into something light, but what we do want to do is say, Hey, this is the actual event with real people and let's figure out the after actions of what we can do to make it better. So, even though we're talking about it on the show, I hope you can understand that the seriousness of the topic, you can understand the weight of it and most importantly how prevent it, if you can prevent it and prevent the impacts of it, which we're going to be covering a little bit, you know, we can do better in this field. We're going to be talking about the Pulse Nightclub shooting that happened about five years ago. In fact, almost to the date of this episode, we're going to be talking to the incident commander, Chief Brian Davis, who actually responded to the event and is going to be talking to us about that. Then finally, we're going to be talking about if you've been involved in this event, which some of us unfortunately have, or if it's going to happen in the future, which we feel like at this point, it's kind of inevitable. How can you help yourself and your family move on from a horrific scene? Brian's a really great example of doing that. He's going to be talking about those experiences today. Chief, welcome to the show.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (3m 42s):

John, thank you so much man. I'm happy to be here and I appreciate the opportunity.

Host: John Scardena (3m 46s):

Yeah, it's kind of this weird thing about our field, right? Because we all have had a response experiences, a lot of us have a response experiences, especially the guests and myself. So, you have this weight or this responsibility, this badge even of, I've had these crazy response experiences and it allows us to go into these topics. But at the same time, it's like man I wish I didn't have to have that badge and I wish I didn't have to have that associated. So, understanding that you carry that weight again I think it's a great honor for us to have you on the show again, before we even get started and like just thank you for responding. I've heard amazing things about the things you did in that response and want to break that up. But even post event, you've done a lot to be able to help out the responders and their families to be their advocate, to be able to move on. And so that's a huge pitch for our show is it's like mental health and emotional health. So again, thanks for taking the time for coming on.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (4m 57s):

Yeah, absolutely. John, and you know, it's one of those things. It's not something you want to be on the top of your resume. I mean, it is something you want to be proud of, but I've coined it as that worst, best day ever type thing. It's the worst scenario, your heart pours out for the victims and both the victims from the shooter and the individuals that have suffered trauma as a result of the incident. But it was my best day and that I couldn't be prouder of the men and the women that actually rally to the cause that evening. We were able to affect a lot of rescues and save a lot of wives in the process.

I mean, we weren't able to save the 49 that died as a result of these horrendous acts, and that part of it makes us really sad, but we were able to actually save over 30 that were critically injured and wounded and they made it to the trauma center and they survived the surgeries and everything. So, we talk about my involvement in that and I would like to allude and everybody understands this, I'm sure in the EM world and also in emergency response, it's a team effort and I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the men and the women that were there on that event. It was some of the most professional actions I've ever witnessed. It's not something that we were ready for. Quite honestly, we've talked about it. I think agencies across the country were talking about it, but it wasn't really on the forefront of what fire departments and EMS providers were prepared for and it was large-scale huge magnitude when it hit

Host: John Scardena (6m 42s):

Well, when it hit, it was the worst, unfortunately to date it's not but at the time it was the worst active shooter event in us history. It was unique for so many different reasons. For the listeners who somehow were hiding on a rock for the last five years and didn't know about this. If I may sir, I'm going to probably set up the context here a little bit and then you can, I'll set up like that with the pre-end and you can talk about like the response we don't ever share again. For our listeners, we would encourage anybody in the field who's listening to this, please adopt this methodology, never share the shooters or the terrorist’s names. We don't feel like they're worth sharing and we want to change that mentality.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (7m 28s):

So yeah, you can call them evil.

Host: John Scardena (7m 30s):

You can call them broken, you can call them whatever you want. Just don't call them by their name. It's not worth remembering. So, the shooter goes into Pulse Nightclub. It is a gay nightclub in Orlando, goes in there, checks out the scene. There is an off-duty officer there and security actually leaves and comes back. If I recall there's an upper stage, a lower stage, a patio area, on the upper stage, the DJ I'm talking like I've been there. I haven't been there, but you know, done lots of attractions on it. Yeah. I love going there. The DJ has the booth, was on the upper end with bathrooms on the back end, where the upper end was. So, you have 320 people packed inside this club with some people on the patio when the shooting started around 02:02 in the morning and you have people on the patio, a lot of confusion obviously, because you already have sounds in a nightclub, but then you have to deal with shooting before we get into like really anything. What I find is most fascinating, what I always bring this up in our active shooter classes, telling people to know your exits and the DJ had enough situational awareness.

In fact, some of the members to understand that there was an exit behind the DJ and so you had a flood of people going out, but essentially, they were locked in there with this shooter. So, the fact that out of 320 people, it is horrible that 49 people lost their lives. However, it could have been much higher even. That's the stage. So, you get this call around two o'clock in the morning, can you kind of walk us through that process of like the next actions you took?

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (9m 32s):

Yeah, it's one of those things that's a bit surreal, you know, been in the fire service and a first responder worked as a flight paramedic for a local program and a trauma flight program for many years, you know? So, you get accustomed to what the units are and what they're responding to and everything else. When that call was dispatched, the units that were assigned to the call seemed a bit out of the norm for me, I’m like wait a minute. What are we going to? Because it was just a myriad of units. Most departments have an SOP, you know, where they have a mass casualty assignment that consists of so many units and so on and so forth and this one didn't really meet that. Like I wasn't really sure at first and it was a lot of units, so I'm thinking, okay, what's really going on two o'clock in the morning, downtown Orlando, one of the busiest nights of the week in the city, they've got events all up and down orange avenue, they've got concerts going on that have streets closed. It's just one of the busiest nights for us. We automatically move over to an operational tactic and everybody gives responding. Before that, probably one of the most revered and admired lieutenants in our organization now retired. He was the company officer that was at the station that was right next to the Pulse Nightclub.

Rarely if ever, did you hear any fluctuations in his voice, on the radio? He was usually pretty calm, cool collective. He came across the radio in this very, I don't want to call it high pitched, but several tones higher than normal. Very rapid. I'm like, all right, something's not right because I've never seen that in this Lieutenant. This is a guy that you can count on to be really cool, calm, and collective, and in moments like that I'm sure in the years after when people had an opportunity to review the audio, you can actually hear gunfire occurring in the background. You know, my immediate response is holy crap. My guys are in the middle of this and I'm a mile away, but yet there's not a thing I can do. Even when I get there, it's like, we just got to figure out what we got and what we have going on. So immediately just went into, you know, they're telling us multiple, multiple victims. We've read our communications division was overwhelmed with phone calls. I mean, 500, 600 calls within no time at all, because it was members or it was people that were there and their families and everybody else, because this is breaking. This is hitting the news everywhere immediately. So, resources were big, obviously in an emergency management and disaster preparedness and stuff. That's something we talk about a lot.

So, I asked for the world, I said, you know what I’m being told I've got 20 to 30 victims. We're a department that consists of 17 stations. We provide our own transport in addition with private ambulance service and then mutual aid agreements with other departments and stuff. I'm like, man if I've got 30 victims, my transport situation has already completely overwhelmed our hospitals, which fortunately for us, and this isn't always the case but fortunately for us, our level one trauma center was literally six, seven blocks away. Our other trauma center that it's not a dedicated trauma center, but one that can receive overflow was six or seven miles away. So, we have hospitals but I've traveled to parts of the US to talk about active shooter and their closest trauma facility is an hour away and that by flight, we were very fortunate and unfortunate, good. You know, like I said best day, worst day ever, you know, in best case scenario, we were aware, we were when it happened and law enforcement was really active initially in getting some of those people out of there. Actually, they saw how overwhelmed this was going to be. But the biggest thing for me was in this realm of chaos that we were diving into, somebody had to be that voice that just brings it all down.

I seem to be that a shit magnet, sorry I'm sure others that know me will tell you that, but it used to be whatever can happen, will happen whenever I'm working. So, it's something I've really tried to focus on as a Chief Officer, but we had to bring it down a level and the biggest piece of that and I'm sure in your world of emergency management and disaster preparedness and stuff like that, you know one of the biggest things is getting everything set up and having the resources organized. Priority was the safety of the men and women that were responding and the safety of my crews that were already literally a hundred feet from this nightclub where this is taking place. Then basically I just kind of pulled the reins back on everybody and said, listen, we just can't go running in there. We can't just all come pull it into this dead end and have no way out. We have to set this up for success. We have to set up the divisions, the groups, everything that you need with that. A lot of departments are myself included, we spent a lot of time with table exercises and even in mass casualty or disaster preparedness for hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes or whatever it may be. When we talk about all that stuff, it's amazing how different it is when it actually happens, because the reality of it sets in and you're like, oh, this is insane, but held everybody back.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (15m 10s):

I actually moved myself into a forward position in the scene very early on. Again, it's not anything I want anybody to relive emotionally because this will, some people will look at that and they'll remember it. I mean, I have still had the visual of driving down Orange avenue and individuals running the other direction against me carrying shooting victims and just trying to get them somewhere other than the immediacy of the nightclub itself. But got in, got set up, got positioned, made immediate contact with the station. I actually chose to set up the command post and stuff a little bit away from the station, but yet I still had a visual on everything that was going on. Probably initially, maybe a little too close for us, but I really needed to get a grasp. The one thing too, you know, law enforcement was there in numbers. We had agencies from all over Central Florida, FHP, Orange county, UCF police, Winter park police, there were more Cop Carson, blue lights there. Then I think you could count in a year on any other.

Host: John Scardena (16m 18s):

Of what you want in that situation though, honestly overwhelmed.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (16m 21s):

And we're there to help each other, right? We're there for, you know, they're gone, we understand active shooter, you've done a lot with it. You know, they really have three objectives. They're either going to confine, kill, or capture the shooter and they want to stop the event. We know most active shooter events by definition, depending on whose definition you read they're over within 10 minutes, this wasn't. This individual was actually shooting for more than 10 minutes and it wasn't until he was barricaded into an area that the nightclub that was pretty inaccessible to law enforcement, that now this evolved into a hostage situation.

So really, this thing came in waves for us. We set up an MCI. We operated under that premise. We had all our groups and divisions working. Again, the discipline of the members that were responding really are what made this to the degree it was successful because they were disciplined. They use a little bit or reserve, and they knew that it was absolutely critical that we really built on the foundation for this and made sure that we all just didn't come running in and then we couldn't get out. Meaning we can't get our transport groups set up. We don't have any communications with the hospital. We don't have any communications with law enforcement, which was impartially the case and we learned a lot from that. I hope as an industry, the importance of that unified command and having those communications and having a liaison and everything else. But yeah, it was just really surreal and I mean, I've had some pretty enormous events in my career and this one definitely just immediately stood out and really what stood out and beginning was the Lieutenant and just his voice, just the change. He never waivers in that at all. Just to hear it in his voice, I knew, then I said, this is not just a shooting where we've got one or two or three victims. This is a big deal. Especially when each tee’s up and you can hear the shooting in the background, I'm like, wake up what do we got? Yeah, you're right there.

Host: John Scardena (18m 31s):

You bring up a lot of different, you bringing up a lot of points to show why it was so unique. So yeah, you're right. Temper. Most like 90% of active shooters are under 10 minutes. You got 10 minutes to save people's lives and run, hide, fight. Doesn't just mean run, hide, fight, it means a lot more than that. The other thing that you brought up is there's a discussion, I really pushed back on the discussion. I think its semantics and I think it's stupid most of the time, but there's no question with this active shooter. People say active shooters are not terrorists. Well, they are terrorists. But this guy especially was, I mean, he claimed affiliation and allegiance to ISIS. He talked about strapping people. He had hostages. It was very different than I hate to say normal, but the most common active shooter, which is psychologically broken, just goes in there for a headcount, bang, bang, bang and then kill myself done, right. That’s kind of their typical MO so three hours versus 10 minutes claiming allegiance to ISIS, calling 9-1-1 multiple times, calling a new station, posting on Facebook. There’re so many differences of why this was even outside of what we would have been training for.

You brought up the uniqueness of this and we're talking about it, right? So, the other two that are unique in my mind are the Aurora shooting with the theater, which, you know, you talk about being six blocks away. In this world, people can make their own choices and they should. Most of the time it's good choices, but sometimes it's absolutely horrific, but you know, there's still sometimes the hand of God that just gets placed in like, okay, this horrific thing happened, but the trauma center is six blocks away. Or the fact in the Roar shooting, like I just brought up the will. The time the active shooter started was the transfer time for all law enforcement. So, all the guys getting off and all the guys getting on, everybody was able to respond and they were able to save a lot of people on there.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (20m 42s):

Yeah and actually, I've written a couple of papers just for some classes and I've focused on Aurora, Aurora was one that I looked at. I looked at the after-action reviews and it was fortunate they had just completed. Actually, there was a SWAT training that was taking place just miles from there that had just completed. They had those resources they're really quite fast as did we, I mean, I had OPD officers and other law enforcement members coming by me. Like I was standing still and I don't exactly stand still when I'm responding to them, they come by me. I'm like, holy cow, you really start to grasp what's going on here more by what's happening in your surroundings than you are actually what you're visually seeing in the scene. That a lot of times for me is kind of how I gauge the severity or the enormity of the event is what's happening in their periphery, if you will, and everything else.

Host: John Scardena (21m 43s):

That's an excellent point because I went from Hurricane Harvey directly to the Northern California wildfires. Hurricane Harvey, it was like the same thing, if you stopped to look around you at all the different parts that were moving and how fast people were going, you would have gotten behind the curve because you would have just been blown away by all the media parts for lifesaving. But in the wildfires, at least for the role that I got out there, they were also calling it a type one most catastrophic, and it was catastrophic for sure, for the people there. But in terms of like complexity, people were working 12 hour shifts and going home, like that's not type one. I'm probably going to get a lot of pushback from the people because obviously lives are impacted, not talking about that. I'm just talking about the complexity Pulse Nightclub is a type one event because again, not 10 minutes, three hours claiming affiliation with ISIS. As you noted, a million things happening all at the same time. So, what I like to tell people is it's sometimes hard to figure out when you're in what, like to classify type one, type two, type three. I don't know really what a type two is, but I always know what a type three is, you know, a county flood.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (23m 3s):

Yeah, exactly and I know what a type one is, right.

Host: John Scardena (23m 6s):

So that's interesting that you researched Aurora too, though.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (23m 15s):

I've done others. I mean, obviously I had an opportunity at the request of, did some things for Department of Homeland security and just had an opportunity to do some stuff up in Indiana and Indianapolis and some other departments. It was in the moment. It was definitely, get that message out there with them, you can never be too prepared. But it's like I mentioned early on, we do spend a lot of time, a lot of departments spend an inordinate amount of time in preparing for mass casualty and what we've always known mass casualty to be is, and I'm sure if you tabletop one, it's that hurricane, it's a tornado, it's an overturned school bus, it's a tanker truck that dumped all its acid all over the road. We got a chemical cloud, but we've never really, until the last five years as an industry, we've never really sat down and said, okay, this is what just happened, and what measures were in place, what did the after-action review, which in my opinion, fairly accurate, but not really in the eyes of the individuals that were with that event. I can say that I looked at the Las Vegas event a year later, actually had an opportunity to meet some of the individuals that were working that event a year later, because we did have members that travel from Orlando to Las Vegas, part of our peer support program and stuff that they were trying to launch at the time go out there.

You know, when we had Pulse happen and I'm Segway in a sidebar a little bit, but this is going to get into your peer support and your mental wellness and stuff like that. But we had a tremendous amount of outpouring from other departments. FDNY, Boston FD, the individuals that have been through very similar tragedies and they traveled down here with the international association of firefighters on their own accord, because they had just been through a tragedy themselves, whether it be the Boston Marathon Bombing or 9/11, whatever, it's going to impact people. But with this event, you know, it evolved over three hours. We’ve hit on that a couple of different times. It went from an active shooter with a high-level MCI acuity to an EOD for us, if everybody's using the same terminology, it's an explosive ordinance device. They had several bomb sniffing dogs there that actually had positive hits on the same vehicle and in a hostage situation. You know, it evolved. It really had several moving parts, several components that were occurring. During these three hours, it actually went in waves because there were opportunities where law enforcement was able to get into the nightclub while they had this guy barricaded in the back and continue to remove victims and get them out to us. You know for us the idea of ballistics and all that wasn't something that was fully introduced to the department. Yet it wasn't readily accessible for us and we weren't really prepared to operate in that hot zone if you will.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (26m 18s):

Now five years have passed, and there's been a lot of discussions of where EMS providers will and will not operate. Even to this day, speaking with some of the high-end command law enforcement officers, they've said, we didn't expect you to go into the nightclub and sometimes there's an expectation and that's the big thing John. I, as the incident commander and as the guy calling the shots at one point, I basically had to say no, we're not doing that. I'm not putting my individuals in that position. We've not been trained for it. I mean, I understand it. We're first responders, right? What we do has evolved.

It's no longer, we don't just get 911 calls for catching the tree and houses that are on fire. We get called for anything that somebody deemed an emergency in their eyes, and that's what we've evolved to. So, we've added all these components. We've added hazmat, we've added aviation rescue, whatever disaster, preparedness, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, you name it. This industry has evolved and its whole lot of data and a lot of information for us to keep up with. So, I feel like a lot of things went really well for us where there some opportunities for improvement in what we do, that's going to be the case with anything. Unfortunately, it takes that event to actually occur before you know what your weaknesses are. You're not able to exploit those weaknesses, sitting on a table top exercise. It just doesn't happen.

Host: John Scardena (27m 48s):

Your process can be flawless and yet you can still have casualty, right. That's just like the reality of the field. I like that phrase. What’s that other phrase, you can do every scene, everything right and still lose. That's like a really big thing and I guess for our field, like I said, we have emergency managers, first responders on here, military personnel, whatever you talk about after-action reviews, what are some of the high-level things that any department could, in fact, I want to bring up the other thing too, in a second, about how it's expanding into other areas. So, we've talked about that, but what are your specific after actions, what you did really well and what you think other people should at least ingest or digest for their departments?

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (28m 43s):

Yeah. We've seen a lot of activity in the last couple of years, you know, disheartening obviously, right. We just had one at our railroad or a facility, we've had one at a distribution center with 5, 7, 10 casualties and certainly, you don't like to sit and listen to that, but those were confined in terms of the geographies, the systems necessity of that. They happened in a very small, localized area of a warehouse or in a yard or something of that nature. The things that worked really well in this scenario and I can't overemphasize this enough, the use of ICS and the incident command structure and understanding NIMS, even though it was derived from wildland firefighting and you know, adapted into the world of first responders and stuff that absolutely proves beneficial. You've got to get those things moving early. Even if you anticipate that this thing is going to expand, are going to grow, it's easier to get those resources moving early.

 I've heard some people not specifically this event, but I've heard others, Ah, you know, they overreacted, they did this, not specifically the polls for me but just in general conversations. Sometimes when we talk about disasters and stuff, oh way too many resources, what a waste or this or that. No, I don't believe you can have too many resources when it is scaling and it's growing exponentially. So, getting these groups and divisions and understanding ICS, I mean, there was an opportunity for improvement, obviously in our unified command.

Obviously, that's identified in the after-action review and I own part of that as the incident commander, even though I wasn't the highest ranking official, and it really was probably outside of my scope of what I should be doing. It was identified and at the end of the day, I represented the members in the organization that were present on that scene. I saw an opportunity for work, we could have done better with that, but so did the other agency, we were supposed to be working together with in that unified command. So, you know, things that went well, right? The guys just operating with some control and maturity and just taking it step-by-step, they knew they had a task in front of them unlike any other they've had in their career and most of these individuals I've worked with for my entire career at the fire department and I knew what to expect. Right. You know your strengths and weaknesses, you know what you can expect, but these men and women were flawless in their execution of doing what we had to do, but yeah, getting that early, getting it set up really understanding, yeah. What you have and how in the enormity of it, whether it's 5 patients, 10 patients, 50 patients, 420, like you said, there were well over 300 people in that nightclub. I mean, the reports say this because this is what they're supposed to have, but closer to 5, 4, or 500,000, okay. 400 or 500 people in that nightclub, but regardless could have been a lot worse.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (31m 53s):

The biggest challenge is when I look at an event like that, and also when I reviewed the Las Vegas response, geographically the size of the event was spread out over several blocks. I mean, Las Vegas people were running into the hotels and seeking shelter and in some of the resorts and stuff there, and a lot of that happened with us too. You know, one of my lessons and one of the things I would do differently is I would look at that geographic difference separated into maybe a Northern division and a Southern division or, North or South because we did have indices that actually fled to the south of that night club and our entire operation, including the trauma was north on the north side.

We were cut off from getting down that main artery, Orange avenue, which basically runs that North to the South venue, we were cut off because that was the hot zone with that as it evolved. I did decide to move some units down to that south side and start looking at, do we have anybody down there that we need to be accountable for? You know, going back to what really worked well. We had a lot of resources from our department. We had a lot of resources from her joining departments through our mutual aid agreements and utilize those resources. I had liaisons go to the trauma center because that way I have eyes and ears on what's going on there.

I mean, Orlando health, a level one trauma center, they said bring them all. I'm thinking, all right I've been in this system a long time. I used to fly on that helicopter that goes into that system. How are they going to handle them all? Somehow, miraculously, anything that was a trauma or read by our NCI category, they wanted it all and mandate they handled it and they didn't lose a single one of them that were transported to that, incredible. We created this flow and that was the thing early on. You got to pull the reins back on all those transport units and you got to get them to staging and then start bringing them in as you need them in coordinating all those efforts. So, the discipline, the amount of discipline that was presented by all the officers that were put into those positions is what allowed this thing to really just move.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (34m 13s):

It was very fluid if you will, in that when there was a demand and it did, it peaked on us a couple of times, OPD would bring out another dozen victims and we were ready to receive them at the edge of that hot zone, if you will. We moved them into whether we could just move them into triage or get them right into transport and get them going to the trauma center. So, a lot of things went well John, at the end of the day, you're always professional. You're going to go back and look at it and say, okay, were there some opportunities for us to do things a little bit differently at the end of the day, I still stand firmly that the opportunities I speak of would not have changed the outcome of the event.

We would have still had 49 victims. We would've still had close to 40 that we rescued because those operational changes that the presence in that unified command post towards the end. Would it have made a difference in the outcome for the individuals that were already deceased within the club? I don't believe it would have. It's unfortunate because that's not what we like to do. We like to get in and get it done, say wives. I mean, that's what we're about. We're really strong type a success driven individuals. We don't like to fail. I don't know a single person that's in emergency management or in fire, EMS, or anything as a first responder that likes failure.

Host: John Scardena (35m 39s):

There's only one person in the Pulse Nightclub shooting that failed and it was the shooter.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (35m 46s):

Absolutely. Absolutely, and I'm not talking about it that you brought that up, so we'll keep that there, but it's not worth my time or energy at this point.

Host: John Scardena (35m 57s):

Good point. But yeah, like on that same vein of that, you're talking about from the responder side, you know, disasters, whether it's natural or man-made, when you're dealing with life operations and really life impacting operations. I've had friends who've worked in congregate shelters and just seeing people lose everything and that causes them to break down. You know, we are success driven where a lot of us are A type personalities, but that comes at a cost sometimes because we're unwilling to face the reality of that, despite all the training, despite whatever the stuff that we deal with is not normal and there's an impact to you.

I've brought this up on the show before, but there's also an impact to your family. My wife is a graphic designer, she is amazing. She has like so many accolades to her name. She didn't sign up to like walk over to the tornado and punched the tornado in the face and try to pull people out of buildings, right? Like there was one time where USAR came up to me in a Georgia tornado and they asked to figure out the math because I did analytics at the national team. Hey, there was a boy that was sucked out of a home, could you figure out where all the different possibilities of where he could have gone and how far? You know, unfortunately did the math and it basically, because of my degrees, I knew he would have been disintegrated in the tornado. I still gave the trajectories of where it could have gone based off of rotation and speed and all this other stuff, but never found him, that is an incident that really frustrates me, but I understand it.

My wife didn't sign up for that and especially when I started doing the man-made stuff, especially in DC. I don't talk about that too much, but I told her about it one time and it like really shook her for three days. Like, oh this is what my husband really does. I think we have to talk about that, you know, Pulse Nightclub, you just said that literally everybody was flying by, you are flying into the scene and trying to deal with this. That's a lot of people and their families who for three hours were worrying about this terrorist. What would you say to if he could influence the country somehow? What would you say to that aspect?

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (38m 40s):

Well you know, John, obviously this, this will shouldn't come as a surprise. Obviously the first responders we talked about it, we talked about strong type A personality. We seem impervious to emotion and we don't on the outside. In most cases, we don't even seem like things like that, rock us. Like, you know, that's just not in our genes. We just don't do that. But even if you look back as far as 9/11, there's tons of photography out there that show you these members from FD and Y and Port Authority, police departments and stuff that were already grieving over the enormity of the event.

So, you know, we see that a lot and our mainstream media, a lot of times they'll do a good job of showing all the great things and all the video and stuff like that. They also show all the horrific things that have occurred the loss of life and doing it with some regard to the sensitivity of the situation. But the first responders for a long time, we've always just kind of, yeah, we did what we did and we, man, I wish we could have done more. Then we move on to the next day and in this case, John, I can tell you personally, not the case. My number one goal in the days and weeks following that, I was genuinely concerned about the members that responded to that call.

Now you have some that are callused and hard, and they may not ever show you that it's bothering them, or it bothered them that we couldn't do more. I'm the incident commander. I wore that weight on my shoulders, that there wasn't more we could have done for the individuals in the club, but given the information I had at the time, based on the resources I had at the time and the enormity of the event, I mean, mass casualty is not a nice thing because in mass casualty, you are actually being asked to triage. That's what we do, and if you have a black, you move on in, in normal responses to say, just a shooting with one or two victims. That may be an individual that we actually initiate life saving measures, and we try to resuscitate, but in a mass casualty, when you have limited resources, and you're really trying to impact those that have an opportunity for survival, that's the mode that you are trained to operate in.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (41m 8s):

Sometimes it just gets nuts. I spent a good or more on a time. Our department was in its incipient phase of developing a peer support group. You know, a lot of departments across the country rely on worker's comp and things like that and they have IAP, and then they have EAP (employee assistance programs) that the reality of those employee assistance programs as they are contracted by the city. You know, I probably will catch flack on this again, but it's a contracted service, low bid for mental health providers that can come in and help somebody if they're having a difficult time.

But I don't know that they really have the ability to relate to what just occurred. So, in the days following, we did some debriefings and we got all that organized through the efforts of our local and other members. We had members that came from Boston and they were part of the Boston strong effort. We had members that came from FD and why we had members that came from all over the country, who convened in the city of Orlando to be there for the first responders. Now, the city themselves, they did an amazing job in their response for the victims of the event. There was a lot of relief efforts set up and stuff like that. I caused some scrutiny over this in the months and years following, but I feel like it's got to be said the responders in my opinion, weren't given priority.

I'm not saying that we needed a priority, but we were asked three days later to go back to work and be ready to do the same thing over yet.

Host: John Scardena (49m 49s):

I was just wondering how long you guys had off, three days.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (49m 51s):

Actually, the unfortunate thing of its John is we demobilized the event just after 5:00 AM and a couple of units actually got caught on calls going back to the station. Now that was not my call. I was still in the demobilization phase of the event and units were being returned to return back to the station. You know, here's a unit that just worked an MCI with 49 victims, 38, 39, you know, critically wounded, a couple of debts that were just all of that on their station. They catch a man down that is a homeless individual, sleeping on a bench or something like that. Why do you think they have the patients or the willingness to know? So, it has to occur immediately, that process has to start the minute you start demobilizing that. There’re some opportunities we learned city did an amazing job with the victims and stuff. The city stepped into a degree, but it was our peer support group that was in a very incipient phase of development and the relationships we had with UCF, University of Central Florida and they have a program out there that has grown significantly for them.

Then the support of all the other departments across the country that came in to help provide that. There were individuals that were having some difficulty with that. John I've seen a lot of things, but some guys saw things that they would never see in their entire career and it was all within one night. I mean, multiple victims and anybody that understands firearms and stuff like that, what these wounds may or may not look like or what these individuals may look like, we had the victims being brought out and being brought to us that were well past the point of, I mean, they were triaged as a black and these bystanders that were helping the club goers themselves. They were trying to help and I applaud those efforts tremendously.

They're bringing that out to us. So not only are they seeing it and it's maybe their best friend or somebody they were clubbing with at night, but we're seeing it as first responders. We don't get an opportunity to do anything, but just pull the sheet and that impacts people. So, from my level as incident commander, I were to wait for several years of whether or not the decisions I made that night were in the best interest of the event. I spent a lot of time, two days later, I won't lie. You know, I can't really, I can't lie about this. I was pissed, I was pissed that not one member of my leadership team at the organization that was above me, even reached out to me to say, hey, man, I know you had a really bad night and I'd love to talk about it.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (45m 38s):

If you need anything, you know, let me know, and it didn't happen. Maybe I was expecting too much. I don't know. But at that point in time, I feel like I was failed as the member that was representing our presence. There, just a phone call just say hey, and I know you had a shitty night, we want to talk about it and just want to make sure you're okay. You know, a lot of stuff went on. So, I took it upon myself in the days following, I actually compiled the list of every OSD member that was on that call and I tried to personally call them myself, whether I got a voicemail or whatever. I said Hey, this Brian Davis, I'm just calling to see how you're doing tremendous work the other night. I know it was a lot, you know, and that was a dry for me and I felt it important. Then our peer support group, along with some of the actions of these other groups from across the country, they finally got guys on track and I didn't realize the impact it was really having on me. It was driving things at home. Like you said, you take this home to your family. I mean, my wife was up at five o'clock that morning and it's on news. She knew I was there. She's like, I knew you were there. I knew it had to be you there's no time I've ever turned on the TV where there's something bad in the City of Orlando happening and you're not connected to it, but really hard to on end. About two years after the event, one of my lieutenants who I consider one of my best friends, he came to me he said, all right, man, he said, it's your turn. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Because you got to take care of you. You've been dealing with this for two years, it's time. You know, not a lot of people know this, but I had to seek professional help. I had to go see somebody to deal with the PTSD because it was creating something of me that I wasn't proud of. A lot of that had to do with just bearing that weight of an event like that, you know, where you want to give it all and do everything within your power and you feel like you failed. I mean, I was left. I had a tremendous amount of support from the men and women that were there on that call, my immediate supervisor, good support, he was off that night, not on duty, actually.

I should say she, the Assistant Chief that would normally be my supervisor that night, she was off. I had some other Chiefs from other departments that I've remained acquaintance with since they retired and moved on to other departments, you know, they reached out and called and maybe my expectation was too much, but just a phone call in some cases goes a long way just to touch somebody and say Hey man, how you doing? You know, we've never dealt with anything like that. We've seen stuff like this throughout our entire life, you’re affiliated with USAR and that's how we made our acquaintance through those connections. You know, I couldn't imagine, I've had one interaction in USAR and I actually, I was a flight medic on a flight program and we flew to New Orleans after Katrina and we were there specifically just to evacuate ICU patients out of hospitals and move them in. But I got to see it, you know, or everything. We saw what it looked like and I'm like, holy cow, we're here dealing with ICU patients, just stuff that just needs me to transport to outlying hospitals, but you're still seeing the tragedy and the huge loss of life that occurred from that event. So, things impact you, man, they stick with you forever. You talked about having visual reminders. You know that the Pulse Nightclub is still in memoriam of the victims that lost her wife. But we have individuals who drive by that scene every third day that were part of that scene.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (49m 20s):

At some point, you know that's got to weigh on them. They've got to see that and remember, and they have these flashbacks because we do it in first responders. I'm sure it's the same in emergency management. If you've had those experiences, you have this Rolodex of carbs and it's constantly spinning in your memory bank and sound will trigger something with you. I will tell you that for two years, a very loud sound that sounded similar to that of a weapon would startle me a door. You talked about, you know, how your wife and same with mine, how your wife was kind of living it through you. Call it a crazy but I go into a restaurant, I'm looking at exits. I'm actually sitting with my back to a door because I want to know that I have an exit to get out of something. I taught my wife and my son, kids, it's quite scary actually, because you're like, you don't want to do that. You don't want to feel like you're over-cautious, but that's what events like this do to you as a human being. I don't care if you're a firefighter, I don't care if you're a nurse, a graphic designer. It doesn't matter if you've been involved with something like that, the individuals that were involved in the Pulse nightclub, all the patrons that were there, this will impact them for the rest of their lives. So, it's not just us as first responders, it's everybody is going to be impacted by that.

Now what we're seeing is because of all the avenues with social media and stuff like that, you see it immediately. Lost his wife in California, you know, after being shot by another firefighter, what a tragedy that is. But you knew within minutes that was happening and you're like, we didn't have that 10 years ago or 15 years ago. You didn't know that something this big was going on in California, other than the news, you didn't see it in social media, Twitter, or Facebook or whatever it is you're using for those platforms. But the recovery piece of it, I was doing some presentations as I shared with you.

I coined it the before, during, and after of an active shooter event, and that was a presentation about an hour long. I started really diving into that thing. I'm like, man, you know, really what I want people to get out of this is the aftermath. I changed it to the before, during, and aftermath of an active shooter event and keeping in mind our thoughts and prayers and feelings for the victims of an event like that. But this was geared more towards taking care of each other and our first responders that are dealing with that because we see this day in and day out, day in and day out. It's not to this magnitude, but we're still dealing with it. You know, you were still dealing with individuals who lost their wives over senseless, acts, things of that nature and it'll take you back. You just see that.

Host: John Scardena (52m 20s):

So, you make two really good points and I'm going to actually start with the second point. I'm going to go to the first point after that, the people are in this weird place right now, when they hear that this one aspect of this one topic is important to me, you can name any topic. It’s gay pride month right now right? So gay pride month, black history month, right? You hear other people have like, why isn't there this month or that month. It's like, okay, you can still talk about this. It doesn't have to diminish this other piece.

I think it's a hundred percent acceptable to say as a first responder, as the incident commander, as somebody who would have really appreciated somebody reaching out and that catastrophic events, saying how are you doing to say hey, I think we need to be aware that there's this group over here, the first responders and their families that need mental and emotional care first aid. I don't even like care. I like saying first aid, mental first aid, right? You've been through a mentally traumatic event that requires a medicine. That medicine might be sitting around the table and talking to people who don't have that really go through the event with, it might be talking to a professional, which I think by the way that it's one of the toughest things you can do. It's like to own up to that, man up, woman up, whatever, and say hey, all right, I'm going to tell my buddy that he needs to take care of this.

That's a tough thing to do and then it's even tougher to say, you're right, I'm going to take care of this. So, I applaud you. I'm a big fan of that. I think it's okay to say that. I think it's also okay to just to note inherently, duh, you should also be taking care of, you know, the victims and their families. When you have to say, duh, I think that’s the point of the conversation. You're like, oh, okay, like it's not offensive one way or the other, things are obvious.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (54m 33s):

Yeah and it is tough. You just mentioned, you know, it took me a while to really, I don't want to use the word concede, but address that help was needed. I think you've met enough officers throughout your career in emergency management and disaster preparedness and what you do with USAR, I mean those guys are put to task time and time again with similar situations, but it is one of those things, it's tough as a chief officer to be able to say, Hey man, I'm really not doing well with this because you don't want your peers to look at that as a weakness. I'd like to believe that our industry has evolved to where individuals don't see that as a weakness in their superior officers or their leaders.

They see it more that we are vulnerable just like anybody else and it does impact you. If anything, it's made me more aware about how it impacts our members and it's just one of those things. Like I said, I talked about changing that to where it was the before during an aftermath. It was the aftermath in the mental health and mental awareness that first responders across the globe, not just here, but anywhere that deals with this type of event, what they may need because we're asked to go back and do that.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (56m 30s):

You know, we just got to spend a little more time focusing on our first responders because we're asked to go back and do that job the very next day, time and time again and it's tough. I think whatever part we got cut out there with thank you technology, and we're still trying to figure it out. But you know, it's hard as a chief officer or somebody that is revered or admired or respected throughout the ranks. It's hard to reach out and say, hey, you know, I need a little bit of help with this. I hope that across the country, I hope that that message is resounding to where we as first responders.

I mean, number one because of suicide rates amongst first responders is the highest it's ever been in years. I was part of 10 years ago of looking at a line of duty protocol and looking at what was in place by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and all that, there was a time where suicide wasn't even considered as part of a line of duty death, PTSD wasn't really talked about. It was believed that suicide was a choice and that those individuals did that on their own. So why should they get benefits of a line of duty death or something like that?

That's a ball right now. We're talking about suicide amongst first responders and we're talking about how important it is that they get the help they need. So, you know, I take the pulse event, I'm very proud and sad in the same moment. I felt like it was a shining moment for me personally. Yes, is that what you want to put on a resume when you're applying to do something or go somewhere or do it? It's not really, shouldn't be the highlight of that because there was a lot of sadness that came out of that. It wasn't the highlight of the career. Again, the men and the women that partook in that event and our mutual aid responders and everybody else came in. John at the end of the day, they're the ones that really made it happen.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (58m 39s):

Sure. You put the plan in motion. You're the guy that's coming up with this plan. You're the guy, as you described waterflows and protectories and all this to hopefully find this young child. But at the end of the day, those people are the ones that are out there actually doing the work and making it happen. So, I made it a priority couple of years, really trying to make sure that these guys, we had a lot of people that really did a tremendous job and trying to get involved and make that happen. Then finally, a couple of years after I got the tap on the shoulder and said hey, it's your turn. So, you know, I understand this Disaster Tough. We're talking about preparedness and stuff like that. We can be prepared as that before, right.

The before, the during don't always match. But it's really the after, the after is the piece. Yeah. We talk about cleaning up, we talk about rebuilding our communities, we talk about getting infrastructure back in place and everything else, but the rebuilding part of that is the aftermath. Then an event like that may have on the responders that were there. I'm not a wildland firefighter, but I couldn't imagine losing one of my groups that got overtaken by a wildland fire. I couldn't imagine that, I wouldn't know what to do with that.

Host: John Scardena (59m 54s):

Yeah man, so I'm going to go back to that. The second point that I wanted to talk about and you kind of just highlighted it again. So, like most of my career has have been focused on the response pieces. You know, operations and planning for specifically response. So, it's kind of funny like disaster preparedness in my mind, the best disaster preparedness you can do is mitigation. I'm not talking about doing safe driving and I'm like super against that actually. But I'm talking about, actually going way back in the conversation, talking about the physical makeup of the club. There was no egress in the hallway of the bathrooms. There's no way to get out. So, what they ended up in one of the bathrooms, he ended up punching through that the AC unit. Right, and that's how they got out of the other.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 0m 50s):

Yep. They were pulling victims out of that opening, yeah.

Host: John Scardena (1h 0m 53s):

There's something like building codes, that's mitigating a potential loss of life just by changing building codes. Schools in I believe Utah, all new schools in Utah are built with two exits in every classroom. That's good emergency preparedness. Right. But there's also the MOU and getting the supplies and getting everybody integrated. I think a big part of that is I am lucky enough to have gone to that USAR training with Walter who connected us, you know, really grateful for that. His show just aired and Joe Hernandez and some of these other guys, because I'm looking at it from, I deployed you all the time.

I was the guy that nobody saw that was trying to figure out, do you go to A or B? And now that I can see that integration, I'm like man, we need a bunch more integrated. But that all aside, let me talk about this one point, because it's really important, especially for Father’s Day weekend. You talk about the before and you talked about you checking up on everybody, whether it's a phone call or whether it was just like a touch point, whatever you felt there was responsibility. My thesis in my master's program was all about the psychology of a disaster specifically to survivors and preventing disaster. The data is very, I said this around Mother’s Day because I brought up too, like good parents prevent disasters like this from happening. I mean, it's not a given or it's not a guarantee rather, but you know, checking up on people, getting in good environments. We have a problem where despite in our field wanting to help people, sometimes we forget that the best thing you could do is probably help your family. The best mitigation of a disaster you can do is in the walls of your own home. So, I kind of wanted to call that out. I don't know how you feel about that, but you kind of took on that parental role anyways of just doing what another human being should do. Just check on people who should be checked on, right.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 3m 10s):

Yeah and it was tough, John because you're dealing with at that level, you're morally, you're torn because you wanted to do more, you know, you will get the patches of, the badges and the things that you're wearing in that time. You know that there was, you wish you could have done more, right. We go to a house fire with a victim that we're not able to rescue and they perished in that fire. I've seen crews, you know, beat themselves up. That's a normal reaction they go through, what could we have done differently? Could we have gotten in there quicker and stuff? Those are situations that you keep adding that little car to your Rolodex of emotions and your Rolodex of experiences. At some point you're going to see something, hear something, or do something that is going to remind you of that moment in time. It's going to trigger an emotional response with you. You know, I'm not a doctor, I don't have any background in psychology or psychiatry. But I can tell you I've done enough with it over the last few years that I know just from the experience, you know, what that looks like. So that's a big deal.

Host: John Scardena (1h 4m 16s):

I do have to give this caveat. I am not a doctor or a psychologist, but it that the psychology of disasters and how people, like the social vulnerability of going through something traumatic, we don't get political on the show. So, we're not going to get political, but the news that just came out about not continuing the support of the family is pretty mind boggling to me, or not the family that the victim has rather. I think we have a responsibility to provide a long-term awareness of the people who have been through this because they could end up hurting themselves and they just survived.

Do you want to keep them surviving? That might be two years down the road, that might be five years down the road. You know, we had Joe Hernandez, a legend and Neustar was telling me about an experience of a firefighter who had pulled the children out of the nursery of Oklahoma City bombing. Everybody, if you know that story, you know that all those children had deceased. A couple of years later, he had a kid and the kid was sleeping in the same position and looked like the one of the children he had pulled out, game over and the career right. Who would've ever thought that years later you would have had a kid? The kid was just sleeping in a toddler position, probably the butt up in the air, that's how my son sleeps. Anyways, he's two years old, he kicks his butt up in the air, it's hilarious. But a normal event triggers something in the background and without adequate recognition, like the same people who provide first aid on the daily, you guys need to have the reality of like the first eight of your mental and emotional health. I think we've kind of beat that one quite a bit, but I appreciate you.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 6m 16s):

In the firehouse, we sit around the table and we break bread together. I mean, that is part of the traditions and the cultures as a first responder. That does help a lot, but we are peers and that's why we call it peer support. That level of training may or may not be anything more than other, just being somebody that's willing to listen. You know, it's not just us, it's across the country. It's probably across the globe with first responders that there has to be some type of support mechanism there because we are the ones and, and we'll get our military, I mean, we'll get the horrendous things that they are involved with and what they do to protect our freedoms as an American. What mechanisms do they have in place, because that's where PTSD originated from, the bleed through the military.

Then now it's progressed into being identified in the work of first responders and disaster preparedness and things of that nature. So, you know, it is a crisis if you will. Again, I'm no expert, but wrapping it up with the event, a lot of great things to talk about the event, the men and the women that were on that event did a phenomenal job. We could spend a whole other cast talking about just the structure and the operations like that and a five-year anniversary this year. I make it a point every year, those 52 members of my organization that are still there, whether it's via email, text message or phone call, I make it a point every year just to remind them that, you know, people are there if they need them.

Sometimes you'd rather do that in person. But I think just the touch, just the, Hey, I'm thinking about you type thing goes a long way. I hope that our commanders that were at some of the other horrific events that have occurred across this country, whether it had the 5 victims or 50 victims or you know, in between, that they understand their first responders, police, fire, EMS, hospital workers, all need that mechanism in place to help cope with those situations.

Host: John Scardena (1h 8m 26s):

I think we we've been highlighting this a lot without actually using the word and the word is leadership. Thus is a great discussion, not just for the after actions of what happened and good ideas, but also if you're an emergency manager and you are responding to your local flood, which is not the Pulse Nightclub type one incident, but if you're responding to this and you’re the emergency manager, the mitigation officer down the room is freaking out because it was their job to make sure that levee was fixed and it didn't get fixed. You know, 500 homes got flooded because of that, that's impactful for that person.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 9m 13s):

It's impactful, John, if they care. Yeah.

Host: John Scardena (1h 9m 19s):

But that's the thing I actually think most. Yeah. Well, I think that is a minority really. I mean, we all got in the field because we liked helping people.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 9m 29s):

Right? Yeah. You will come across an individual from time to time who genuinely is disconnected from the event emotionally because they really don't care. Or at least that's the way they appear. So very, very small percentage.

Host: John Scardena (1h 9m 46s):

For me, what I found more often with those types of people is that they have, obviously there's always a jerk, but I would say most people in that situation, they've been through enough things that they cannot take the emotional toll anymore. So, they're there, I'm here to do the job, but in any case, like we're going back to that mitigation officer. Yeah. Absolutely. Check on that person, anytime you see a behavior change, anytime you do something that's impacting people's lives, you know, that's a good time to say hey, how are you doing? I think that's a great leadership skill. I think that's a great note to end on.

We typically do like 45-minute episodes, obviously I like talking to you because you know, we're about an hour and 20 into this now. So, it's awesome, I just want to thank you again, you said for the first two years that you kind of struggled. I hope that you're beyond that because people like me who do look at the after-action reviews, people like Walt, your colleague who says this guy's the man, the guy who we look at a Pulse Nightclub and we do after actions on it, because of it's just so unique. He did great. There's a lot of people that you haven't met who have looked at your work and highly respect what you've done and not just you, but everybody who responded to the active shooter, like one of the worst-case scenarios, because it's murdering innocent life.

When you're dealing with that I think one of the toughest things you've ever did, you proved that you are disaster tough by saying, Hey, I'm going to address this. But I just wanted to let you know that you have our respect. We'd love to have you come back on the show and talk about some of those other aspects. But yeah, thanks again, Chief. You know you're always welcome in fact, to the Chief's point, especially being Father’s Day weekend and everything else at long-term care, if anybody needs to reach out, send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com. Hey, we'll hear you out, we'll point you in the right direction, whatever, we'll do what we can. You know, we did this with Joe as well. So, having to get those emails happy to help out, if you don't want to let anybody know, you want to talk to a stranger, we'll figure something out, man. Thanks again, chief.

Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 12m 17s):

Absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity and hopefully the message, I mean obviously preparedness, because that's what you're talking about. I coined it before, during, and after. We talk about that in emergency management MCI and USAR and we do these drills and we do all this training. It's different. We plan it, we talk about it and a lot of the components of it do work, but as an incident commander and something that has what I call tactical fluidity, you have to be fluid with the moment. So, when it changes from an active shooter to an MCI, to a hostage situation, to an explosive ordinance device, when all those things are happening, there are so many moving pieces in that you have to have that operational fluidity and you have to be a proactive commander, meaning you're not reacting to what's occurring.

You're actually trying to stay a step ahead of that and anticipate the growth of the event or the projection of the event, if you will. So that's one of the big things. Then, like I said, we changed that last word from after the aftermath. That's the piece that I think is important. We've done tremendous work with UCF restores our own peer support group, which has done through our benevolent association and then other groups that came to RA during this tragedy. Then we reciprocated that a year later in Las Vegas, and then some of these other events that are occurring. So, if the messages there John, I appreciate the support. I'm humbled by the outpouring of accolade for the event. Again, it wasn't just me, it was the men and the women that came to that event that evening that made it what it is and appreciate. Walt is always, he's been a good peer of mine for many, many years, and we share a lot of discussions back and forth about stuff. So, thank you again for the opportunity I look forward, if there's another opportunity to divulge into a little bit.

Host: John Scardena (1h 14m 13s):

Absolutely, so I’ll actually get Ashley on that right now. So, hey I got to do the super cheesy part. The part that I kind of hate, but everybody, this is why I hate it because it sounds so cheesy, but it is important because it shows that like, Hey, this matters. So, if you liked what Chief Davis was talking about today, if you got something out of it, which you should have, you need to give us, gosh, this sounds so cheesy. You got to have is giving us that five-star rating. You need to subscribe. You can help him get back on the shows. Follow us on social media, Disaster Tough Podcast, Instagram and Facebook, or you can follow us our business Doberman Emergency Management on LinkedIn and on Facebook as well. We're also on Instagram, we're all over the place. So, make sure you follow us. We're going to be posting more about Chief Davis and some of the quotes, some of the stuff that he's had on here on the show. So, it's going to be really great next week and we'll see you back every week. Thanks.

#61 USAR & Emergency Management - Interview with Chief Walt Lewis

Urban search and rescue meets emergency management in this episode with veteran responder, Chief Walt Lewis. Collaboration, training, leadership, and incident command are some of the topics covered.

Chief Walt Lewis serves on the Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Florida Task Force 4 team and operates as a District Chief for Orlando Fire. Chief Lewis has been able to successfully combine forces with his emergency management counter-parts, looking at the fire perspective and coordinating other stakeholders of the disaster lifecycle.

In this episode we talk about leadership, firefighting and the culture of fire rescue, training, and incident command. As noted in the show, all groups that play a role within the disaster lifecycle should apply these principles of success, which highlights the need for cross-sector training and collaboration.

We want to provide a big thanks to Disaster Medical Solutions for inviting Doberman Emergency Management the the State Urban Search and Rescue skill based training conference. Joe Hernandez, C.E.O, is a great friend of the show and led a flawless conference. It is at this SUSAR conference that we met other powerhouse first responders and instructors , like Chief Lewis. Thanks again for the invite Joe!

Picture taken at the State Urban Search and Rescue Conference 2021 Provided by Disaster Medical Solutions. Thank you to Joe Hernandez and his team for the invite!

Host: John Scardena (1m 57s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this week. Two weeks ago, I was at a state urban search and rescue conference basically north of Orlando, Florida. I met just amazing men and women who are true heroes, and have a ton of courage and they were at the out there doing medical training for search and rescue, and they were in pancake buildings the entire time. They were working on really intense situations. I got to be there to observe and to do after actions and to see how that coordinates with the bigger picture with a strategic planning. While I was out there, I met Walt Lewis, who is a District Chief in Orlando for fire. We had these amazing conversations talking about the role of firefighters and the future of firefighting and what's going on, and what's some of his career experiences. I was like, man, we have to have this guy on the show. He's actually with the Florida task force four, which is out central Florida. So he can talk about USAR too, well, welcome to the show.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (3m 4s):

Hey John, thank you very much for having me.

Host: John Scardena (3m 6s):

I was just talking about how I should call you Chief Lewis on the show and I introduced you as Walt. So thanks for the informality.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (3m 14s):

That’s what my parents named, me so that’s where I started out as, I am very fine with that.

Host: John Scardena (3m 16s):

That's awesome. You're obviously a really cool guy because when we were talking out there and I was seeing how these different parts of emergency services coordinate and work together and this very hyper specific field of medical USAR and how to move into that from the firefighting side, it was just really incredible to think about. Just looking at the use cases there, let's talk about going back from your experiences, how did you get into firefighting, and then what drove you towards USR perspective?

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (3m 58s):

Okay, well, I'll try to keep it short. So anybody that knows me, my wife always jokes that I'm like 44,000 minimum word per day. I'll try to keep it in under an hour.

Host: John Scardena (4m 10s):

That's good for podcasting, by the way.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (4m 16s):

So I was fortunate to be exposed to it early on in life. Both my older brothers, my father worked for volunteers in a small town in New Jersey, and each of them were very active in the volunteer firehouse. Being nine years behind my older brother, as a youngster was seeing the firetrucks and the enthusiasm. As time grew on, my father retired, moved to Florida, and I got to be an Explorer in my hometown of Palm bay. With that the exposures were there and early on with Palm Bfire department when I got on there, we responded down to assist and what we thought we were assisting with hurricane Andrew. That was my first exposure to use, or here's this major natural disaster. I was dating a girl down in Miami at the time so I knew a little bit of the area. To go down, there our people that coordinated, it didn't want it. They took it for what it should be as far as the disaster. They brought their own camper food supplies, and they laid the groundwork for our group to be able to operate because so many people flooded Florida. Hey, we're here to help. Where do we stay? Where do we eat? We had certainly realized what that impact is. So fortunately our agency did the right thing. Jim stables, the Fire Chief, now in Boynton beach, back down to Florida, he helped coordinate a good part of that effort and showed us how we could do this in a good way. So in small teams, we went down to operate out of firehouse 29 and Sweetwater, and provided some aid to Miami-Dade fire rescue. I thought it was kinda neat. The USAR system was coming online. FEMA was coming about from CD, civil defense, and my brothers were involved in civil defense. That's what funded the fire department part of it in Maywood. So in retrospect, it's kind of neat how it connected and then fast forward, and getting on with Orlando fire department. After a couple of years with Palm Bay, the 9/11 disaster, the 9/11 tragedy highlighted the need for regional and local teams to be able to be self-supportive at least for the outside of the emergency, unknown if it would be just an isolated event prior to then it was really thought of disaster as being pretty much localized or stole in their aspect. But 9/11 really pointed out that you would have major disasters in so many locations. Outside of the hurricane or the earthquakes in California, where you had large areas, heavily devastated, here you've got the Pentagon impacted, the trade centers impacted, and had the flight 93 made its impact where its destination was another site, perhaps. So that highlighted our system and we were fortunate with Orlando, Orange county, government, Seminole county government aligned to create under the umbrella of the state of Florida is created one of the regional task forces. With that Florida four was born. Originally, 12 teams were supposed to be created. There weren't enough areas to support it. Florida's one and two, which are already in the system, its FEMA teams were also pulled on the umbrellas of Florida asset. So they're a dual role team and they're great set of assets.

It's great having older teams with more experience and seasoned veterans there to kind of give us some guidance on things. They've been some great heroes in my career to help me with get answers. I'm very fortunate to have one of them that's retired from Miami Dade, Dave Downey, living in the Orlando area. So I get to talk to him every once in a while and get some really good insight on stuff. I have a great pleasure working with him because years ago he was a guy, and I still do, look up to and want to follow as far as leadership and great decision making. So I try to follow what he's laid before, because he's done a great job, and I want to continue that tradition. So that puts me in a position of a joining Florida four in 2003, the team stepped onboard in 200 hurricane Charlie hit the map across Florida, and then three other, two other storms followed St. Francis and Jean, each of those cross the Orlando area. Once we were able to step up our team and get out the door, we started to become active light rescue. A lot of searching and verifying was done and being able to support the community in humanitarian needs was started. So our team got a couple of deployments out to Wilma, Katrina, Ivan. With all those deployments, we got quite a bit of seasoning. Then we had a drought which was kind of good for the nation, kind of good for a lot of areas that we didn't go out the door for another 12 years. So it was a challenge staying on the team, staying motivated. I saw people do a whole decades of service on the team and never deployed.

So that part's a challenge and keeping people motivated now, as I've advanced and had the pleasure I have the honor of now serving as one of the task force leaders, I get to be that cheerleader still and keep people engaged in the team. It is easier when you dress up for the rehearsals a lot, and then there's a performance. So if you're a bridesmaid, a bunch of times, and you don't get married, it gets a little disappointing for us. We're fortunate that we get that opportunity, but we never like to see the tragedy. We just always are happy to be able to assess like any team out there.

Host: John Scardena (9m 11s):

Okay. So you hit on12 different topics that I want to talk about. So that's awesome. I'm glad that you're the 44,000 a minimum because I'm the same way. So let's go down this list a little bit because I was literally writing this down as you were talking. You mentioned Andrew, which is a game changer, you mentioned 9/11, you mentioned Katrina, you mentioned all these different events that have really changed both the USAR perspective and the emergency management perspective. If you really think about it, for our listeners, I keep saying that everything before 9/11, whatever emergency management was then is not what it is now and it should not be, after this pandemic. I hope more people wake up to what it can do in terms of coordination. We hit that next phase and we can talk about that later, but you're talking about some major events that are happening and you're involved in those in one way or the other. So that's awesome, just to have that perspective on the show, and then you kind of switched over and you're talking about leadership, which is a very big thing that we talk about here. I thought it was interesting how you're talking about keeping people motivated.

We're kind of in a weird field because we never want disasters to impact people, but we're in the field for a reason. We want to work. We want to get out there. We want to be able to prove our skills and whether you're an emergency planner, you're a firefighter, you're a humanitarian aid doing a nonprofit. You want to be able to do your job and to help people essentially when you don't… oh, actually I'm going to back up for a second. A week or two ago, we had Joe Delmoro on here from a FEMA and he talked about, how you have to go to your town and say, hey, I need money to stop bombs from happening. You hope that a bomb will never go off in your city, but how do you get funding to make sure that bombs never go off in your city? So you're always fighting the money man there. On the same side, you talked about keeping people motivated, not deploying for 12 years is a pretty tough run. I'm not gonna lie. I would sit in house at FEMA sometimes for like eight months. I'd be like, I started like to twitch, I'm like get me out the door. There's things happening. I want to be there. So how do you do that? How do you keep people motivated? What tasks do you focus on? How do you, how do you keep that level of energy up? So if you do deploy you're prime and ready to go.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (12m 1s):

Well, it's not easy that's for sure. You're going to have members that are only there for the t-shirt. You're going to have members that are the adrenaline junkies and to touch on that point there, it was a bad thing many, many years ago and I put some thought to it as far as why, you know, touching on your point. It's not that we're adrenaline junkies, where we want to see devastation. We have prepared for a major event and we enjoy the mental and physical challenge to be able to encounter that and do it with success so that we can succeed for the people we have signed up to serve. I think that's a better answer live in saying that, yeah, we just hope nothing ever bad happens, but the fight the dollar certain circumstance.

That's a challenge and try and keep people motivated. Big thing is training. There's always the events there's we don't know what mother nature is going to throw at us next year, but there's always a manmade problem that can come about. There's been enough tragedies here as of late that identify that we need to be on our guard. As a USAR team, we need to be prepared for whatever is under our umbrella and incapable, but ultimately it could be anything. It could be wide area search. So we started developing our team for that one, several children, a couple of high profile cases. The area went missing and we could have been tested as a utilized resource. We have the rank structure. We have the radios, we have the personnel, the equipment, people, the vehicles, the GPS units. It was just a matter of being another extension. And sometimes we just weren't thought of, or we weren't in plate or what's going to cover the insurance. So it wasn't planning on the front side to enable that so we could work on that. But before they asked us to go, let's make sure we can answer that call. So we did training in that arena and got a lot of people. We had some experts in the field that were less involve members, but when they're engaged and tasked with a project, they become more engaged and more available, interested in being involved.

The biggest thing, if anything, it's consistency. If you don't have consistent training every month, every three months, people start to forget about it. Then they dissociate and they do it. They put their time to something else and it's always going to be cyclical. People have kids, they get older, they retire again, people that want the t-shirts, they don't have the enthusiasm to begin. So you have to keep, at least the majority engaged. You're not going to get everybody but understand your audience and what is their motivation? I mean, that's a leadership principle and it's plaguing every service. But you've got your veterans, you've got your boomers, you've got your gen X-ers, millennials, everybody in between. What drives them? What's their motivation? What do they want to achieve? And how do you make your drill? Can you make your training, your team fulfill what they want and just use them? What Forbes lists or why do people leave jobs? It's not money as the top answer it's fulfillment, right? So if we can fulfill some of our members, even if it's a short amount of an hour training, two hours, hey, coming out of the firehouse from nine to 11, we're gonna be doing some training, come by the warehouse. If nothing else stay engaged, see the people again so that you learn a couple new members. You remember the old members, people see your face so that when the deployment happens, the people and we're able to move quicker because especially in our agency, we have three main agencies. So I named Orlando, Orange county fire rescue, and Seminole county fire rescue, were supported by other agencies and region five to 70 fire department, Winter park fire department, Osceola county fire rescue, Martin county, we've got Claremont fire rescue. We've got numerous agencies in our region that also provides the personnel and a big one Lake County fire rescue. Their fire chief is a former Seminole county fire chief or a chief officer. We got a lot of people that are going to integrate just like in a FEMA building. They're going to be coming from different places when you have that association to those people it's going to work smoothly.

Host: John Scardena (15m 50s):

Okay. Again, you mentioned about 12 different things I want to talk about. I love it, dude. I love it. You're already giving us a lot of clips we can use. First of all, the t-shirt one I find is hilarious because the national strike team is there only for response. If there's not a response, we're really not doing our job. We work on policy. We worked on training. We did a ton training. We'll talk about that in a second. But when I would get it to deployed to the hurricane Harvey, the hurricane Matthew, the wildfires, the tornadoes, whatever disaster where you got to deploy to, 90% of it was natural. One of my metrics for demobilization was when staff that we'd bring in, because we'd have 200 staff and we had what 25,000 people deployed when my staff started asking me about t-shirts. I knew that it was time to go home or not be in a response anymore. Right? Like you're doing 18 hour days. You're trying to coordinate all these resources. I specifically was trying to figure out where the USAR teams should go. I was working directly with the emergency services branch director and we were doing all these different things. So they use our teams, would go out and we were tracking all this stuff and trying to help out.

Then one day people started asking for t-shirts and you're like, okay, that's not that anymore. So that's really funny. I will say on the other side of the coin, if you do want an awesome t-shirt, you have to get the Disaster Tough T-shirt from a website. Okay. That's really dumb. There you go. Good man. The other thing that you're talking about is the mental challenge. I really like phrasing it like that. That's a good idea that the conference that we were at talk about a great mental challenge. I like to call a strategic level emergency management, to be fair. When I was talking to most of the firefighters out, there are people trying to go in the USAR Teams. They had no idea what emergency management was. We'll talk about that in a second, but I love the idea of a chess match. I like to say, okay, there's a category five hurricane coming in. How am I going to reduce the level of impact, to the max and what do I need to do to do that? That mental challenge of figuring out who, what, when, where, how bad, and reduce that impact is a great mental challenge. So I like that a lot. Then what you're talking about this last point, and we're going to talk about this one quite a bit, where you can fill us in here is consistency. I was very lucky to work on under somebody similar to you, Rodney, Melsick, who, when we didn't get deployed, man, we kept that culture up of deployments. We did trainings all the time. We did what we call lightning bolt exercises, which is basically, you're in go mode. You get the call and you're going through all the motions. We did a lot of training and we just refined and refined and refined and so when we went out there wasn't any rust, right? And luckily I was on a team that we didn't have a lot of t-shirt people. They brought in the best people, but consistency is really key. How do you integrate the consistency of training? I'm going to go back to this money thing again, because it was a lot of times for us, it does come back to money. How do you give people the training that they need if they're not getting deployed? Those dollars could be not there. What type of exercises would you suggest?

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (19m 28s):

Well, there's a ton of stuff. It's just got to put the time to thinking about it and you don't try and do it alone. Talk to some other task forces, TRTs, and other people that are in your field and see what they've done for success, or at least brainstorm for the lack of the old term, but get everybody together. What worked out well for us during most of that 12 years, I grew up on a team as a text rich specialist. Then to me, that's one of the most important roles in the sense of you can't find victims, there's nothing to do. So with text search, we needed to stay good with our skills with our GPS use. Well, everybody's going to look to us to make sure we know where we're going and how it's gonna work. So let's stay focused on what our demands are and to work with a small group, I approached our team management and said, hey, doing the road training's great, doing the confined space training, great, all is good but we're not staying highly proficient on our skills. What's important is frequency, recency, and accuracy equals proficiency, right? So by having those three things, if we're not frequently training on it or doing it accurately or not doing it recently, we're not going to be good at it. So as the team management, would you mind if we broke away and did our own group training for canine search specialists and techs are specialist. It's open and available to anybody else that wishes to attend and we'll need those extra help. So we started working with our canines and I got to see firsthand some of our dog operators and they are fantastic. Love those as resources. I had true faith in our canines when they would go out and search, if Marcia's dog hit, I knew there was a victim there, it wasn't. I needed another dog to come check because in seeing their dog operate all the time, I had confidence. Same thing with Susan Wesley's and Jen Browns, I knew that the dogs were doing their job and I could have confidence that we could start doing the rescue work rather than delaying it any longer. The problem was in the pile that dog barked at me, I would really like to just start coming to help me wait for rather than wait for another dog to come bark at me. But I understand the reasoning so I can appreciate that too.

But the fulfillment part of it, doing those training skills, look at where you may be deficient. What do you truly need to focus on? But also, what can you do at the cheek? There were other agencies that need to do training as well and have a small training budget, but can't fulfill what they want for their training, because they don't have enough people or resources. Fish and wildlife commission, the official wildlife commission. What do you guys got going on? The next year, well, we got a couple of flight trainings we got to do, and we've got some ground search. You mind if we integrate? That would be great. So with them, we got to do airframe training, find out what equipment we can carry, how far we can go, how long the air ship can go, how to do loading procedures. They teach us, we teach them everything on the front side so when we go out and we have to meet, we already know these people and we know what exactly we're going to do. It was their training budget we used. We just applied to people to drive down to Lakeland airport. Well, we're going to Lakeland airport to do the training. Lakeland fire hosts, the technical rescue team. So I call Matt brown. Hey, Matt brown. We're going to be in your backyard. Would you like to get some training, free training for him? It happens to be in his backyard. So three different layers of training involved, all on the cheap search and rescue training. You can do search and wide area search training. It's not much to take out maps, but you can do search training in your own backyard. That's easy. Everybody knows the major geographical regions, but pull out a map of the Apalachicola national forest and then give it to our search managers and now they got to try and work on an exercise we're deployed to here, lay out where you're going to do and where your boundaries and what you expect, your genuine travel time for your people and doing their willingness search.

How do you set up your drills? What are your support mechanism and have them truly walk through everything and have it come out with and then have the experts stay silent. Then at the end, let them follow back in with, and think about these other couple of things rather than inject every little thing. So this way they learn not necessarily the hard way, but they truly get all their thought out of their head and then get the introduction or the extra points. And it's as much as you want to try and do really, what's going to be your primary or prior priority responses and work your way down there because it's possible. It doesn't mean it's probable, but go with the probable and handle the possible as well. The disaster medicine for a while, we had some pretty motivated medical specs. We would get mad cadre back again. We would integrate them with a couple exercises and not only did we find the victim with the dog, searched them with a camera, hurt them with a Dell star, but then we had a med spec come out. We would remove the victim to some degree and then the med spec had to medically manage the patient in the pilot future training. We hope to set up and hopefully with the development of our future training center, we can create that training environment that will integrate every aspect of our USAR components. That's something that I see. Here's another, another segue for you is some of our training facilities, they do really good for a couple of points of use are, but not all of them. It might be good for structural collapse or for shoring or search, but not really good for the medically needed management patient. Like the M sock training that you went to. Joan does a fantastic job with a group for disaster medical solutions of setting things up to make it as realistic as possible. That should be the run or the sprint level and sometimes we do have to do that crawl level with our personnel so that we can get to there, but there's always some crawl stuff we can do. We can only do GPS training. That's great. We can do math training, that's free. We can do winch and off-road vehicle operations. That might be a constant curve because you might break something, but there's a lot of little things that you can do. Again, it looks look at your priorities.

Host: John Scardena (25m 12s):

Okay. Wow. Again. So this is really interesting. You talk like a firefighter, but you are using emergency management principles and pretty much everything you're doing so far, you have talked about three of maybe 10 things that we hit on. You talked about the issues of planning, specifically planning before a deployment. That can create a hiccup. That's a big time of emergency management thing of like coordination and planning. I already used the word coordination, coordinating between different teams is what emergency management really does. I run a company called Doberman Emergency Management, and yet I think emergency management is a misnomer. That's kind of my problem, but emergency coordination is really what we're supposed to be doing. Great emergency managers, great first responders coordinate with all the different groups in the house. Quite frankly, when you're out there doing your job, you shouldn't be coordinating at that point. There should be somebody behind the scenes assisting you, helping you coordinate those resources. The last thing you talked about was training, Joe Hernandez and the disaster medical solutions. I do not do endorsements on the show very much, but I will say this I 100% endorsed Joe Hernandez and the disaster medical solutions.

That was probably the best training skills-based training I've ever seen. I have been to a million trainings. In fact, I've put on a lot of different trainings and hopefully those went pretty smooth as well. However, this was top tier for sure, full integration, by the way, he kept on saying crawl. That's kind of a huge pun for USAR. I don't know if you caught that, but I've never been in a pancake building so much in my life than last week. As an emergency manager, I kept on every day, I would take these notes and I'm like, man, there needs to be so much more coordination between our side of the house and the USAR side of the house.

But in terms of that training piece, like everyday was flawless, right? Yeah. You had the skill-based training in the morning or the discussions in the morning and then the afternoon and evening, they would actually go out there and do it. When I say do it for those listeners, they had a cadaver and they were actually performing amputations and tracheotomies. I learned about ketamine out, like everything in the pancake buildings, it was about 300 ML of ketamine and then another 200. I was like, okay, I basically can do USAR now. But yeah, let's talk about that. You start trading specifically, because you're out there as an instructor yourself, there was a lot of instructors. It was almost one for one. Well, it was like 2020 instructors that I counted with 36 students, a lot of different skills going on. What do you think sets apart that training and in your perspective, am I missing something? Is that just kind of the standard or does that training really stand out for you as well?

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (28m 23s):

No, I didn't. I'm not going to do mass, any other training agency or groups that are out there, and there's a lot of great ones, but Joe has dedicated from the early days. And this originated underneath John Holder center rescue training associates many years ago where we provide the disaster medical specialist class. Eventually when that company folded, Joe kept this going and created disaster medical solutions and he has the eye too, super nice guy. I know salt of the earth superhuman, great humility, but he has the ability to just create great connections and friendships with people. There's so many high level people. I really don't even count myself as an instructor in the group because there's so many smart people in the group that I have the pleasure of going, just to be able to hang out with them and have fun with them. I bring a very small piece of the pie and they have done pretty much the whole.

Host: John Scardena (29m 18s):

You're full of it, by the way because you literally, the last 20, 30 minutes just proved why you are one of those smart guys. So that's BS anyways.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (29m 30s):

So I took notes from that conference, but their focused goal, the thing they're focused goal, you know, Vinnie Johnson, Wanda Rica, the guys that are helping run the thing, is to make it as realistic as possible so that when you are forced with that event, the decisions you're going to make, how are you going to respond? What needs to be done? There's no question because most of the time, those medical specialists, they may be completely on their own without the yet conference on a doctor nearby because you're in the disaster environment. You may be in Haiti where the doctor is one and there's four med specs and each of those with patients, and you've got to make the decision, what is being done for this patient right now, IB therapy by carve onboard and EKG tracing. If I've got the machine available, if not, then I've got to make my other decisions based on symptomology. Having that depth of knowledge is way beyond we're just paramedics, you know, continue to learn from, and also want to break the mold of standard, not against ALS or any other teaching platform, but when the situations are presented, do you have pretty much a basic mannequin? You might have a sim man, which is very interactive, but to go the further level of the mannequins over there and trauma effects. Forgive me for not having an accurate name of the company, but trauma effects has moved on to another company name and to have the realism that's there with that high level, multiple patients scenario that is true to life it immerses you in the true scenario. So when the students would come in, we had to break the mold. In a day one we gave a little forgiveness too, we started hitting them day three, I have plenty of dumb looks and I would give him a lots of dumb looks when they would ask me a question about a patient that they should be able to find out themselves, but they wouldn't get it because they didn't take their gloves off. The work loves to expose their patient care gloves, to touch the patient. I'm not going to tell you anything. This is not a mega code. This is a real life scenario. Do everything that you can, and the patient will talk back to you. The noises, the smells, the sounds everything's coming about to make it as realistic as possible. So it has all information-based decision-making not just me telling you something, you just, all your sensory input. So it's sensory input, decision-making rather than information and for those scenarios, the last day, the goal is to have live interaction. The location couldn't be much better. It's Florida state fire college. It's got a great pile, but also it's when fire standard students are there and lots of them are energetic and interested in participating and learning. So they're right there and they make great role models or a model actors. So they get move lodged up and supported features. You'd mentioned about the student does structure, a student to instructor ratio. If we engage in a football game, we'd probably give them a run for their money. Absolutely instructors, because it was the thing. One to three, as far as in orange shirts, but it was very close to being one-to-one or one to two and a lot of scenarios and we want that. We want that immediate, full attention as much to the students as possible so that they have full confidence when they go back to their local jurisdiction and they can be the authority so that their fire chief, their emergency manager, their EMS director had full confidence that these are highly trained well pointed individuals that are fully capable of providing whatever scares needed, when that disaster happens. The downside is going to be sustainment of that training. So we invite those students to come back and when we have other exercises in those regions, we try to reach out and stay in visible. So certainly go to their websites and know when those events are coming so you can come back up and revisit just so that's availability is there and that's something that we don't do a very good job of it.

We typically take a class, but we don't do a lot for sustainment later on. We expect our agency to follow through it. So we allow that to happen too ahat's a great vision of Joe and it's the personnel that work there. I love being around them. I mean, we tried each other, we have a great time, but I know that at any moment, if I needed help, I could call any of those 20 people and they'd probably be at my house tomorrow, if not tonight, whatever I needed. So they're a fantastic group of people, very intelligent, very humid, humble, and just experts in their field. And I'm privileged to be around.

Host: John Scardena (33m 47s):

Yeah. In fact, I was privileged. I felt the same way. I felt like it was an awesome learning experience. I like what you said earlier, when you said you don't want to knock any other group and to that credit, I'm kind of one of those people who says something like, I'm the best other people are the best too, but I don't want anybody to be any better. Like that's how hard I want to push. I hope everybody gets to that level. I think of things like tears in terms of training, that USAR training is top tier in terms of, it was as close to flawless as I've seen it in terms of the purpose, the mission and the outcome.

When I was w observing the students, again, I'm not a medical guy, but I have had some training working with people and understanding communication and understanding emergency services and understanding that tempo and understanding these different things that have to happen. That coordination piece, even just tracking what you're doing, like from a triage perspective, I understand triage because we deal with triage a lot in large-scale disasters, right? And so I was watching them and like day one, man, I was like, oh, this is bad. They were making so many mistakes and day two, even day three, there was one moment where I was really impressed with the two instructors, basically by their lack of attention in this one area, the person that she should have been treating died, or they would have died because they didn't treat it fast enough. They weren't really well coordinated. You could tell the instructors were really frustrated by that because, you want them to do lifesaving work, but when they came back together and they did their hotwash at the end, it was no emotion. It was pure teaching moment and still building up their confidence. Let's focus on what you did, right. Here's a couple of things that you need to tweak, but you really know you're the professional. You already came here. You're already paramedic, you know what to do. So make sure you're doing those things and allowing that, I think what happens a lot of times with the instructors is, if people aren't doing it right, there's a real world try to stop everything. Well you didn't need to be fix this, or they'll give a little hints.

There wasn't really a lot of that. There was, we're gonna teach you the skill. You go do it. Then we'll do a hot wash by the last day, which was my favorite probably exercise I've ever been a part of, because we don't really do with night a lot. We had another guy on here Dr. Steven Johnson, who is a biochem counter-terrorism expert for UK. He goes, we don't really do a lot of night exercises because there's just so much more work. I was really happy to see the night exercise and then watching the students, we actually had her name was Tammy. I was outside the whole, in fact, I was inside the hole a little bit but I was mostly outside of the hole, but we could hear inside. The level of progression that happened from day one, I'm not talking about her specifically, I'm just talking about students in general till the last day was just incredible to watch. That's my favorite thing as an instructor really is bright eyed and bushy tailed morons, usually what happens in the beginning. But if people take it seriously and that's kind of on our side to help them take it seriously. But if people take it seriously by the end, where are they at? And I was very, very impressed where they were at. That's why I was just kind of blown away by what the purpose and mission and the outcomes were of that training exercise. So hats off to all the instructors, yourself included and Joe for coordinating that piece.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (37m 36s):

The other group to touch on is also the students. We get a lot of high-level performers and Tammy, the one you mentioned, she was one too. So coming into the program, there are the people that really take it serious, really do the extra study. They're the good paramedics, you know, in the organization and then they become even better or more better exposed.

Host: John Scardena (37m 55s):

Yeah. It's interesting to watch. I'm not a huge Kobe Bryant fan in terms of basketball or whatever, but I did like what he was talking about high school students and they will go and work out and do basketball skills and training an hour and a half, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or they'll do an hour every day. Then he was like, okay, compare that to a kid who does three hours every day. What happens after the year? And he goes, it's simple math. Somebody takes it seriously versus somebody doesn't take it seriously and does like a hundred percent their effort, whatever their level of effort is, sorry, whatever their capability is in the beginning, it doesn't really matter. If you're listening to this podcast and you're like, okay, I'm like really bad at X, Y, and Z, and somebody else naturally just amazing. It doesn't matter if your level of effort is always to the max and theirs is not, you will eventually be better. You definitely saw that with a lot of the students and other students that really impressed me actually, from a coordination and communication standpoint, was a student named Cody. There was one exercise where I'm in the actual hole, they're not relaying information very well. There's five different parties talking on the outside of what they should be doing on the inside, trying to relay information.

So neither parties communicating and Cody tells everybody shut up. I use like the incident commander or whatever. He's like, everybody just got really quiet. He goes, what do we need? And he says that into the hole, they relay it back. He says, okay, let's get them X, Y, and Z right now. I was like, that's the word? A little bit later, he was like, is there, this is a really funny moment for me actually, he was like is there a code word for trying to get everybody quiet? I was like, you just used it. He said what. I'm like, shut up is the code word like that is the way to get everybody to be quiet. Sometimes it has to happen. Now the problem with that is once we told them that, or once I relayed that information, the whole group kind of got excited with using shut up. It’s a little bit, maybe too much, but it shows that like, communication is a big piece. I thought that was another great thing about this challenge, because you're treating them as if they should be able to do it and you expect them to do it. I think that's part of the reason why they were trying very hard. It's like they wanted to live up to that expectation. Right.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (40m 27s):

Going into those drills, typically, he's not going to be the whole leader, the whole search manager, the whole, what we're trying to get out of that without telling them is that we're trying to develop you to be the authoritarian in your respective role so that you making that decision. You'll have that confidence that this is what we need to do, this is how we need to approach it. You need to listen to me rather than being the diminutive. I'll do whatever you tell me, but I really think we should do this. We want them to engage their capabilities so that they feel confident and can make those decisions and get that message across, maybe not by telling their team manager to shut up, but kind of more appropriate management in their peer level.

Host: John Scardena (41m 10s):

Oh yeah. You don't tell your boss to shut up. That's a big no-no, but there's a time and place and he used it appropriately, I thought.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (41m 23s):

The got control of the problem and got it on track and that's one of the other skills that we're teaching without teaching.

Host: John Scardena (41m 28s):

Yeah. I will say the later in the week, when we had some explosions go off before that he was talking about, we have explosions and a little more real and then the first bullet explosion went off and I caught them on camera. I got to Cody, he flinched. I was like, ah, I knew it. So it was kind of funny that they catch him on that. I think we just highlighted some really good points about training in general. I do that all the time in emergency management. I train people on active shooter because I did more of the operation stuff in DC. So we talked about active shooter and we do skill-based training with that.

I've tried to get people away. It's like a much more complex than run, hide, fight. We try to make the scenarios real as possible. One benefit that I have that I don't think is utilized enough is this geospatial background that I have, map making and visualizations. I think one of the reasons why the USAR training is so effective because you guys were out there actually in the pile. Tabletops exercises can be great and they should be utilized, you know, pretty frequently. But when you're able to pull in maps and injects and people are able to do visualizations and start to make it as real as possible, then you start getting away from having to tell people don't fight the exercise when people are fighting the exercise. It means to be honest, it means the exercise wasn't developed very well in my perspective. It's a call to emergency managers, trainers, instructors, whatever to say, this is exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to make it as real as possible, as we can and go forth and succeed. Right. And so, again, just hitting on all pistons, I'm giving a lot of praise because I was obviously really impressed. However, I will say, and maybe you can shed some light into this.

I felt like pretty much everybody I talked to out there, had no idea what emergency managers do. Like most of the time I got was like, oh, you deliver the water right now. That's a logging, right? Oh, you can get us food, right? No, that's someone in a VOAD, like, I don't do that at all. So I think there's this disconnect, we're all in. I've been trying to find a word for it. Lately, emergency management and emergency services should be hand in hand. I really feel like that way. It's not as part of the reason why there's so many disconnects in communication, that was a big thing in 9/11 that you brought up, you brought up 9/11 police and fire. Not literally, don't even have the capability to talk to each other. Well, there's an after action. The police helicopter watched the second plane hit. He had no capability. He didn't even consider communicating to the firefighters in the other building. hey, get out now there's a second plane that just hit. That's still a problem in New York city. There's this whole culture thing, BS. I don't care about people's culture. You're going to care a lot because you're a firefighter, but I don't care. Right. In a large-scale disaster it's about lifesaving. But that being said, why do you think or let's actually, let's just be super honest. What do you think that the opinion of emergency management is from a standard firefighter perspective? What do you think that they think an emergency manager is and are, do you think that they are effective? Do you think the firefighters believe that they're even needed?

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (45m 9s):

I'm going to hate to put words in anybody's mouth. So I'll speak from our perspective. So fair enough. As far as most of it's just education, it's an understanding piece. We're very blessed. We've got a very good emergency management organization. We've got Manny Soto and April Taylor, and they do a fantastic job through this last year. We had full exposure as to what their involvement is by daily situation reports being published by them. In the planning section, chief, I tutored from April quite a few times, ran into her for some guidance on things. Quite a few times always had the answer by high-level performers like that. And you get spoiled. You don't necessarily have to know what they do. They just work magic for what, what does an emergency manager do? If the person at the end of the nozzle or on the fire truck doesn't understand what they do. That can be okay. They have to have faith that there are people above them that understand what the emergency manager to do. It has to be an integrated process. I like that. I think that's where maybe the best disconnect occurs in many agencies. We just started again because of training challenges and time on the calendar and the availability with COVID access and so forth. We're getting our officers to go back to the emergency operation center, to spend some time with our communications personnel, to see what challenges they run into.

Through that exposure that's attached to and under the same roof over EOC, we do quite a bit of training at our EOC. We have nothing else. We close the class there. So our people get to sit in their environment, see the desks, how it's laid out. There's Manny, I can ask him some questions and then a good number of our people, probably a dozen or better are involved in some sort of project that integrates with them. So that helps. So the association, they're not just not a mysterious person behind the door that only shows up when a hurricane shows up and then we have to ask them questions. They can't answer us any way because I don't understand what we do and what do you need me to do? We try to reduce that. So again, on the front side, exposures integration, how can we make it happen? When the pulse occurred, we stepped up our EOC, to some level you probably don't need public works. We probably don't need, we probably know a couple of ESF’s when he says, sit down and think about it. You do. When you square out a mile square of downtown Orlando, you're going to have an influence of how the trash is going to get picked up, how people are going to get access. So the police having a say in it. So all the ESF’s, there's quite a few ESF scenarios that are going to be effective. And like you said, maybe not emergency management, emergency coordination of having the decision-makers in the room that can all integrate and coordinate how it's all going to play out how this is going to impact the community for today, and sustainability. We want to be able to answer these questions because the decision I come up with, it's going to work out great for me today, but it's going to mess you up for the next month.

So having those answers and people in place, and I think we need to give it more value. So where the big challenge I see is an emergency managers of being able to advocate to their community leaders of how valuable that role is. Sometimes they don't even know themselves. Maybe they haven't been in that position. One of the great performances I saw in stepping up, and there's thousands of out there, I'm sure lady named Adrian. She became the emergency manager for Holmes county from a rapid needs assessment team for hurricane Michael or visiting the different OCS. Earlier in the year, she had been in a different role. She took on the role of emergency manager because that person had left. She was still working to go to the classes and then hurricane Michael hit and she was sparse on resources. She's not Orange county, Orlando, the Holmes county. So she's really in trying to get answers. She did a great job with what she had and people she had. She had the match lined up. She had all the streets were open, how things are going when she's coordinated and public works. She had a family at home she's tending to some other family members needing help. She, I don't know how she gets. She did a fantastic job and she earned the title of a accomplished emergency manager by doing it at her level, the best way possible and sometimes that's what emergency managers have to do. But from that, I hope other emergency managers can see where the value is needed for better preparation.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (49m 31s):

Then I hate to say respect for the position, but without, for lack of a better way of the position needs to be better understood by everybody that would have to rely on it because once the disaster hits and you're coming to this person going, why can't we? And why didn't we, that's not the time for anybody to say, well, we should have on the front side, that's when you got to pick up the pieces. In the after action report, you know, we could have been better prepared. Had we done this and this and this. So hopefully any previous after action reports pointed out were failures have occurred from be utilized to help drive better change now for better prepare preparation for later on. If nothing else, this whole last year of COVID, our EOC has been activated. The stadium has been activated. So that's been a great primer for what we need to be doing. And why that's set that set up is so valuable for COVID. We didn't need public works every day, but not every emergency is going to require. Every ESF function will be relative to the disaster. You have an active shooter, public works may not be so involved. You have a hurricane, police is going to be involved, but public works is going to be the big drive after your rescue. So it's going to be relative to the emergency, but they all have to coordinate through one hub and that hub is emergency managers.

Host: John Scardena (50m 44s):

Perfect. I love the idea of the hub. Yeah. We pull in all the stakeholders, a great emergency manager understands the authorities that they have to understand that the authorities that they don't have and the perception of the authorities that people think they have, which is a big part of the job. Because if people don't think you're relevant, they're not going to use you. If I'm going a million miles an hour and I have to say, what do you do for me? That's already too late. Right? And I think an emergency manager is forced to do that because they're like, what can you do for me? And how can you make my life better? But a great emergency managers start to understand all the stakeholders, all the ESF’s, all the different community lifelines that get involved and say, okay, this is what's needed. This is what's needed and then there's an expectation that each of those people or those groups do their job efficiently. Right? And so I was telling him just to use our, a students. I said, you know, in so many disasters that I've deployed to, I have directly said, you need to go to neighborhood A, you don't need to go neighborhood B. Right. We have limited resources. We're trying to coordinate teams coming in. I don't do USAR, I do a little bit of USAR now because of that conference.

So thanks Joe. But, and thanks team. But the idea was that I knew I could send some people out into a region and they could do their job. Honestly, that confidence went way up after the training that we just did because it was like, oh, that's why they're so good. But in any case, like, that's the idea, right? If you have the Red Cross come in and do sheltering, I'm not going to go there and check on how's your sheltering going? Every day I wanted the numbers back. I want to know how many survivors we're going to try to get survivors out the whole deal. But when Salvation Army comes in and they do a feeding mission or a religious group, Southern Baptist church, the church, Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whoever brings in food, I'm going to expect that food to be safe, healthy, and whatever. Whatever the group is, public works, I expect everybody to do their job. However, the biggest problem I've seen is when groups get left out, because nobody even knows about them and so there needs to be better communication. Well, before disaster, you never hand out your business card in disaster, right? That's the idea. To the USR perspective, man, I was kind of frustrated my first day there because I was talking to a lot of the teams, the state teams. One guy, said I've been on a team for 16 years and they've never deployed us. I talked to somebody else and like, I've been on this team for eight years and they never deployed us. You said 12. Right? And I will tell you during hurricane Harvey, because hurricane Harvey, Maria, and Irene were happening at the same time. It was my understanding that every state and federal asset for USR was being utilized and what I was hearing from these different groups was we've never been deployed. And there's a lot of politics at the local level that was preventing that. Oh, we're not NIMS qualified. Do you think I care if somebody's NIMS qualified, if you know, we're doing life saving. No. You know, and so, we need to do better on the emergency management side to understand the resources, but this is kind of a call-out to all those local people who are anybody who's listening right now, if you don't feel like you're part of the process, get part of the, become part of the process, tell people what you can do now. So when there is an issue, you know, you're already in that discussion. So there there's a lot of points to that as well. For sure.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (54m 40s):

For sure. You hit on a couple of things if you don't mind me touching on. So prior to Katrina, it seems that the federal response to major emergency use was several teams and that's about it and it wasn't fully activated. Hurricane, Haitian earthquake, was I think the first time every FEMA team, all 28 were scheduled to go there to respond. I may be off on the figures, but I believe that was the precipice offense to activate every single asset available for humanitarian needs and rescue. Since then, we've done more to put resources in play. Hurricane Dorian was probably the biggest Wah wah moment if you want to call it that. But I think it was a fantastic

Host: John Scardena (55m 23s):

That’s the quote of the show.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (55m 26s):

Category, five storm that's devastating Bahamas, and it's going to level Florida and I lived there. So I'd really take interest in wanting to keep it up and running. But here millions of dollars of assets, multiple teams coming to the state of Florida that weren't needed. I counted as a win because it was a fantastic disaster response exercise to see what else is all needed without the cost of recovery needs. You're not getting the money back for maybe some of the things, but you definitely got a lot of good answers so that we're fully ready for the next one. I think it was a fantastic preparation if nothing else. So I applaud our response efforts in getting staged resources ahead of time.

One of the other points you made was that the emergency manager shouldn't have to hand out business cards during a disaster, for sure. So if you're in that element where you're not being sought after, by your community leaders go make the approach and then where I've seen a couple of circumstances, it's maybe that top level manager really isn't interested in meeting with you, find out the person in that office that is, talk to them and say, hey, just so you're aware in case we ever have to operate together. Here's my card. These are a couple of things I can do, I'd like to chat with here and meet me for lunch or someday. And then talk to that person that's used at that level. You can determine where you're going to have to serve that group plan for it so that when the disaster happens, you're ready with the answers because when that high level official or that top person who really wasn't interested in you comes in and suddenly need you. And you're ready. Here you go. This is what I forecasted. This may be a problem for you. Here you go. Boom, there's your door just wide open. So that should solve a lot of your issues, but it takes work and it takes a lot of planning and you don't have to be every single plan, but some of the plans go with the probable and that's planning on the front side. That's a lot of what emergency management is, is being ready for the disasters in which your most likely circumstance.

Host: John Scardena (57m 24s):

Yeah, the worst thing an emergency manager can do is to go to approach a high level person, political appointee, especially, and come off as the doomsday prepper. If you walk into a room of somebody who doesn't want to deal with you because they have budget constraints and they're trying to do this, and they're worried about their career and blah, blah, blah. And they don't really see it as an issue. You walk in and say, okay, we want to prepare for the nuke. That's not going to be very effective, but if you go in there and say, hey, we have, every year we have floods and it makes you look bad. Like the make you look bad. Argument is probably the most effective argument I've actually had when dealing with high level people, because they are career focused. I mean, we are in careers, so it's okay to be career focused to a degree, but it's like, hey, you want to stay in office. You want to not have a, a crap storm hit ya. Then, you know, spend one 10th of what you would normally have to spend and let's mitigate this flood by, you know, let's deal with the levy system that's been outdated for 20 years. That's been on the news a couple of times about being outdated. You don't want that to become an issue that happened in Michigan 2019 or 2022 dams gave and big deal impacted 10,000 people. Oh, surprise into that. Or 1999, the Army Corps of engineers said, these dams are vulnerable. You have to fix them. Now it will cost about $10 million to fix the private company chose not to fix the dam. And it became a hundred million dollar problem to fix plus all the lawsuits. So, you know, that happened with Texas power grid, right? Hey, your power, your, hey, you don't have, you don't really store any of your fuel. Maybe you want to start sort of storing some of your fuel, you know? Oh, just kidding. When we had a cold happen cold, right. Everyone starts using their, gas and the power goes out for several days and you know, everybody's out of their job. Everybody about one resigned from that job. That's the kind of things that can happen. I don't know, but there's other motivators too. I like how you said, like most reasonable go for the most reasonable, get their trust to show that you can do your job competently. And sometimes it's not about the job. Sometimes it's just approaching people like humans, Hey, you have kids. I have kids. Right. And I think there's lots of different ways to garner relationships, a great emergency manager, anybody who's who's in the field of communications should be a great communicator anyways. Right. And so if you're not very good at that skill, that's a skill to definitely work on.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (1h 0m 5s):

Absolutely. If you're not going to communicate your message, somebody else will, and it won't be the one you want.

Host: John Scardena (1h 0m 11s):

I love that, man. You have all these quotes. So we try to do quotes from the show. Ashley's going to have to put that together for us for social media, but okay. Let's, we're getting to about an hour here. That's where we'd like to keep it. Let me ask you a couple of questions. I actually asked you this question before, and I really liked your answer. It was pretty, pretty simple answer, but it's a good answer. There's a lot of media right now. In fact, let me back up. When FEMA became on, came under department of Homeland security, we added a fifth element to, prepared, preparing mitigation response recovery where the four, and now we add protection. So a lot of emergency managers. In fact, I know some cities that have started giving a weapon to their emergency manager. And so from your side of the house, there's been a lot of media that says, hey, should firefighters armed themselves? Yes or no. And so I asked you that question before, I want to ask you that question on here. What are your thoughts about firefighters carrying a weapon?

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (1h 1m 20s):

As far as day to day? I don't know if that's necessarily the best option and it's relative to your region. We typically stand by and re and stage when there's a hospital event down the street. Now as an entry team going in as a rescue task force, my personal opinion. If I'm an, I'm a gun guy, so I'm comfortable with guns. My father was a police officer. So if I'm qualified on the weapon, I train with the weapon. Often I'm going to be proficient. Number three, you should see accuracy proficiency. So with that, if I am comfortable, the weapon, then I should be able to, I would want to protect myself. In theory, I would have four officers around me providing that protection. The threat has been reduced or minimized because they're secured, sequestered, killed, captured by that. But I believe if I were on the rescue task force. Now, if I were comfortable to have a weapon, my agency would allow I would to carry a weapons while I would have the option to protect myself as well. So that if one of my other protectors was injured or incapacitated, I can still provide that layer that I need to continue for protecting everybody else at my level on my team. If I'm not a gun capable person, then I wouldn't force that issue. You don't want to give somebody a weapon. That's going to be a more danger for themselves and others and create the problem. So it's a little bit more of elaborate and answered than the other day.

Host: John Scardena (1h 2m 46s):

No, I liked it though. I mean, that's kind of what it broke down to before too, right? Is if you have the training and expertise and you're you feel comfortable with it, then there's a possibility for a door opening. But if you're not like that, that was the same argument with teachers carrying a weapon. People were like, oh my gosh, you know, I think the state of Georgia, everybody, all teachers should carry a weapon. Well, I don't think everybody should carry a weapon. I don't think if you're comfortable with it. You're not there to everyday protect against the active shooter, you're there to teach. And that that's the cliche, like your weapon is you know, the pencil, right?

But there was a story a week ago in Logan, Utah, a man, a 41 year old man was trying to break through the window to grab kids inside. And as he was breaking through the window, a teacher, showed their weapon and held them there at gunpoint. And the officers came and arrested the individual pretty scary situation for the kids. But a teacher was able to control the situation. Nobody died, nobody got hurt and they controlled the situation. And the police officers praise the teacher for doing that because in their state, they're allowed to do that. They're a lot to care if they want to. And that was to me, a perfect example of training and expertise, not escalating the situation, but I go back and forth on it. Quite frankly, like I am as an emergency manager. I'm not law enforcement. I'm always behind the scenes, but I recognize that if I was wearing my FEMA shirt or if I was wearing my county's emergency manager shirt, then you know, some idiot might want to put a target on my back, you know, and to be aware of that as well. And so like, it's a complex issue. It's, it's always going to be gray for a lot of reasons, but I like what you're saying. I like, at least the door could be open to the conversation if the training and capabilities there. Okay. So that being said, that was kind of, that was the biggest tangent of the show.

Host: John Scardena (1h 5m 0s):

Let's talk about the, the final point here. The question I like to ask everybody now that we've talked about the emergency services side and the emergency management side, which again, should be a much closer relationship. In fact, Orlando sounds like they're doing a great job out of April. I don't know who you are, but great. Thanks for making us look good. Yeah. The other, sorry, what was the other name? Manny and April check check. Good job. Make things, make us look good. So the last question I'd like to ask now that you've been integrated with them very well. The next phase of emergency management, what do you think? One thing that we should change to get to that next level of emergency management?

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (1h 5m 44s):

Well, unfortunately money is always the big drive on everything. It's always a big challenge and we asked, and it's not about money. It's about budgeting, which is about priorities, which is about what we need to address first. And that wasn't always the big challenge if we could make things happen. And I think this requires integration where a lot of cooperation, airports, hospitals, large businesses, cities all typically require events and training drills, collaborating those efforts to integrate those operations so that you truly get a large operation, I think would give the biggest effect. You would have to develop that. So that have to be training modules up until you built it. That would require a work and forecasting and people staying consistent with the operation. Those are other challenges to face, but some of the best exercises I've been in and in the medical component, the M shock conference you went to a couple of weeks ago was a component of, that was part of it was a syndrome, a community involved disaster response exercise and did a couple of those. There was one in Connecticut that I missed out on. I've got to be a part of one in Wichita many years ago, phenomenal, phenomenal multi-day exercise, multi-agency multi involvement.

It was a impromptu terrorist scenario where the truck detonated before its target then created the fire and collapsed aspects, but also a SWAT element. And so police investigation, and then inter integrating with JTTF and FBI and bringing those elements who also need to do exercise, coordinating that whole element. They were given a piece, then the fire service, they had to do their piece water, supply water loss because of the explosion devastated the water management area. So they had to do that piece, which damaged several buildings in the hearing reminiscent of the Oklahoma city bombing. Then you had multiple buildings to be searched and structurally supported and prepared. So then you have your vendor application of cranes coming in and heavy equipment, patient management, hospitals, transport infrastructure, sustainment, large, large exercise, a lot of pieces, but it's like eating an elephant one bite at a time. It can be done. It just has to be supported and having enough, right. People I think in certain regions would be able to make that happen and just take a collective of time, have a work group, don't call it a committee. It doesn't get done, go to work groups or the work gets done. And see if you can put something that together. And that's something that could be done every three to five years on a large scale, it takes a long time of planning. But I think that truly tests an agency or region on their true capabilities and gives honest answers.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (1h 8m 37s):

And unfortunately, some people don't want honest answers and it's typically an inhibitor, but if we're truly serving our community and whatever aspect and role that you serve, you should want to be able to be willing to take in those answers so that you can perform better because all our purpose, my purpose is a firefighter as a district chief, as a task force leader is to serve my community. And part of my community is my family. I purposely live in the city of Orlando. So I serve my family and I want my firefighters and everybody I work with to do their best because they're serving my family when I can. That's awesome. So if we took that approach, I think we would probably put a little bit more exercise, a little more energy into some of those things that we do. And hopefully that's maybe a little motivation for somebody that's listening to your podcast to go forth and do even better because I love what you're doing. Disaster tough. I mean, I'm a big fan at this point when, once we met, I started listening and I love the messages and I'm humbling,

Host: John Scardena (1h 9m 36s):

You know, no humble needed. You're, you're talking about all these, ah, I'm not smart enough to be an instructor, BS, you know, you don't, there's no, you know, there's cumulatively needed there. You're obviously cutting the top, top tier. Right? So I came home and I told my staff at Doberman, I said, guess wha we're going to start doing? We're going to start doing full-scale exercises that do cross training. I learned a lot. I I've been around the block and you know, I'm kind of an arrogant guy, but I've been to 30 states. I've been to, you know, disasters of every kind every size. And I have two degrees in the topic and I get to interview experts like yourself every week. And I learned a lot being out there that applies to what I do. And I was like, man, they really need to understand what we do so that the whole idea of communication and incident command and learning that authoritative piece and the different things that applies to, to, to even the tactical level. And so we need to develop skill based training and exercises that allow observation and a little bit of training in cross sector, cross sector training. And by so doing it, you're creating more, well-rounded more capable people by gaining the skills that apply to them and their specific sphere of influence.

You're just expanding that understanding. And so when you get out to a large-scale disaster, we didn't even talk about pulse nightclub. So there's definitely gonna be a poll part two. In fact, we're having Brian Davis come on here, Chief Davis, thanks to Chief Lewis is going to be talking to us about some of the incident command perspective from that. But like just understanding when you get into a large-scale disaster, because 90% of what fire police does, doesn't require a large-scale disaster. However, like if you go to a car accident, especially if there's a fatal car accident or there's a taste, there's going to be fires, there's going to be police. There's going to be the tow. There's going to be, you know, whoever DOD is going to be possibly involved with rerouting people. There are a lot of elements in emergency management and emergency coordination that have to go, they go into play and just understanding how they work. Oh, hey, I'm, I'm 45 feet away from the police officer. I literally cannot talk to him. Maybe we, maybe an emergency manager can address that issue, stuff like that. So great call out about a full-scale exercises, a lot more training, a lot more cross training and full-scale exercises. I love all those points. I just want to thank you again so much Chief Lewis for coming on the show, you obviously know your stuff. There's going to be a part two. If you allow us, there's got to be a part three and five for obviously, because you know, it's been really fun to talk to talk to you and I'm sure our listeners are going to have the same sauce. So thanks again for coming on the show.

Guest: Chief Walt Lewis (1h 12m 36s):

Absolutely. And I'm right around 40,000 words. So I still got a few left.

Host: John Scardena (1h 12m 40s):

That's fantastic. That's awesome. I appreciate the opportunity. Absolutely. Okay. So everyone, this is what happens every week. We love it and we hated it at the same time. We love it. When you send us an email and let us know what your thoughts are, but we would really like it. If you put it on our social media to Disaster Tough podcast on Instagram government, emergency management on LinkedIn, either, or for Facebook, that kind of stuff. We love the reaching out. So we appreciate for all those who do it, don't be afraid to ask her a question publicly. A lot of other people have similar questions and that's probably the fastest way that Chief Lewis will be able to see those questions. If you send it to us publicly, a lot of other people to answer as well.

However, if you do want to work with Doberman Emergency Management, if you want to do full-scale exercises, you you've been thinking about how this place you want to become a better emergency manager or whatever. Send us an email at infoatdobermanemg.com. We'll work that there, if you liked this episode, which you should have, because it was packed, was quotes, packed with great information from Chief Lewis. If you liked that, you have to give us again, we always ask five-star rating and subscribe. Let us know that she liked it, and we'll see you back next week. Thanks.

#60 Utilizing Drones in Emergency Response - Interview with 'Fritz' Skydio's Head of Public Safety

Two pioneers in sUAS (small drones) emergency services: Fritz developer of drones for SWAT and John developer of FEMA’s first drone program. Fritz and John talk about building these programs and walk through the use cases for tactical and strategic operations. Fritz is now the Head of Public Safety at Skydio.

In this week's episode, tactical meets strategic. We talk about the use of small drones (sUAS) to support emergency services response operations, and the benefits, as well as after actions, of real-world use cases. We also explore the future of emergency managers, first responders, and humanitarians in this increasingly popular field and what you can do right now to get your own program off the ground. Today's guest, Fritz, developed the first small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) drone program for SWAT, which is now a complex and highly effective drone program. Fritz now leads Skydio's Public Safety Program. Likewise, our host John, created FEMA's first drone disaster response program. Fritz and John highlight what drones can do for you by comparing their experiences in tactical and strategic level operations. While these uses are different, their discussion points to the numerous benefits and hurdles associated with using small drones. Ultimately, drones enhance the capacity of emergency services.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. I'm your host to John Scardena, owner of Doberman Emergency Management and former federal emergency response official who's responded to some of the most extreme disasters. Disaster Tough is our mantra. It combines experience, training, and analytics in order to be successful at any stage within the disaster lifecycle, it means being a professional in emergency and disaster services, Doberman Emergency Management lives by this. If your organization needs to fill a gap, please contact us we can help. Contact info is in the show notes.

We also support other products and organizations that will increase your ability. For example, if you fight wildfires, hurricanes, a pandemic, any disaster in the field at a hospital, or command center, listen up. You're missing out If you do not use L3 Harris for your radio coms, they are secure, portable, mobile and scalable, which is great news for us in the field. A truly disaster tough radio system. Check out the XL family of radios by clicking on the show notes, or simply go to L3Harris.com.

When you think of situational awareness, you need to think of Futurity IT. They are disaster tough because they saw a gap and figured out how to close it by creating the Orion and Athena applications. Situational awareness is all about speed coordination and accuracy of information. Futurity IT’s Orion app collects and provides preliminary damage assessments and integrates all incident action plan documents with WebEOC. The Athena app allows for planning, contact tracing and customizable group coordination and every single phase of the disaster life cycle, the best part Futurity IT made both applications extremely intuitive. It's so easy to use. Click on the show notes today to schedule a free demo.

Host: John Scardena (1m 55s):

Welcome back to the show everybody! It’s your Host: John Scardena, I am so excited for this week's episode! Man, you've heard me talking about drones so many times on the show because of my background with the use of drones and doing it with preliminary damage assessments. There's this random scene, let me cue this up. We might put this in post-production from, I think it's Guardians of the Galaxy to where the father goes, I'm finally not alone. That's how I feel today because I am meeting with the man, the myth, the legend Fritz who's from Skydio. He's a Skydio drone expert there for search and rescue for public safety, all this kind of stuff, because he has a background in it. He really is a pioneer in using the use of drones for tactical level response. So, all you guys out there who are in, you know, first responder capabilities are doing tactical response, damage assessments, you name it. This guy is an expert. He can talk to it for its welcome to the show.

Guest: Fritz (2m 55s):

Wow, thanks John, it's quite an intro. Very glad to be here.

Host: John Scardena (2m 60s):

Like I said, it's pretty exciting for me because you know, when you're talking about pioneering drones in agencies or in emergency services, a lot of people don't understand like what it takes to get that done and with perception behind it. Then once you implement it, that change that happens and to see all the positive changes. So maybe we can just kind of start there, how did you get into the use of drones? I understand that you were doing SWAT with drones. How did you find that capability? Then what were some of the outcomes from using drones on your side?

Guest: Fritz (3m 39s):

Yeah, so I guess I kind of became a hobbyist and got a Phantom four and started flying around and the ability to get the thing to return to home. Every time I really started to see how valuable that would be for just public safety use cases in general, being a guy, I spent five years on SWAT obviously some entry time as well as some sniper time. Really when I saw drones, I was wasn't on SWAT at the time, but I thought, wow, this is great to be able to send in. You know, we were doing ground-based robots and other solutions where you want to see what's going on in their near, before you send people, but having a drone that could not get caught on the steps and just fly right in and clear the whole house without putting people in harm's way was like pretty intuitive, a no-brainer, you know.

Obviously, I wasn't the first to think of that, but that's really where my mind first started going with drones and I would get little FPV drones and buy them for like a hundred bucks and fly them all around the investigations and blow paper off desks and getting everybody excited about it. Wouldn't it be awesome if we had these at Chula Vista, I worked at Chula Vista Police Department. A buddy of mine, Vern Sully, who's now at Axon, after he retired working with Axon Air, he started the drone program and I kind of was looking from the sidelines. Then when I promoted the captain and I got the opportunity to take over the team, we were swapping around collateral duties. He was like, yeah, sure, great. We really hadn't got into the operational aspect of Chula Vista yet.

So, when I came on, that was my first role. It's just, let's get these things up, let's get them in the air. Let's show start showing the value to the operators because, you know, until you see it you don't really realize the value that they get. Then once you have it, you just don't want to do anything without them.

Host: John Scardena (5m 27s):

It's kind of like for me. First of all, blown paper off the table. I remember that when we got the drone, I was in a joint field office in Hurricane Harvey and I was so excited to use it. I put the drone in the room and took off no experience whatsoever and immediately blew all the paper off everybody's desk and flew it right into some blue lines. Like the other deck cables that were hanging down from the ceiling. I was like, oh so there was a learning curve, but that learning curve was what, five minutes.

I mean, it's amazing what drone capabilities can do now. For my end, same thing kind of happened. We knew we knew we had a one-use case that we wanted to use it for. As soon as you do it, you're like there's a hundred other use cases that you can put this for a big one, saving resources and time. Another one is just not putting people in harm's way, right? I mean, you're talking and the ceiling, you know, compared to a robot or compared to a manned helicopter. You know, a small UAS drone is a game changer.

Like you said, you could just put it right in the house and start seeing capabilities. The way I want to go through the discussion today, I liked what Skydio had on your website. Now this isn't a big ad. I'm not an official sponsor, I just like what you guys have. So, I have to say that for my audience, but there were four capabilities for this drone that I liked a lot. The reason why I'm excited to endorse it is because, you know, it's an American made drone assembled here, the whole deal. For us agencies that’s the hot topic right now and it seems like an amazing drone.

The four topics I thought we could kind of just run down today, one was situational awareness, two search and rescue, which you highlighted three hostile scene and de-escalation and for crime and accident use cases. So just like backing up situational awareness, can you talk about it? Remember we have a lot of emergency managers on here. First responders, humanitarians, military personnel who've never used a drone before they see it as a hobbyist thing. So, my job today is to have an expert on here to say, Hey, this is why you need this. This will help out our field a lot. So, from the perspective of situational awareness, talk to us about what you have found drones can do.

Guest: Fritz (8m 19s):

Yeah. I mean, you hit on the four, probably the biggest, most common use cases for public safety, emergency management. You know, a little bit about my history. I was on the type three incident management, all hazards, incident management team at Chula Vista was a regional source. I was the Ops Section Chief. You know, you do a lot of decision-making at a remote location, and you're delegating a lot of activity out with units in the field and having a situational awareness of what's going on out there of whether it's at EOC or an incident command post or whatever, is huge. So, on major incidents get downlinks from helicopters and once you have that, you're like, I want that on every incident, big and small.

That's what drones let you have is that eyes on the situation so that the decision makers aren't making the decision based on radio chatter or third hand information, they get the context of video. We all know, and that led me into the ideas related to drones as first responder. Then specific to Skydio that's the goal is to get that capability out into the field broadly and onto the most what we think is a routine incident that you wouldn't be using a manned aircraft for that quickly turn and turn deadly, and we all know how those situations can happen. So, to have a drone is the foundation of autonomy, easy to fly and get it in the air.

It's hard to crash. It's as you said, American made NDA compliance, grant money can buy it and get these things out into the hands of people that don't necessarily have a hundred flight hours on the sticks, right? That you feel confident flying in obstacle rich environments and flying below the tree line, looking into windows and doing all these things that these drones can do, and to have a drone to help you do that with the autonomy that comes with Skydio platform, I think is huge. Like I mentioned, my first drone would just return to home feature and then hover in place. The first drone that Chula Vista got was a gift from SDG. You literally kill yourself without thinking, because it wouldn't have to have skill to make it hover in place.

Once that hover in place became, it’s just a tool for the masses and that's what the next level of autonomy will do is doing, is making people who are they're professional cops and firefighters. They're not professional drone pilots, but they want to use it in their work. So, you know, that's the foundation is to make it, democratize this asset and make it something we can use more often on a daily basis, early in the incident and get the vantage of these big resources on the big stuff down to the most time-sensitive smaller incident so they don't grow into big ones.

Host: John Scardena (11m 8s):

Yeah. I mean, I think we said it last week on our show, or two weeks ago with Pete gainer, for those who don’t know he was the interim head of DHS and he was head of FEMA just on here two weeks ago. He said, you know all disasters are local right. We've heard that before. He mentioned that and that's true. All disasters hit hardest local because it takes a lot of resources in a catastrophic event to know what's going on in the field, talk about the hover in place capability. Now, if somebody's listening to that, they're like, what does that even mean for me? Well, we even played with the idea of tethering like cell connections or radio connections too, you know, hard hit, okay. Put five drones up with a tether on there. So, we have continual power and now you have connectivity over mountain ranges.

We've talked about that. We've talked about all these different capabilities. We used drones for herd migration when volcanoes went out so putting in the right place to help the cattle go in a different direction from the volcanic eruption, that was a big deal. Right. To have that situational awareness of agriculture and how these things are interacting with the environment, let alone people, right. Then see okay, we have a potential for a mudslide here because it's been raining heavily for the last four or five days it's led up. Okay. Do we want to send out resources, see if there's going to be a mudslide and they get hit by it on their way out there.

No, let's put up a drone out there right, and so it expands your sphere of influence to a huge range, right. To be able to see that in real time, like you said, as soon as you see it, it clears up so many issues. Another use case I just thought of, going back to the preliminary damage assessments, wildfires. So, most drones that are used on the federal level are like the Reaper drone is, you know, high altitude, you know, infrared, right?

Host: John Scardena (13m 22s):

So, we have a good understanding of where the fire is, but it's not really great for situational awareness of the ground level because that image can be completely whited out from height, drones, only small drones, lower, low level 2 to 400, 1200 feet. If you have an SGI, Koa can see fine detail and say, okay, like what the wind and everything going, the firefighters is actually behind the line of fire. So, like again, situational awareness there. Right, talk about a huge capability. You talked about SWAT, remind me, does SWAT specifically deal with crowd control, right. With crowd control, drones have a capability there too, right. Of just not putting your guys in harms way, like just having that situational awareness for crowds.

Guest: Fritz (14m 21s):

Yeah, SWAT, it kind of depends on the agency. Most agencies move to a, sort of a mobile field force (MFF) professional crowd control training, which is different than you might get from special weapons and tactics. I'm sure there's a lot of overlap and you'll see resources, both resources at major events, depending on what's going on. But in terms of using drones for crowd control or for just situational awareness during large crowd events, you know, in the old days, quote unquote, you'd have to get to a position to be able to see the crowd right and you can't do that. If you're standing on the ground at the same level, so you had people getting up on rooftops and stuff, and just being able to like, see what's going on, because if someone's getting hurt in the center of a crowd, how are you going to see that?

If you're on the outside edge, look at the standing ground level. If there's threats to the crowd where they may be approaching cars, and we've seen what has happened with cars running into crowds. So, I know there's concern from crowds doing lawful protests that drones are there to like spy on them or surveil him. But every public safety ADC I talked to, is there's a responsibility. They have to protect that crowd and you can't do it just by reacting to what's going on. You have to get to a position where you can see the crowd, you can see what's going on. You can see approaching threats. You can see areas where the crowd is heading so you can stop traffic and cordon off any kind of incoming threats to them.

So, you'd be irresponsible really not to have sort of an Overwatch position on these crowds. You owe it to the crowd to understand you're responsible for protecting them. So, you've got to understand what's happening and be able to manage resources. It's kind of a team effort, much like it'd be hard for a coach to know what going on without sort of game day film that top down looks at this team and handles the situation. That's the same with crowd control.

Host: John Scardena (16m 22s):

I like that. Let's talk about the elephant in the room because I'm pretty passionate about this that I think, yeah like I said, passionate. I think people are pretty stupid when they think about the privacy of drones and understanding people in public spaces, because you have, I'm not even talking about a protest, let's talk about concert. Let's talk about any kind of open venue. You have 400,000 people taking live video of everything around them. You have 50 satellites up in the air, just you know, Google earth, whatever you will as seeing what's going on. It's public space. Anyways, you have film crews there, you have news. You have everybody else, any kind of public event.

There is so much data being collected on people anyways, that when somebody says like, oh my gosh, the drones are spying on people. Actually, you're spying on yourself. You're taking your camera over everybody so I don't get it. I guess there's real concerns there, but I think they're kind of just stupid to be honest, but I don’t know. So, what is your take on that?

Guest: Fritz (17m 32s):

I mean, I get that sentiment for sure. I do feel as an ex-cop working for the government, we do have a responsibility to be transparent. You know, the data that the government gets, isn't like the data that citizens or private sector gets, you know there's a fear that there's an incremental illness about things that we know, and that’s reality. So, we do need to be certainly respectful those fears, even though I think like you say some of it's because of the unknown of what drones are, it's a new, fascinating technology. There's a lot of movies that show drones, it's sort of true you know, like the drones being equipped with weapons and being used to like prevent the hero from escaping, right.  So, I definitely get that sentiment.

I think when the public is exposed to what drones do and how they do it every time I see they're very supportive. As long as we in the law enforcement, public safety, emergency management remain transparent, use it in the right way. Definitely share the successes so that if people say we don't want drones, they know at what costs that comes, that is a huge win for the drone industry. So, I think transparency through and through is, you know, we have responsibility to protect people's privacy, but we also have a responsibility to show how these things are being used to save lives.

Host: John Scardena (19m 2s):

I appreciate that answer a lot because usually, like I said, I'm a hard liner on I'm like, come on. But I think you're right. As government bodies, there has to be transparency. There has to be data acquisition and protection and all of that goes into play and as it should. However, in a public space it's already being collected, you know, and that's my call. I love how you said people always like it. I had this cool story where I think I shared it before on the podcast. So, it's kind of a repeat for some of the people listening. But the first time we were using drones to do preliminary damage assessments in a wildfire, I was standing on one side of our vehicle with our spotter and I could see in the drone, an individual walking up behind kind of like sneaking, walking up behind the vehicle. I was like he knows I can see him right. But while I was watching this, I said, Hey, you know, Kyle, just letting you know, some guys walking up behind us and he's like, okay. So, I went over to talk to him and the first thing is, what are you guys doing? He thought we were a private sector, he thought we were just trying to take cool images or whatever. But as soon as we said, Hey, we're trying to figure out how many homes are damaged as fast as we can, to be able to help you out, the guy's attitude flipped immediately. I'm like, that's really what it comes down to. It comes down to the survivors and helping out survivors as fast as humanly possible.

I'm not one of the guys who thinks drones are the only thing we should be doing, but it is a tool that allows us to move into that space to help out people faster and that's the mindset. That's the culture cultural shift I want to see happen. Emergency management is like how to help out survivors fastest, responsibly, but fastest drones by far right now are that cutting-edge technology that shows data impacting decision-making.

Guest: Fritz (21m 3s):

It's a great story. I mean, that's an instant transparency, right? It's not a tool to be used to control you, or it's an asset used for your benefit, the community's benefit and as long as they see it as their asset, then they embrace it and run with it.

Host: John Scardena (21m 16s):

I love that the community asset, right. Drones are a community asset for life saving life, sustaining an emergency response. Yeah, no question. So, I admittedly I do not have a lot of search and rescue experience. My search and rescue experience are limited to a bunch of training and in large scale disasters, as a GIS guy, I would point search and rescue operators in the right direction saying, Hey, this is going to flood. This levee is going to go. We think this dam is going to give, you know, wherever. So, I would point, so can you kind of share us your experiences and kind of understand, help us understand, like how drones’ impact specifically search and rescue. You talked about clearing facilities, what else can it do for you?

Guest: Fritz (22m 7s):

So, yeah, and I'll admit, I got a ton of search and rescue experience as a cop over 27 years, right? Looking for lost kids and walk away adults and Alzheimer's patients. This is a relatively urban environment so I don't get a lot of the wide-open field search and rescue stuff. I do talk to agencies daily who do this quite a bit, right? A lot of rural areas across the country, it's a huge tool. Obviously a thermal is a great way to pick up heat signatures. So that's a needed aspect for any search and rescue tool. Certainly, the sooner you get something up in when it's, you know, a walkaway adult or a missing child, the better, right. It's less far they can get from the point of last scene.

Just in general, it's just hard to see anything from the ground level. Typically if you don't have a man helicopter with a really robust FLIR system available, and most agencies don't have those at a moment's notice, you know, your drone, that's the drone that's in the trunk, you throw it up right away and do as much as you can in terms of the searching fields and eliminating areas that you don't need to hand search or walkthrough so you can concentrate on those most likely areas. I know the, the civil air patrol, which is a huge search and rescue, you know civilian arm of the air force, they've recently purchased, you know, scores of Skydio X twos to be delivered that have a thermal precisely because they're a great drone for a very large team that you can't, you know, all these people spend hours and hours and hours of being drone experts.

Guest: Fritz (23m 50s):

So, it's a great tool to have quickly throw it up. and then not only be able to see what's high above, but be able to navigate down below the canopy, right? There’re two types of drones in a search and rescue situation. Here's your high up Overwatch drone that looks over a broad swath of areas and then there's drones that can kind of go where humans can't go on foot, that's invisible from above, right. You know, along riverbanks that are tree-lined covered, you have your Overwatch drone. You notice that there's no heat signatures in the center of the water, body water or the river, but you don't know what's along the banks. Right? So, you can wait for a team that might jump in a boat and sail down that river and look to the sides, or you get one person out with a drone fly low along the river, looking along the banks clearing that in the first 10 or 15 minutes, time's not on your side.

So, having something that's in the trunk of pretty much every first responder on the fire truck or whatever that can do both be comfortable in both environments that Overwatch and close to the ground or an obstacle rich environment is your perfect layered approach to search and rescue as it relates to using drones. Certainly, having the sensors on there, that's going to be able to see what you need to see, right? A thermal sensor that can heat see heat signatures, and then your cameras, high quality cameras that we can see where we need to see basically a drone is just putting a subject matter expert somewhere they can't otherwise be. It's kind of an avatar for a decision decision-maker search and rescue or just the use cases and the environments where they add values unlimited.

Host: John Scardena (25m 26s):

That's awesome. You said a word that struck a chord with me in a very good way. When I go out and I do presentations, I often get requests to talk about my experiences in the field. I remind the audience constantly that the number one problem we have in emergency services is time. Time changes everything. It's relentless, obviously, but the more time it takes to do something, the more problems you're going to have, as soon as you get behind the ball, you're never going to get in front of it. I've seen it way too many times. You know, again, just like I said, a big ad for drones and trying to get people to change their cultural mindset because like hard to get to places, check quickly, going over an area, check one thing that's where drones can do that the naked eye can't do is point cloud. I was a big fan of doing point cloud, you know, the shape, Hey, we want to be able to find a body. Well, we found that the shape of an arm in the field, right. We can, we have millions of points and it's now we're using artificial intelligence to scan over that. And so clearing banks looking for the heat signature, you're now doing multiple that the naked eye just can't do. Even if you're looking at that Riverbed, right. Infrared currencies, there's something over there. Human eye might not be able to see it. Right. Especially if it's buried on a surface level and that's a big deal for catastrophic level to have buildings that have been thrashed right. So, these down buildings and trying to get into places where we haven't showed up yet. So huge use cases there. Okay. So, another one that admittedly, I stay away from as much as possible. In fact, I don't get on this too much on the show, but I did way more manmade stuff in DC than I ever want to talk about. However, the hostile and hostile scenes in de-escalation, talk to us about drones and hostile scenes in de-escalation.

Guest: Fritz (27m 39s):

Well, I'll touch a little bit on your time thing as well with the de-escalation, because you know the thing I'm probably most known for is the Jonas first responder use case at Chula Vista police department that we had done through the ICP where essentially, you've got drones nested on rooftops within the city. And as soon as the call comes in, they respond the drone to that location, getting ahead of ground units. And that's something Chula Vista police is still doing to this day. There are over 6,000 missions they are doing, you know, pretty much every day, all day. Literally hundreds of use cases where they're on the scene, whether it's a walkaway child or a robbery that just occurred, or people fighting in the street or a car accident or anything you want to send emergency responders to get the drone there first, before people were in harm's way and get someone who's an experienced incident manager on scene.

 I think from your audience, they understand, you know a lot of times the experienced ICS come well into the incident after a lot of the first responders are doing as best they can in the first moments. The idea of getting an incident commander as the first responder, some experience the decision-maker who's not in harm's way, who basically essentially arrives as a drone and basically an avatar for their decision-making capability to see the situation. Then, guide units in is like the ultimate in terms of the shortcut and time and that's kind of what your example is just to have to get a jumpstart on time and see the future, whether that's indoor case where you want to send a drone in before people, it totally changes the paradigm.

Guest: Fritz (29m 20s):

So, I may have gone on a little tangent there, but your time thing kind of made me think of that. That's cool. Then the other aspect that you had mentioned was the de-escalation. Again, that a lot of times officers or emergency management, fire, they rush into a situation because they can't sit and wait and plan, right? They don't have enough information. People might be in harm's way while they're waiting. So, they rush into the situation as necessary. Then they got to figure it out once they get there. So, any opportunity to slow them down and say, look, we're on scene, I've got a drone. It's not in harm's way. I can see what's happening if anything changes, I'll let you know, but it's perfectly safe right now to stage, wait for less lethal, wait for a canine, wait for the right resources with a fire and then not rush in, and then not be forced to be in a situation where you're not prepared.

That is a very effective tool to deescalate, right and getting a drone into a room where a person may be holed up. Once you send the drone in either you find out he's in there and you don't have to go in, you know, right where they are, or you find out it's clear and essentially means you don't have to go into either way. It just kind of changes the whole dynamic. You're stacked up on the store about to go in. Then once you send it a drone, it just changes the whole dynamic because you know whether there's threat or not. So, it's kind of just a paradigm shift really. So, in de-escalation, that's all about that is bringing the right tools, the right decisions, the right problem-solving methods to the situation so that you're not hitting every problem with the hammer, right. Not everything's a nail, but in historically we just respond and then kind of make it up as we get on the scene right, do the best we can.

Host: John Scardena (31m 12s):

That's so true. That's all true, a hundred percent. I think of like make it up on the scene, right? So real-world application on my end, dealing with active assailant, active shooter events, right. You know, statistically, as soon as first responders are in a facility, active shooters, change their motive from finding innocence to either killing themselves or addressing the first responders. It's like 99.9% of the time. As soon as we get people in their assets in there those things change.

I do wonder what the capability of having a law enforcement drone specifically going into an area just for sensory overload to psychologically broken terrorists or active shooters, obviously the sound of the drone, the location of the drone makes them shift just enough to where people’s lives could be saved or the reminder to potential survivor’s help is on the way, whatever. There could be lots of different use cases for helping, not just the survivor, but preventing the loss of life of a responder who was going in there and has address a threat who is extreme right. I think about that a lot because I had to deal with that a lot. You know, at Doberman, we teach an active shooter course and we go through, we're like a data backed company. Like we're really focused on data. So, when we do our active shooter course, it's like two hours of just use case after use case. We're just drilling it into people's head like it doesn't mean just run, hide, fight, right, it means freaking barricade and what the difference of barricade means versus, you know, the fighting and what fighting means. It means like stopping the threat or the threat will hurt you. Right? And how fast those scenes are. You talked about time, we talked about time. Most active shooters are 10 minutes or under.

So, you trying to figure out where, the person is trying to figure out, you know, your other first responders are showing up on scene, everybody's showing up on scene. You guys put battery in, put a drone in the back and shove it into the building, figure out where this thing is at as fast as humanly possible even for clearing rooms, what is that diamond formation teams. So, you have diamond formation versus drone. Okay. For living people, drone. I don't know it sounds like there's a lot of use cases there as well.

Guest: Fritz (34m 1s):

Yeah, so I'll talk broadly because you're hitting awesome, a lot of points and the work you're doing there is so critical. So, I'll talk over you, then I'll talk specific to Skydio because we have a tool, I think that really can help in these kinds of situations. Hopefully it never gets used for it right, because it never happens. Again, but we know that we know the answer there, and there's a couple of really big paradigm shifts that where everything just kind of turned on its head like 9/11, right. We used to hijack, or everybody said, Hey, if you get hijacked, just sit and cooperate right. That totally changed in a heartbeat within, from the moment that first plane crashed in the tower to flight 93, right? That's no longer what we do. We fight back, right? The big paradigm shift, as you well know Columbine where you can't just sit and set up a perimeter, the people in there aren't there to negotiate. They're there to slaughter like your Joe citizen in the neighborhood, got it before the police officers did because we're trained a certain way. When it was hard for us to change our paradigm, and once we understood that difference, then our change training changed. We began to learn with that incident, the LA shootout, that we can't wait an hour for a special weapons and tactics and these really effective tools that require a lot of training and a lot of expertise and money. We have to push these capabilities to the frontline. They got to be there on the first second. So now you have officers with AR solutions, right?

So, they have active guns. I'm exterior accurate guns that can fight off serious threats immediately. We have an active shooter training, which you talked about where it's, you know, don't sit and wait, go in. That's what you're paid for, trained to reduce the risk, but going to have to take risks because they're innocent lives at stake and drones are part of that, right? The drone is first responder is that type of use case of getting the drones there. First, whether it's going to go indoors first or on scene first is going to add that value of service and intelligence and making those people that have to put their lives at risk do so with a little more knowledge and intelligence, and then have the tools there, right?

Guest: Fritz (36m 2s):

That's a lot of what we talk about Skydio is, you know, the drones that are back at the station are no good to you in those situations, right? It's got the drone in your trunk is better than the best drone back that the station is what you have with you, have the ones that people are comfortable with flying. You can train them, you're comfortable with giving them to them and they're easy enough to fly where you can fly them in these types of difficult environments. The Skydio too, it's the first drone out. It's not an expensive option, a lot of public safety has it and it's this type of situation where it really could add value because you can get it up in a minute or two. You can just fly it in an obstacle. Richard Meyer with no skill whatsoever.

The first time someone's got their sticks on it, they can fly this thing through a mall, a business park, a school. You can imagine a stack of four or five people, maybe the person in the last part of the stack just throws the drone up front and it's running point around these corners clearing the area because you don't have time. You have people bleeding out, you have victims that you have to assess and you've got large areas that you need to clear and secure and to be able to do that where a person's head, isn't the first thing around the corner, but a drone that's there and that's going to take time to get it up. But you know, these clearing these business parks takes a while after an active shooter and you got to do it safely because you never know.

Host: John Scardena (37m 22s):

We took forever to clear the Navy yard shooting. A beast of burden and that after action and you had every federal and state agency dress, not dressed in uniform, had the badge not have that, every buddy was there, you have a ton of people. Here's a really sad statistic, again, the drones are kind of a tangent, but you know, the Parkland shooting officer, the, the one who waited outside people give them a lot of crap. People don't understand that 30% to 40% of the officers, single officers that show up on scene die in an active shooter, not injured, not whatever, die because they have no backup.

When you're talking over a third, that's a big deal. You want to use, you want to come in with a lot of force and what I mean by that is an overwhelmingly amount of what I call sensory overload for the threat. So, they don't know what's going on, which causes them to pause, which causes us to be able to end the situation. Again, a drone is the force multiplier, even for a single officer who's on scene, distraction, distraction, distraction, sensory overload. Let me take care of this. See it, the other one, which is like a huge tangent Navy yard shooting, the officer who lost their life unfortunately they heard the sound. You could see them like was that, was that the sound of a gun? They holstered their weapon again and when they holstered their weapon, the active shooter came around the corner and killed them. Like I said, that has really nothing to do with drones, but I'm super passionate about that because like we hope active shooter training is the most worthless training people ever get, but if they do get it, it could save their lives. Now we're talking about it in a cool new way that I've never really thought about before, to be honest is the use of technologies as a force multiplier for first responders. As a guy who deals with catastrophic disaster on a large scale, hurricanes wildfires, that kind of stuff, it's kind of amazing to have somebody who's an expert in tactics to be able to say like all disasters are local, all disasters fail at the tactics and give you every resource you need to be successful. We kind of hit a lot on the crime and accident side of the house. So just like looking, is there anything else that you think that could help out somebody, like I said, a first responder, emergency manager who's listening to this, who's now hopefully on board with the idea of drones, what would you say to them for accident and a crime scene awareness for drones?

Guest: Fritz (40m 18s):

That's another thing about data, that data that you just can't get any other way. It's not necessarily a time-sensitive one, but there's a safety component specifically to accident reconstruction, which wasn't something I did as a police officer at all would never work traffic, but certainly that's a lot. I talked to a lot of people doing that, certainly now with our 3d scan solution coming out from Skydio where it's a data capture tool where it flies around in a 3d environment, capturing evidence, photos, and something you can upload into a photogrammetry tool and makes great evidence to take measurements. It's a solution for your court and an investigative tool. To do this, instead of shutting down a roadway for four hours with a team of five people and flyers everywhere to be able to do it in 30 minutes, you know?

So, you're not out in the roadway that drones out in the roadway, collecting that. I mean, that's a use case that's out there. It's pretty obvious, it's a unique tool that Skydio has, but accident reconstruction in general is just a way to really good police work, collect the evidence in a way that's useful that you understand what happened and record the incident in a way that's manageable. It's got to go from a 2d sketch by hand, to a real time 3d model and have it be done by one person, regardless who is not an expert in anything other than just the workflow. I mean, what an amazing tool.

Host: John Scardena (41m 51s):

Okay. So, you shared tactics side, I'll share a strategic side, federal side. It made me think of a debris pile estimation. At the debris pile collection sites, they bring these trucks, it depends on the state. Each state is different I'll say that. But what happens a lot of times is the trucks back in and they fill up and the backseat. What happens is it creates a donut effect where as they're all backing in, there's actually a giant hole in the middle of this debris pile. You know, we're talking about 80 feet up by 125 feet wide.

What the state sometimes does in a disaster is by contract. They will look at their circumference and multiply it by the height and figuring out their dome and they will charge for that. Essentially, they're charging for a giant hole in the middle. Well, if you're trying to do accident reconstruction. What I did with the drone is I went over to a couple of these giant doughnuts and I saved the federal government, like $6 million in 20 minutes by showing that they were paying for a giant hole in the middle. My counterparts, it was just like, wait, what I was like, why aren't you calling it a toy the other day, a $6 million recovery of just waste.

Now I'm sure the construction company was pissed, but at the same time, it cuts down on freight, fraud, waste and abuse, and it is tax dollars, right? We are government agencies. So, like a big one there and it goes back to that earlier point about the point cloud and point people don't really understand what the point cloud is. Basically, what you're talking about is, if I take a picture and, you know, traditionally there's a 2d image of my picture, right? What you're talking about, it's amazing thing and I think Skydio paired up with it's as Reese product, the shoot drone deploy, that's what it is. Yeah.

For those listeners, it's as if I can put my mouse on this mic and start spinning the mic and I considered 360 degrees up, down, left, right and you're able to get a true picture. Another one on the, big scale stuff. Obviously most of my experiences with floods and that kind of stuff, let's say it was a hazmat incident we do with floods where the water actually went right by. But we have to worry about hazmat unintentional or intentional. If it happened in a large city, where is all that material, are you really going to send in first responders who could be impacted by that by accidentally touching something? Then no, like you got to figure out what's going on in the large-scale incident. You know, whether outfitting the drone with infrared or chemical detection capabilities. Now you're getting a 3d image of literally where every single particle is, and it's a huge game changer. So, I'm glad we ended up talking about it.

Guest: Fritz (44m 59s):

6 million bucks, there's a lot to brag about. There's quite a bit of ROI there, so.

Host: John Scardena (45m 4s):

Oh, I know. Tell me about it and that was one mission. Another mission is a brag moment, the Southern California wildfires. First time, this is why drones are now SOP and on all federal responses and why civil air patrol was contracted by FEMA. I went out there, I was pilot and command, by the way, I hate that term. We got it, that's a term we need to change and that's a bit much for drone pilot, whatever. But I was the pilot in command and I had my spotter. We had three giant GIS people back at the JFL and I went out there and we found 33, sorry we found 31 more homes than a 33-person ground crew PDA team and we did it in a third amount of time. We did that at almost no cost. We actually recovered eight homes that the Reaper drone thought had been destroyed because it cannot white out image. You're talking about two people versus 33 people in the field when they were out there for three or four days, we were out there for one day and we fed it back to the JFK and almost real time, they were able to analyze the data. We were able to get the state, their federal decoration faster because we were able to prove the economic loss faster. We actually worked really well with the ground crews because they were able to get into areas.

We were looking at areas, but when they got blocked, they were like, Hey, can you just fly your drone over here? Yeah, sure no problem. We'd be there in an hour. Pack up, go over open, flew over an entire neighborhood, found more homes and the other part of that was wildfires. If you're on the east coast, you might not know these wildfires burned left to right. Or sorry, top-down not left to right. Your home can look perfectly fine from the outside, but the entire inside is gutted because it, Amber burned right through the middle of your home. So that's the other reason why we were able to find so many. So just like it's a wonderful tool. It doesn't replace PDA teams. That ground truth information that you're getting is great.

But I mean, talk about cost saving. You multiply that hundreds of thousands of disasters that we go through globally a year, or the 300 active disasters that we're dealing with right now. Administrator Criswell, you're going be on the show here soon. We applaud you for stepping into FEMA. Now 300 disasters are currently under her belt. So, I mean, it's just crazy stuff that we're talking about here. I can talk about drones forever, but yeah.

Guest: Fritz (47m 46s):

No, that's huge. That experience is invaluable, and once you guys are on scene, adding that kind of value to people who are decision makers and responsible for doing it quickly, efficiently, safely, they don't do it any other way, right and that's a lot of what we're trying to do is just let people know this tool is out there. If you don't have it, ask for it and get it once you have it, it speaks for itself.

Host: John Scardena (48m 11s):

It's kind of fun to talk about both sides of this house right now, because Skydio is obviously a for-profit drone company has a really good product. By the way, again, not official, but just my own personal feelings on it. But it sounds like you're making all the right moves by saying, Hey, let's address all these different issues, whether it's situational awareness, threat detection, de-escalation crime, and accident scenes, like in terms of a for-profit company, you're very socially conscious and you're trying to do something. What I would, it's a weird word, now I would say righteous, it's a righteous endeavor to be able to impact this space.

I applaud you Fritz, who, by the way, before we started recording everybody, I realized that Fritz is the prince of drones because he just has this one name. It's not, you know, Fritz O'Brien or whatever, it's Fritz. So soon is going to be a drone civil it's going to be in a quad copter is going to be a symbol. So also, you're not allowed to sit next to him and award ceremonies, but Fritz, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for talking to us about Skydio’s capabilities. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I've been watching you guys from afar and I think you're doing really great things there. So just thanks again for time talking on the show and talking about tactics versus strategies and drone space. Thanks again.

Guest: Fritz (49m 36s):

No, John appreciate being on here. I mean your list of who you've had on as the who to be included in that is a great honor. And it's really great to talk with you. The work you're doing is amazing. We're glad to be on the same path with you guys.

Host: John Scardena (49m 50s):

Yeah, absolutely. So maybe we can have you back on in the future, again, as a new capabilities rollout, and again, applaud you and both Skydio on the work you're doing. For all those listeners who learned something today, you should have learned something today because we talked about a lot of really great things. We got to say it, we say it every week, it's kind of monotonous, but we're going to say you got to give us that five-star rating and subscribe. If you liked it, you got to send us a comment. I say this, I bring this up every single week. Thank you so much for those emails to info@dobermanemg.com. I always put it out there, but I really put it out there for if you want to work with Doberman Emergency Management. However, if you want to talk to Fritz, if you have questions about using drones, or you want to talk about Skydio, we'll do them a favor. We'll put Skydio’s link in our show notes, so you can check it out there. But you can also put your question, put your comment out on social media so he can see it immediately so we can start addressing some of these ideas. Change your culture, use drones. It's an amazing tool as you heard for the last 50 minutes or so on our show. We'll see you back next week.

#59 Saving Restaurants & Survivors Through Food Relief- Interview with Matt Cohen of Off The Grid

Matt Cohen with Off The Grid found a "win-win" solution when he found a way to save restaurants and provide emotional care through great food in disaster. It's time to throw out those MREs and support small businesses- Off The Grid is changing how to look at food in disaster response.

In the world of COVID-19 and beyond, it's time to look at innovative solutions that overcome traditional disaster norms. One of those is a double-hitter by addressing food as emotional care for survivors, as well as, saving small local restaurants during times of crisis.

Small restaurants are particularly vulnerable to disasters. Between supply chain rout interruptions lack of business from the local community, and staffing constraints- restaurants fail too often in disaster. Ironically, by focusing on the business continuity of restaurants, we also help survivors by providing delicious meals, made by culture of local cuisine. We know that great food, packed with nutrients can counteract the impact of emotional trauma of environmental chaos. Thus, if we focus on creating relationships with the local food community to build business continuity and use their resources to support survivors- we now save two groups. A win-win for emergency services.

Learn more about Off The Grid's mission and strategy to save local restaurants and provide emotional care to survivors by visiting Off The Grid

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. I'm your host to John Scardena, owner of Doberman Emergency Management and former federal emergency response official who's responded to some of the most extreme disasters. Disaster Tough is our mantra, it combines experience, training, and analytics in order to be successful at any stage within the disaster lifecycle, it means being a professional in emergency and disaster services, Doberman Emergency Management lives by this. If your organization needs to fill a gap, please contact us we can help. Contact info is in the show notes.

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Host: John Scardena (2m 84):

Welcome back to the show everybody it's your Host: John Scardena. I am so excited for this week. One year ago, roughly today we talked about business continuity. We talked about small businesses, and most importantly, we talked about restaurants and what they had to be doing in a response of a pandemic and all kinds of crazy disasters. You fast forward a year and I found the man that can answer a lot of our questions, his name is Matt Cohen, he leads off the grid and he's there to specifically help small restaurants get connected to big groups to be able to help people out in disasters, specifically those restaurants to be able to keep them going. It's really exciting to have him on, Matt welcome to the show.

Guest: Matt Cohen (2m 48s):

John, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Host: John Scardena (2m 50s):

I was checking you guys out over 900, in fact at 973,000 meals that you were able to help deliver last alone, which is pretty wild to think about. I know you're based out of there in San Francisco, you have food trucks and you guys saw this opportunity to respond. Now you're touching the emergency management world, tell us more about off the grid and kind of that idea that you guys that had and why did you get into the emergency management space?

Guest: Matt Cohen (3m 23s):

Yeah, so John our story started in the emergency management space in 2017. We really deeply believe in the idea of local food communities and how we can support local food communities. The best way to explain what we do for people who aren't familiar with our company is that we connect local food businesses, typically mobile businesses. So, food trucks, caters pop-ups, cottage food businesses, with opportunities to sell it in the public and we provide the spaces to be able to do that. So, it always seemed like there was this connection to emergency response, but you know quite honestly off the grid, it's been around since 2010. Quite honestly, like how you draw that connection between where we fit in and the emergency response space took us a little bit of time to figure out and so it kind of went from there.

Host: John Scardena (4m 25s):

Well, 2017 was definitely the year to jump in an emergency because like I think that was the first year we had four for type one events in response. We had hurricanes wildfires, a lot of groundbreaking stuff. Unfortunately, we don't want to ever want to be groundbreaking in emergency services.

Guest: Matt Cohen (4m 46s):

I mean, this is the fundamental conundrum, right? Like we want to be able to help. We want to be able to be prepared, but fundamentally we also don't want these things to happen. Right and so that's, that's also that mental shift has been something that our team has had to kind of work through as well.

Host: John Scardena (5m 5s):

Absolutely. The way I like to approach it is, you know, especially for those who are thinking about getting into the field or the people who are really passionate about emergency services, it's not doomsday prepping, great preparedness is making your life easier in response. It takes a crisis and it prevents it from becoming a disaster and what you're doing right now is you're saying, hey, for all those small restaurants, for all those restaurants out there who just need to get out there and help people, that's taking a crisis that could impact their business and allowing them to keep operating it, hence preventing a disaster for those people. Right? So, it's not so much like if or how, but it's about sustainability and be able to return to normal as fast as humanly possible right?

Guest: Matt Cohen (5m 55s):

Well, actually, so what we saw in 2017, because we were at that point only involved in more of a local response in Sonoma and Napa counties, and what we saw was like this amazing energy from the culinary community about wanting to jump in and support these farms and these communities that they work with all the time. Right. But what also became increasingly clear was like those efforts, which were relatively chaotic, those efforts were also relatively unsustainable. So, they could jump in for a few days, they could jump in for five days a week, they could get something donated from suppliers. But ultimately that began to run out over a period of the first seven days of the events and that's really where we began to see like, oh, there is this next step about what happens in terms of recovery, as people move towards stabilizing and they're interested in comfort, but long-term care as well.

Host: John Scardena (6m 57s):

Yeah. There's definitely the psychological side of it as well. We'll get into that in a little bit. But in terms of the organization, it sounds like a lot of support without a lot of organization and what off the grid is doing is providing that organization piece to it. Right. So, in my perspective, we always talk about response and recovery, but there is actually like this middle ground of, we know we're technically not in response anymore because we're not doing lifesaving, but we're definitely not in recovery yet. Maybe we can invent it today on the show, but there needs to be like this, it's not A and B it's B and C, and we've got to figure out what B is, right. Maybe B stands for business, I don't know business.

Guest: Matt Cohen (7m 49s):

Constantly. No, but like there is this middle space that happens where initially it's like people just need food, right. But then it goes past food and their entire life is disrupted and is going to be disrupted for Some time, and food can provide that connection to comfort in a way that really is empowering both to them. But also, I think a lot of people forget what the restaurants that are in those communities are also impacted as well. All of their normal customers, their routines, their habits, are disrupted and they might have come back for months or years. So, you know how to make that connection between the two is that the space that I think is really valuable and important.

Host: John Scardena (8m 37s):

So, okay. Not going to lie, I literally just got back from a family trip to Yosemite and if anybody's been into Yosemite National Park, there is a lot of driving, like an insane amount. Like they say, it's all three or four hours to the park, but then you don't realize that it's another, like two hours to get in the park. But anyway, so it was like so much driving yesterday. At the end of it, we're in the middle of nowhere and it's around dinner time. My two-year-old is super hungry. I'm with my parents, it's a crazy situation and I'm exhausted. We found this restaurant and go in there and I had like, it felt like it was the best steak I ever had. I think it was probably because I was tired, but it rejuvenated me. I felt like oh, I can drive another two hours tonight, it's totally fine. It changed all of our moods and we were happier. It comes back to like what you said, in fact, Matt and I talked that previously about the psychological impact of disaster and what food can do for that and overcoming like effects of PTSD. I just like want our listeners to hear, especially those emergency managers from your perspective, why should they focus on the culinary aspect, not just because that's where we always go to, there's an emotional side of emergency management, especially helping out with survivors. What are your thoughts on that?

Guest: Matt Cohen (10m 2s):

Yeah. I mean, John, I think you bring up a really important point that essentially not all calories are equal, right? I think there is an extreme sensitivity to wanting to provide safe food to those who are in need and obviously be able to meet the needs from a kind of scale place of uncertain amount of people that you need to serve. So, like typically the what kind of path to that is buying pretty commodity type food and serving it in a way that doesn't necessarily rely on refrigeration. It doesn't necessarily rely on kind of food safety needs, and mitigating food safety risks. I think that the point that OTG is trying to do when we are operating in this space is make it just as easy to work with a local restaurant or a local business, to be able to provide the meals to people in need, but actually be able to provide fresh local food that can then have this double bottom line impact to that restaurant in that community, farms in the community when we're doing deliveries and we're facilitating deliveries using local couriers, allow people to get back on their feet. It was really about that sense of like being able to provide delicious food that has all of these kinds of trickle-down additional impacts that are good for communities.

Host: John Scardena (11m 32s):

Man, there's so many layers of like good in that, which I don't know if that's a food pun or not. It's like seven layers of good, but you know let's like talk about the restaurant owner. You've just been impacted by a wildfire, your home's impacted and you got this business that technically can still operate, but you don't have any ways to get supply chain there. All of a sudden, they have supply chain talk about a stress relief and now they get to do what they love or at least get to do what they are used to doing, which is a big part of the psychological response in our recovery of a disaster, just returning to normal. So, you have that whole side of it and then they're serving the customer and seeing the customer feel relief and the customer being relieved, you know? From, again, that analogy of A, B, C, all those points down the line, I think helping out restaurants is a huge deal right now.

Guest: Matt Cohen (12m 33s):

If you take it from a restaurant perspective, the first time that most restaurants right now are thinking about how they can get involved in emergency response, is in the middle of an emergency. So, they're like, we want to get involved, we want to be able to help, but they're also like, how am I going to continue paying my people? Where's my food going to get paid. So, I think what we're trying to do, and this is the kind of ultimate space where OTG has landed is by onboarding them ahead of time, by giving them food, handling standards by pre-negotiated all of the pricing that fit with our contracts at the state level, or with non-NGOs of various places. All of a sudden what we enable them and empower them to be able to do is activate right.

Guest: Matt Cohen (13m 28s):

Which is exactly what they want to do and what they're most passionate about.

Host: John Scardena (13m 32s):

Okay. So, let me ask some questions then, because as a guy that has been out to plenty of disasters myself, all over the country, it's kind of works like this and at least my perspective and tell me how OTG, I like how you keep calling it OTG that's awesome, like the OG now. So, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints brings the food. Typically, the Salvation Army or the Baptist church, Southern Baptist Church cooks the food, Salvation Army/Red Cross gives food to survivor, right? So, you have all these commodities and that's kind of the standing operating procedure that happened after Katrina, because that was a crap shoot between everybody like literally trucks with food were showing up and they were just, nobody would use it because they didn't have those in place. How do you insert yourself into that equation?

Guest: Matt Cohen (14m 31s):

So, there's a few aspects to this, and I think we could talk about a COVID time and a non COVID time, right? So, let's just say during the COVID time, when everybody was sheltered and placed in individual hotels, the idea of being able to meet those food service needs required delivery to a great variety, different spaces. The logistics of that are actually really complicated to be able to do even at large hotel properties. So, what we have, what OTG is best at is the logistics of being able to connect those restaurants, be able to have some sense of control about cuisine type around, around dietary restrictions, labeling, and be able to actually safely transport it to hotel properties. Now that's during COVID right. When we get out of COVID and we get to more of a congregant feeding experience. Well, we're also able to do is use the aggregate amount of restaurants to scale up seamlessly so that the restaurants can continue to maintain their supply chains. Also, at the same time, deliver the meals either in bulk or packaged to be able to be used over an extended period of time so, this can fit into the logistics infrastructure of a salvation army for red cross doing a pickup and actually delivering those meals to the site, or we can help to facilitate that too. Yeah. What we want to do is ultimately just be the best partner that we can to those larger organizations that are involved.

Host: John Scardena (16m 8s):

Yeah. In fact, we've had Patrick Mcginn on here from the Salvation Army and he talked about the logistics of trying to deliver food to all, I think it was 120 hotels in the wildfires last year, and that had never been done before because they always do congregate shelters. All of a sudden, he was looking at it and the state basically said, Hey, can you do this? He said, I'll figure it out. You know, he didn't say this on the show because he's a good guy, but he was run ragged. I'm a personal friend of his, and he's a great friend of the show. I know he was just exhausted. So, like the idea of even releasing that burden a bit of just saying, like using local communities to know how to do this, there does come a question in my mind though, of like personal identifiable information.

Okay, we know they're survivors, not even the hotels knew they're survivors in there. How do you overcome the issue of, okay, we want to work with these communities to get food there, but we can't really let them know who's that for, how's that work out? Have you thought about that at all?

Guest: Matt Cohen (17m 14s):

Yeah, what we actually do it in a couple of different ways. With our logistics platform, what we're able to do is anonymize the information down to the bare minimum necessary in order to meet the delivery need. So, in a congregate site it's less necessary. It's just the amount of people that don't have a specific thing that you need. But when you're talking about a hotel environment or something like that, where names are necessary, but no other information needs to be there. We actually are able to deliver printed labels or labels that can be printed the restaurants so that it can make it to the right place and where it needs to go. If there's more sensitivity than that, we can actually put someone on the ground that can actually facilitate the delivery and limit the information sharing to the absolute minimum amount of people necessary. So, yeah, I mean, I think that what you don't want to do is put people's personal information at risk, obviously at a time when they're in crisis. You know, we've gone through and audited our processes and systems to absolutely eliminate the, or I guess minimize the amount of sharing of personal data at every step of the way.

Host: John Scardena (18m 28s):

Got it. Walk me through the process then let's say, I am, I don't know, an Indian food restaurant, one of my favorite restaurants, right. Just right down the street. I'm hearing that, you know, through the grapevine, I was another food pun, I'm very proud of myself for that. So, I'm hearing that doubt, a couple miles down the road, they're survivors from a disaster I want to help, or hey every year, we're at risk for a wildfire. I know there going to be survivors on the road, I want to be able to help as a restaurant. How does that process happen from completion? How do they actually get food into the hands of the survivor if they just want to help?

Guest: Matt Cohen (19m 13s):

I think for us, it actually starts ahead of time. I think here's a call to action for the emergency managers that are out there listening to this, which is if you know of restaurants that have done a great job working with you in the past, we'd love that connection. Please go to offthegrid.com. Please let them know about our website because we're onboarding them right now. So, what we're doing when we work with a restaurant is we're collecting their insurance information, their health certificate, making sure that they have safe food handling practices. We send them an onboarding process. That basically is a kind of a get started kit and an onboarding kit to our program.

Guest: Matt Cohen (19m 56s):

It, it allows them to understand how to print the necessary menus. It allows them to understand the sizing and the portioning that would be appropriate so that they can activate in the event that something happens in their region within a few counties away, whatever they're willing to do, that they can activate and jump in and help people. So really for us, the most important thing, just like that restaurant not wanting to get started with all the paperwork in the middle of an emergency for us. We want to get ahead too, and we're in the process of onboarding people right now.

Host: John Scardena (20m 35s):

Okay, your process includes both the supply chain route and actually working directly with the survivor in like, for example a congregate shelter, right? Yep. So, if I'm a restaurant owner or more importantly, if I'm a manager and I'm saying, okay, obviously I need to start thinking about food as an X factor in business continuity and I'm a local emergency manager at a County. I'm like, oh right, I should be including businesses. We always include businesses for critical infrastructure and for all kinds of different stuff. But what you're saying is we need to include those restaurants. If they are pairing with off the grid or pairing with that kind of mentality from an emergency management perspective, I guess my thoughts or my question would lead towards how does the emergency manager connect those dots between the two, and how does that cost share even happen? Are they getting paid from the county? You know, what is, what is the cost analysis there?

Guest: Matt Cohen (21m 40s):

Yeah. I think the conversation can start in a variety of different ways, but what off the grid, really what we found the value in as being the one point of contact to be able to then distribute the meal opportunities amongst a group of restaurants. If you happen to be in a particularly rural area to go out and find other restaurants that maybe are in your immediate area, but are in the adjacent areas to be able to give you a resiliency. So, the funding, if it's a county, typically that's getting into longer stage recovery. So maybe there's FEMA funding associated with that.

Guest: Matt Cohen (22m 20s):

And we're happy to talk about where the funding source for that could be, or it could be coming in our case from the state of California or from charitable organizations.

Host: John Scardena (22m 31s):

So basically, you're trying to get an MOU in place that if the restaurants involved, sorry, memorandum of understanding that of restaurants involved and they provide services, then the check comes from the government to resupply. You're not going to survivors for example, and saying, hey pay us $12.99 for your meal, right?

Guest: Matt Cohen (22m 54s):

Yes, that's exactly right. I think our kind of first principles are that emergency response for the restaurant should strengthen it rather than harm it. That it should be as easy and simple and delicious for someone who's impacted by an emergency to be able to get a meal. That's obviously free of charge. So, what we're trying to do is bridge the funding source with the logistics and the need in order to make it super easy for an emergency manager, to be able to say, this is exactly what I need, but not necessarily worry about how many restaurants it'll take to get to that name.

Host: John Scardena (23m 38s):

Okay I want to switch gears here for a second, because obviously it's always about the survivor, but now I'm thinking about that stake too much. So that's a problem. But in terms of emergency management, I've been out on disasters where the first couple of weeks out there, I eat one meal a day and I was working like 18 hours a day. I am definitely not as important as survivor, obviously, however, that support system that is required to sustain survivors, I do feel for those, you know, I feel for the wildland firefighters, especially who are at an incident command base for months fighting these fires, they don't do anything with survivors. Does off the grid do anything with that? Or is there MOU that you guys are looking to work directly with the responders, like how does that work?

Guest: Matt Cohen (24m 29s):

So typically, what we've done with, especially kind of more remote supportive firefighters has all been through kind of charitable pathways rather than MOU, is of course the exact same thing could work with an MOU. But typically, what's great about OTG is in those remote places, we can actually spend a food truck to those remote places and it can get supplements to what is normally there, or it can be something where we're stationing people and we're cycling food trucks through even bringing them in from out of state. I think there's a lot of flexibility there, but typically yeah, we'll bring the food to wherever the need is.

Host: John Scardena (25m 16s):

Yeah, so I just spent all last week with Urban Search and Rescue at the State Urban Search and Rescue 2021 training certification that just happened and a really incredible, I mean, true heroes, people who are going into pancakes buildings, that's not upon. That's actually what they call it, where, you know, we were laying on glass and rubble on my chest and the ceiling was on my back and we were helping out survivors inside buildings for the entire week.  I would want to give every single resource I could to them so that they could do their job effectively, and it does take a toll and anything that you can do to like to release that toll on our responders so they can keep helping people. I mean, that's a big deal right off the grid aside. I mean, off the grid sounds like an amazing concept, but what we're actually talking about is food to increase resiliency. Actually, what I should say is food to create more tough people. Right, yeah, really cool concept.

Guest: Matt Cohen (26m 25s):

Yeah and I think, again from our perspective, I think maybe a lot of that hurdle has been around foodborne illness concern right. I think that there are ways to overcome that, that make a lot of sense and allow for breaking out of the environment of just the MRE, right. Or, a very limited food supply. So, I think they're interesting creative ways to overcome that. We're excited to just be having that conversation with people and be educating them about the different ways that that can happen.

Host: John Scardena (27m 5s):

That's a real concern. You saw our teams bring their own food with them because of that. They're so afraid of getting sick. So, if you're going to talk directly to them, what would you say?

Guest: Matt Cohen (27m 17s):

I mean, bottom line, there's not one single solution for any given problem, right? So, if you're out in a remote place and there's a small group of people, the needs associated with feeding that small group is very different than a much larger group where you might bring in more infrastructure. What I would say is it's a conversation where it's about what's the best thing to meet the need. Then we have a whole array of tools to be able to support that. Whether it's bringing in local food businesses, providing them with a truck themselves, bringing in local trucks, or being able to support by actually providing the assembly offsite and bringing it there and making sure it’s transported safely. There's like a whole bunch of ways to be able to make it happen. But it's really about the right process that aligns with health code standards as well.

Host: John Scardena (28m 15s):

Yeah. I mean, the pin debit really highlighted that, right, of like not all disasters are also created equal. Not all disasters are regional disasters, I'm really curious to see the numbers after all of this. I hope it's not as bad as I think it is, but FEMA has the stat that 40% of all small businesses do not recover after a disaster and 25% that do come back, fail within a year. We obviously know that restaurants are a big part of that. I mean, on average, you probably know this better than I do, but it takes about a year before even a small business, small restaurant, can become profitable so that first year is the scary year.

Guest: Matt Cohen (28m 60s):

Yep. The stat that is being thrown around right now in the Bay Area and I think it's probably relevant for the rest of the country as well, is that 50% of restaurants were put at financial risk of going out of business over the course of the of the pandemic. It'll take two years or more to recover financially, even if they get back up to the level of sort of business that they were doing pre-pandemic. So, in this environment, it has been totally destabilizing, these are the major employers and communities, and these are small businesses that are kind of the fabric of what make an individual place to feel special.

Host: John Scardena (29m 54s):

It sounds like you are intimately involved with these businesses and you're able to understand their pain points I got to ask, and this is kind of outside the realm. So, you can pass the buck on this one, if you want to. But all those stories that came out last year about the personal protection payment program, or something that the protection payment program and like Ruth Chris get. If you don't really follow the story, everybody listening in like what happened was, you had to be a small business and it had to be under a certain amount of money. I had all of these things, but then these huge restaurant chains were claiming franchises and they were getting the money and it like ate up a lot of the first round of money because the era to figure out how to go around it, do you agree with that? Because you're like, okay, they are franchises and they are people or where you're like, man, that could have really been much more effective. It went to other organizations. What was your take on that?

Guest: Matt Cohen (30m 53s):

I mean, I think that the kind of the outrage, as I understand it around PPP in particular was about well, capitalized companies. So, Ruth Chris publicly traded company, right? So well-capitalized company in the marketplace going and kind of extracting value from the program and putting other people's ability to take advantage of the program at risk. I think that what I can say is for restaurant in general, the PPP program has been moderately effective because what the PPP program does in order to get to forgiveness for restaurants is it requires them to maintain payroll.

But if you don't have customers coming in the door, what is the payroll going toward? Right. I think in the most recent legislation that went through, there's the Restaurant Recovery Act, which if your gross receipts are, I believe 30% lower than the previous year, there's an opportunity for a grant. It's targeted really mainly at small restaurants and small businesses. I think there's a second piece of the package that's really relevant. But I think where really the PPP kind of impact was really around, oh, well, I have employees I can keep them on, but where can they go by the way, what a great fit for this topic about allowing them to be able to continue working and be able to provide these kinds of services. So that's what we've done. I think, a year, the number that you used at the opening of the show, I think now we're in excess of 1.3 million meals that we provide in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose by operating these programs and supporting these restaurants.

Host: John Scardena (32m 55s):

Incredible. I mean, that's really incredible. Yeah. That's interesting take on the PPP and the fact that it sounds like there's been improvements to that. Interesting about that, I like hearing it from your perspective because everybody, I mean, you read these articles and you're like, okay, if you're going to talk about disaster response, I'm your guy. But hearing about this is really fascinating to think about. You talked earlier about preparing for the future, and we're all obviously all about preparing for the future, right? I'm going to look at it from like that preparing the business continuity plan. I'm a county emergency manager, or even for example, if I worked for a federal agency that required a business continuity plan, and we're working with the community around us, what would be your top three things that they should do now in order to be able to support those local businesses?

Guest: Matt Cohen (33m 53s):

I think that the first thing is really assessing scale of response and what exactly is weather, you know, tabletop, exercise, whatever. But like, what exactly is the emergency in order for us, if we were going to have a conversation in order for us to assess what is the order of magnitude of how many restaurants are needed to support a particular place? So, an example of this is we're preparing for different amounts of response in 39 counties all over state of California, not all of those 39 counties have the same demand. What we're trying to do is meet kind of the threshold that'll be able to respond to different orders of magnitude of response. Then there's a whole kind of secondary series of interesting conversations to be had about what I would love. My dream would be that there are predefined spaces where in the event of a certain level of an emergency that the local community can activate and turn on. Then the final one is about the kind of reality of the economics of the response and some understanding of an MOU. So that action can be taken and those restaurants can be activated.

Host: John Scardena (35m 18s):

Yeah, that sounds kind of on par with what we do with typing it out, type one, type two, type three. I would like to see something like that. If I was going to do a business continuity plan today, and government does these plans for different organizations and that's fine. But I would really like to see it also incident based because you look at a hurricane or tornado, your survivors are your survivors and the people that you're working with are directly impacted. But if you're in something like an active shooter, it's going to be the families and your survivor base has actually expanded now to people who are hyper aware that the world could be dangerous. Something happened to their kid or something could have happened to their kid and providing that. Again, going back to that Patrick Mcginn’s statement of emotional and spiritual care, man, sometimes eating food is pretty spiritual, right? It's an interesting thought process of incident type as well.

Guest: Matt Cohen (36m 23s):

No, I think to that point, I think the other thing about using local businesses is those businesses are reflective of local community values in a way that kind of larger entity that's just kind of preparing food as just a product maybe isn't considering, right? So, the kind of universe of diversity and equity and inclusion and having like a lens into that in emergency response is I think another area where this is a really cool opportunity to be able to serve those needs of a community that might be lower income, or coming from a particular demographic perspective.

Host: John Scardena (37m 15s):

Okay. That my mind is suspending with ideas right now to tell me a few things is unrealistic. So, we had two kids in the last two years, we're ballers in that way, but we had a really great community of like friends and family who like dropped off food or would make meals for us. Then, you know, depending on like the level of surgery, whether it's giving birth or something else, it would be amazing if, and as part of either your insurance or as part of an NGO outreach that said, Hey, if you're going to give birth, we're going to deliver one meal a day for the next six weeks, even like super localized like that.

I mean, you could start pairing this off to any level of disruption in your normal life. Now, having a kid is a wonderful disruption, but it is a disruption, right? Mom's on sleeping, dad's trying to help out like the whole deal. There's lots of different ways that she could pair this, whether you're an emergency manager or you're actually just trying to look at it for your family, you know, and just who orders food six weeks out. Right? Nobody does that. But if he did that from good food, I mean, might change some stuff too.

Guest: Matt Cohen (38m 32s):

No, I think actually there's an interesting connection here to data, because in the past, all of the steps that you described about the kind of acknowledgement that there's been an event in someone's life and an action being taken is that provides a variety and something that will feel comforting and delicious, that'll arrive directly to someone, all of those kinds of tools existed in separate places and they were hard to integrate together. But, the world that we're living in right now and the tools that we think about building on in terms of emergency response are all about integrating those things seamlessly together so that you can use really powerful data around be able to identify the people who have a particular need, be able to reach them through social media tools or through a variety of different kinds of mechanisms where there'll be at, qualify them and then seamlessly basically onboard them into a process that begins giving them comfort in a variety of different ways. That's actually literally what we did for our grocery program in San Jose, where we actually took the tools to amplify what was a traditional community groups and local government communications plan, and be able to qualify people and onboard them into the program that wouldn't have otherwise known about it.

Host: John Scardena (40m 20s):

Yeah, fascinating. Okay, if that's all true and you're moving and you're looking all this data, what is the data telling you about the future? What do you think is most important to focus on? And really for the people who are listening to this show, we're the guys writing the plans, we're the guys and girls writing the plan. What do they need to do? What are the next steps?

Guest: Matt Cohen (40m 44s):

So, I think one of the pain points that we've heard from a lot of people who are responsible for managing a disaster response and emergency response is that sometimes the data comes to them slowly. Oftentimes the data isn't necessarily actionable about the experience of what the people receiving care feel about that experience, and what we are really interested in being able to do is number one, provide as real-time data as we can about what's actually happening. As everyone knows situations change quickly on the ground and being adaptable is important, but also being able to connect that to a survivor response, that they can actually feel empowered to be able to have some control, but also some feedback around, yeah this was good, thank you for this. That message can go to the restaurant, but that message can also go the emergency response manager so that they are understanding about what's actually happening on the ground to the people they're trying to support. That's where we're trying to go in the future.

Host: John Scardena (42m 1s):

That's cool. Okay. I have to ask because I'm looking at the time here, we're starting to run out of time. Let's say, what's your final pitch? If you were going to talk to our community, I deal with guys look like the reality is we're already burned out, everybody's burned out. I actually, I'm doing great, but because I just went to Yosemite.

Guest: Matt Cohen (42m 22s):

I mean, you're burned out because of your two kids.

Host: John Scardena (42m 28s):

Avery energizes me, but like seriously, what's your pitch to us, you know off the grid is an amazing concept and you're reminding all of us a business continuity and restaurants can help out, you know not just the owners which we care a lot about, but we also care about the survivors, obviously. What's your pitch?

Guest: Matt Cohen (42m 51s):

I think bottom line, if the idea of allowing local restaurants to be able to meet your needs is attractive to you, but it feels overwhelming to think about how to even engage with that. I'd love to have a conversation with you, right? Because what we understand is, you can be uncompromising about meeting the demands when you're put in this situation to be responding to it and you can be uncompromising around delivering safe food to people, but we are aiming to be the solution for how they can take what seems like a complicated thing and make it simple. So that's the pitch and I think anecdotally, what we know is that by each successive event, that we're involved in, that we're building the trust of the community and hopefully that trust will precede us wherever we go.

Host: John Scardena (43m 54s):

That's a great pitch, 1.3 million meals are pretty good metrics picking up data. Congratulations to you there, Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm a huge fan of emotional spiritual care and emergencies. I've seen it in real time with the 2011 disaster, which I think I've told people about on this show before with the tsunami and researchers going in there, adding a schedule, trying to get people to return back to normal and providing better than an MRE, providing great nutrients, great meals, to be able to trick their body and their mind that everything's okay and it helped those people respond or recover faster. I love the mission of off the grid. I think what you're doing is great things and I really think my listeners to give you a check you out. What we're going to do is we're going to put Off the Grid, your website in our show notes. You're not a sponsor. We should probably tell people that we just thought it was a great idea. I love the idea of what I heard about it. So, yeah. Thanks again Matt for coming on the show.

Guest: Matt Cohen (45m 1s):

John, thanks for the time. I really appreciate it.

Host: John Scardena (45m 6s):

Absolutely. If you liked this episode, if it made you think about business continuity to a whole new way, which has showed up because it was a pretty amazing concept. You got to give us that five-star rating. So lame, but we ask every time give us a five-star rating, subscribe to our podcast, come back next week. If you have a question for Matt, you can do it a couple of ways. Like I said, we're going to put his Off the Grid company in our show notes. So, you can reach out to them directly, you can ask us on social media. Oh my gosh, we get so many emails. Thank you for the emails. But I keep on saying this, ask on social media. So, because other people have the similar question and Matt can see it there too. If you want to work with Doberman Emergency Management, you have a question about business continuity plans, you need a continuity plan yourself, you can always reach out to us at info@dobermanemg.com and we'll see you next week.

#58 FEMA's Pandemic Response - Interview with the National Vaccination Coordinator Joe Dellamura

Joe Dellamura returns to the Disaster Tough Podcast to talk about FEMA's mission to vaccinate the U.S. Joe has been designated as the National Vaccination Coordinator and speaks to the innovation required to accomplish this mission.

Vaccination sites, supply-chains, and innovation - Joe Dellamura returns to the Disaster Tough Podcast to discuss the complexities, successes, and lessons learned happening in real-time as FEMA seeks to support States in a mass COVID-19 vaccination mission.

Joe is a logistics chief at FEMA Headquarters, previously assigned as White House Liaison during the testing mission. Joe provides strategic level insight into this Pandemic Response.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. I'm your host to John Scardena, owner of Doberman Emergency Management and former federal emergency response official who's responded to some of the most extreme disasters. Disaster Tough is our mantra, it combines experience, training, and analytics in order to be successful at any stage within the disaster lifecycle, it means being a professional in emergency and disaster services, Doberman Emergency Management lives by this. If your organization needs to fill a gap, please contact us we can help. Contact info is in the show notes.

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Host: John Scardena (2m 37s):

Welcome back to the show everybody! It’s your host, John Scardena and I am so excited to have Joe Dellamura back on our show. If you recall, I think it was in January, he was just stepping off of one major project and jumping into another major project with COVID-19 response with FEMA. He's a logistics Chief there. In fact, he was the logistics Chief that was assigned to the white house task force during the COVID testing phase. It's pretty incredible his experiences there. Now he's working on about a million different other projects, not just with COVID, but with everything else there at FEMA, Joe, welcome back to the show.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (3m 15s):

Hey thanks, John. Happy to be back.

Host: John Scardena (3m 18s):

Let's talk about it as some from January. The testing mission finished, you got all that ramped up, you did like a lot of innovative things there. We talked about that last time. What have you been working on since January?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (3m 33s):

Seems like just about everything. We've been primarily focused on the national vaccine campaign at FEMA, as you may recall, one of the campaigns promises and inauguration speech items was a 100 million shots in arms in first 100 days, we far exceeded that obviously at this point. But we've been working basically on the deployment of personnel and vaccine to meet that goal, my role now is that serve as the national vaccination coordinator for FEMA, which involves the deployment of medical forces to all states and territories, in order to administer the vaccine to the selected populations you need.

Host: John Scardena (4m 17s):

To start putting up your titles as awards on your wall or something like trophies, because these titles that they're giving you, I mean, the role that you're doing, it's just so incredible to think about and to be placed in that role. I'm sure you feel that weight of responsibility. Let's talk about that actually specifically for a little bit because you have done really well in your career to be able to put yourself in a position of trust and to get the job done, essentially, wherever you go. Whether it was on the national IMAT, you had this reputation for just like this man handling the event, and then you get into FEMA headquarters, and you're put in these incredible roles. For those emergency managers or those assistants who are like, man, I wish I was more impactful, wish I could do more in my career, what advice would you give them?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (5m 11s):

Well, luck is certainly one word for it. I don't know that I would use that. I'm also not on a seven second delay, so I won't use the word that I would choose and one of these certificates back there does have the last title on it. I haven't gotten one for this one yet, but a good observation in reference to how it got done, honestly, it's opportunity and preparedness. My educational background is in public health, which up until this point, I really minimally use it in my career at FEMA. We deployed back in 14 to Ebola, but that was largely administrative wasn't, overly operational.

It just so happened that we lined up this last round and it just seems like it's been one after another, right. We talked last time, I just got off the testing and only about two weeks later, I got onto this, and it just lined up to me to be a situation where I was able to actually get involved at another high level. Just said, hey, this guy, we gave him the hardest thing last time, they're okay with it, we'll give him out again. So, advice take as many classes as you can, be prepared and know your strengths and your weaknesses, because just how I got the opportunity to do this twice, because we were successful last time. If we crashed and burned last time, I'm not sure they wouldn't tag me to do it a second time. So, know your strengths, know your limitations, take every opportunity that you can, especially young in your career, which I used to say young in my career, it's been over eight years now. So, I guess I'm not as young in my career as I would've liked been, but you know, just take those opportunities as they come to you and don't be afraid to turn something down. If you don't know what you're doing, because you know, one screw up will outdo a lot of Atta boys. So that's something to keep in mind for those emerging in the field.

Host: John Scardena (7m 5s):

Yeah. That's really good most people don't say that. I think there's a lot of value in that. In fact, I think that can actually open some doors for you, but just by saying, Hey, that's not my background to be able to be brave enough to say that puts you in a position of trust, right. But like, to be honest, Joe I don't think you've really ever had to do that to be real like that.

So, when I joined the national team, there was already this crazy reputation for like, just Joe has to do a million different things and he's always able to get all of them done. That was before you and I even really started talking. So, you've always had this reputation for just hard work. Like you will get the job done if you give it to Joe, like you you'll do it. You've had probably very limited opportunities to say like, Hey, I don't do that because you're able to do so much. That call out to just keep learning, keep training, I think that's probably why you're able to do that, right? Because you keep seeking that stuff out on that same vein, like your position now, I like how you said, hey, I wasn't really using my degree, but there was an opportunity to rise, opportunity and preparation, and you're able to attack. You know, kudos to you for doing such a great job with that there at FEMA.

What is like the next steps there then with the pandemic? What are you, if you've been doing all things pandemic, you still have 300 disasters. You guys took a ploy to last year that you guys were dealing with. So, what is 2021 and what does 2022 projections look like for FEMA?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (8m 59s):

Well, I can tell you kind of for me, and for FEMA, are kind of one in the same. I always seem to be whatever we're working on. I always seem to get tagged in some regard, which I'm thankful for. I'm always happy to work, I'd rather be too busy than too bored. I think one of the things, you know, we're still working on the vaccine campaign. We're not done yet, I still have over 6,000 folks from the federal family deployed given shots. Right now, we just awarded the national COVID-19 vaccination contract, which is the largest ceiling contract in FEMA's history that just got awarded, just got through Congress and that's out enrolling now.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (9m 41s):

That's going to take a lot of the federal resources out of the fight and replace them with contractors, which is what we need, because we need to retool and get folks back in the sack and ready to go for hurricane season. When we're using assets, for example, that firefighting is already fire season. So, FEMA, you know, obviously getting ready for the next one is what we do best. But as one of your previous guests Brock Long and a big fan of Brock Long and a call out to him, he said, if FEMA was a car engine, it had been red lining since 2017, we're still red lining. We're still past that point where we would be that I've seen in the past prior to right around 2017.

We're going to go at these a hundred miles an hour until we complete it. We're going to go up the next thing, a hundred miles an hour. Then we're seeing new mission spaces for FEMA. I mean, obviously right now, the colonial pipeline attacks are going on prior to the pandemic, we had a big cyber security planning exercise. We had to cancel because of the pandemic. You know, I can see those efforts ticking back up. Now it just seems to be that we're kind of the government's duct tape for whenever something breaks. So, who knows what's on the horizon, obviously we're a hurricane organization. That's really been what we've done. We've evolved in the pandemic space, we've evolved into the adversary-based threat space with acts of terrorism, acts of cyber security. But we're still in that business where we're going to do whatever we're asked to do by the Chief Executive and it seems like that mission space grows constantly. We're going to keep doing this until probably July and then we'll see what happens. Hopefully it's a quiet hurricane season.

Host: John Scardena (11m 24s):

Yeah. Good luck with that, I mean last year was the most named hurricanes in US history. I mean, you mean you bring up a good point. Brock brought up a good point with the red lining and you obviously touched on that. I liked what Pete said to me on the last week's episode where he said, most of what FEMA does obviously is like dollars in recovery or dollars in mitigation. But this was like one of the first examples with the pandemic as agency wide, they're working in prevention of loss of life in an active disaster. You know, we'd get in there and we would try to support the state and that was a response, but that's such a small scale compared to the entire agency working on this.

What is one of the after actions now that you're pulling out of that almost response phase, hopefully response to recovery here fairly soon. I mean, again, kudos to FEMA, kudos to everybody, to meeting that mission of a hundred million people vaccinated for that campaign promise and beyond what are the after actions now? What are you looking at?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (12m 36s):

Yeah. You know, the after action, I never thought after action planning would ever be so involved and I ever be actually interested to seeing it on the disasters. John, you get the after-action planning person, it seems like they're coming out on a disaster vacation. I write some stuff down and the recommendations are all stuff you already knew. I can tell you how our after-action shop was big on the last mission, obviously between all the operation air bridge, and then our testing operation, you know we've definitely seen some lessons learned from there and then we're learning a lot here, particularly. It's less than a FEMA after action because what we're doing and FEMA is no different than what we normally do.

It's just on a greater scale, right? So, FEMA's business has always just been logistics. Another call out to Brock Long. He said, the only reason you get fired is if you fail in logistics, right? We're not going to fail in logistics. And we haven't, what we're doing is removing basically people money and things around. And we're learning that some of our other federal partners are not as used to this level of battle rhythm or this level of deployability. A lot of these actions are going to be more after actions for our federal partners, because we, you know, as a female employee, and I'm sure you had to do the same thing when you signed up, you had to sign a form. It said every employee is an emergency manager.

I understand I may be deployed at any time. Well, the people that are in deployment for the federal family, a lot of them didn't have to sign that. A lot of them had to pull their personnel off of active jobs to get them to do this. I think it speaks back to national readiness where your skillset might be needed where you don't think so. Here's the example I'll give at the peak of this, I've had over 6,500 personnel deployed at the same time for the clinical side of the vaccine campaign and that's inclusive of the whole federal family to include DOD. But one of the shortfalls that we realized quickly was in pharmacy. There are just not enough pharmacists that work for the federal government.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (14m 41s):

It got to the point where DOD was having to close some of their clinics to support the general population. It got to that point. We started figuring out, okay, what are these pharmacists actually doing? We came up with the zoologist approach where what they're doing obviously is a required work of a licensed pharmacist, but all of the technician jobs underneath them, reconstituting, mixing, thawing of vaccine. That's something that anyone with a general science background can do. What we did was we did a quick search on USA jobs for categories and the 13 and 1400 class that are scientists. We started deploying people that aren't pharmacy technicians, but I have soil scientists from EPA, I had industrial hygienists from department of labor. We have folks that were generally over at the Smithsonian that did like some kind of like agriculture science. We had biological science technicians that generally work for USDA in farm domestic biological substances.

We said, Hey, can you mix these vaccines? It could, but the real part in that lesson learned that these are folks that have worked at the same lab all the time, the same clinic all the time. They didn't have travel cards. They didn't have any kind of, because I've never had a trial for, they didn't have any kind of family preparedness when we deployed the same. We noticed our families moved back in 30 days or whatever the case may be. So how do we greater prepare the federal workforce? Even if they're not a double 89 emergency manager, how do we prepare them to have that same mobility if the call to action comes? And I think that's one of the biggest after actions we'll take away from that.

Host: John Scardena (16m 21s):

I'm not kidding when I say this, I think you should write a book about that. Seriously. If you were talking about the single after-action point, you could probably write a 200-page document that, you know just explaining that. I mean, that is fascinating to think about you're right, because of Craig Fugate, speaking of another FEA administrator we got now three, we'll see if we can bring up a fourth or fifth on the call, but Brownie right, there we go. There's a part of that.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (16m 56s):

He’s already got a show. I believe he hosts a radio show, Colorado, as far as I know.

Host: John Scardena (16m 59s):

I got to get him on the show then he seems like a nice guy. But anyways, so there was Craig on the show talking about how they switched over everybody to, you're an emergency manager, you could be deployed. He said he wanted to just make that a fast and quick rule within FEMA and there was a lot of pushback by people who like you said, we're eating in FEMA and they're like, wait, I didn't sign up for that. You know? There was a cultural change that took a couple of years to get every single person at FEMA to sign that document, let alone in the federal government, under the federal government, everyone should have to sign that essentially because of Stafford Act right. That's a great call-out during a national emergency under the Stafford act, every single federal employee should have to have that level of preparedness set up so that they could understand that essentially, they’ll be working for FEMA in a disaster you know? So that's really fascinating that you bring that up to be honest. I've heard all these after actions out there, that is the first one I've heard that I'm like, that needs to be implemented immediately, right? Because it makes sense. Great example, a good friend of mine now I talk to him every once in a while, Sean Rooney was a department of Homeland security and not deployable, never deployed and we needed more GIS assets. So, DHS said they were going to send out four people. They found out he didn't do GIS. He was a writer and he got on the field. He was like, hey, I'm going to be here for 30 days. I can go to the library and learn GIS if you want and I was like, what? I was like, no, that's not how we're going to use you. We figured out his capability and got him in and mixing the tempo. 30 days later he helped us get it, the drone, because he did all the write-up for the drone. That was like a big shout out to him. But a guy who had military experience who is part of the federal government was part of DHS didn't understand like that operational tempo and what was required there. You know, to his credit he learned. But I can only imagine how many people either pushed back or didn't understand, or lack that competency that you brought up, just fascinating to think about. Do you think that hurt your response at all by them just having to deal with those personnel things?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (19m 31s):

Yeah. I can give you an example. We did a call out under what's called surge capacity force, which is DHS surge capacity force that was created. I believe it was created during Sandy. It was to fill positions for FEMA employees to augment our regular duties and program areas. What we try to use search capacity for is to fill clinical, because we understand other DHS components like border patrol, which we deployed some of them and ICE and those folks have medical folks because they run prisons or they run occupational health programs or something. So, we started doing call outs to them to get them roster, but because they aren't filling a theme job there because FEMA doesn't have clinical personnel, you know, they weren't necessarily rostered. We were running into all kinds of problems that we would get, I did a memo DHS wide and people were just replying back to me. I was getting random guys that work at UFC that used to be combat medics, hey, I can come for three days, but then I have a Bar Mitzvah to go to and I can't go. So, I can come for these three days and these two days later. Or, Hey, I can only come after work from seven to nine. Or Hey, I can only go in the beltway area. So, it was just a lot of this. They were all just replying direct me. Like I was waiting on that. They were the only guy I was waiting on to get rid of COVID-19. Out of that whole thing, we only got about four people.

Despite the fact that we probably were dealing with a pool of over a thousand, because all these folks had all these questions. What should I wear? You know, all of these like weird admin questions because none of them has ever been prepared. A lot of them don't have travel agents. They don't have it. There's never been a need. If you're a nurse at an occupational health clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, you've probably never had to go anywhere on official business before. So, a lot of them didn't have it. I'm more geo locked to those areas that if we needed them in that area would work. But you know, not every town got one of these community banks.

Host: John Scardena (21m 36s):

I think that should be standard for all federal employees to have a travel card.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (21m 40s):

I think so. I know I'm also a member of the Coast Guard Reserves. Every single reserve gets a travel card, regardless if their job is to guard the same gate at the same base for their whole career, or if they're on part of a deployable detachment. Every single person, it's part of your requirements every year to have a travel card. So, I think that's a good model. I think for a lot of federal agencies, particularly those occupation sets that we just don't have a lot of throughout the government. We probably don't need every secretary to have one, but there's just not as many nurses as one might think in the federal government folks that would be helpful. You know, it doesn't take much as a contingency. You don't have to fund it. You can put a penny on it to keep it open, but it might be something that takes a long time to do, but it's not a difficult thing, really an administrative burden and all the mechanisms are already there.

Host: John Scardena (22m 29s):

So that's one solution, right? Okay. Every federal employee gets a travel card, done. Next solution that you have to deal with is that preparedness level. Do you think that in their orientation for their job, that there should be like a one hour, Hey, you are in federal employee. That means Stafford Act and Stafford Act means if the worst of the worst happens, we get to deploy. Do you think it'd be easier to make that pitch to do that because of COVID now?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (22m 57s):

Yes and no. I think that to do the pitch and orientation point, wouldn't be much of a challenge when it comes time to operationalize that. I think when it comes time to actually push these folks out the door, and that's where we ran into our stopping point, because we can do your theme of travel card, we can put you on centralized billing and we can pay for your travel and stuff. We can rent your hotel for you. The problem is with getting that individual police supervisor or supervisory chain to approve it. We did this during a huge transition period in the federal government, you know, with the new administration, all of the new cabinet members were coming in and a lot of them that we’re asking them to do something we never asked any of their predecessors to do. So, they're hesitant to allow their folks to deploy.

I mean, we were pulling biological science technicians out of laboratories that make defense materials and asking them to go out and do vaccines, and you know, as a new department of ag secretary might look at that and say, that's hurting my mission to be prepared with biological agents. You know, that's hurting my mission at the EPA to provide safe drinking water. I'm not going to provide those personnel because I I'm worried I'm new in this position. I don't know the state of everything. So, having the individual employee ready is important, but also getting the agencies concurrence to allow those employees, a lot of agencies don't have excess staff sitting around and waiting for FEMA, right. Those folks would get a reduction in force if that happens. Convincing, you know, cabinet level folks to shut down certain programs for 30 or 60 days to help us, that's really where the hard part comes in.

Host: John Scardena (24m 39s):

Yeah. That's a competency issue, that's an ego issue. Yeah. That's a lack of, when I say competency, what I really mean is we always talk about transfer of power, peaceful transfer of power. Right? Part of that process probably should be a training mechanism for the old and the new cabinet level or whatever. Anytime there's a switch, I would hope that, you know, I'm sure he did, Brock gave plenty advice to Pete. Pete probably gave plenty of advice to Dan Criswell. I'm sure that that just happened because our field matches a little bit better, but when you get higher up and it gets political man, that's one area that we have to all work a little bit better on to make sure that the mission goes above the person, right. A great call out there. What would be another solution? I'm just curious, I'm just diving down the rabbit hole at this point. What would you change?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (25m 44s):

I there's a whole lot of things that need to be changed and a lot of it goes down to the state level. As I've heard, you know, some of the former administrators that were on here also talk about, states need to take a little more responsibility for this mission. So, the same way where there's all these moral hazards that are created by some of the under-insurance that they have in the traditional disaster realm. We see a lot of states that don't want to take responsibility, or they want to push it to the federal government. And we're getting ours, for example, we just did a request a couple of days ago to set up a mobile vaccination site in a very rural state and on that request came about 24 personnel critical personnel. Which, okay I mean, I'm hard pressed to take a state, doesn't have 24 EMT sitting around, but okay, we'll fill that. But on that also came things like traffic and saw horses and tables and minivans, and I'm thinking, does that entire state, is there a national shortage on traffic counts because the entire state doesn’t have the ability to provide a hundred traffic cones for this site. Is there a big shortage on minivans? Can they not go to enterprise the same way the federal government would go to enterprise and rent a minivan? So, I think a lot of these states are all too happy to just pass the buck and not look internally at what they have available. We, for example, title 32 National Guard Assets, FEMA has authorized the expenditure for a certain amount of National Guard Assets in every state depending on how many forces you had, how many are employed overseas, how many were available.

Here's been what we call a force cap developed for every state and say, it's 3000 personnel. I get those Forecast numbers every day. How many of the authorized 3000 are deployed? Some states are 40 or 50 people are deployed under that force cab. They don't want to use their guardsman and then they're asking me for 150 staff. My first thing is why aren't you using your car? A lot of times when we send those questions back to them, we don't get that request back again. A lot of them, they know they can do it. A lot of them don't want it.

Host: John Scardena (27m 49s):

Well, they’re not incentivized to do it. That was a Brock Long thing. There was no incentive to get these states to say, hey, if we do everything we can to mitigate, if we put it up the dollars in the right spot, we put the person on the right spot, our cost share should go up with a federal government disaster. That's what Brock's pitches essentially. The federal government will fit a higher bill, but if they do a lot less, the federal government shouldn't have to pay for so much. I kind of tend to agree with that. I think there's lots of ways to do that, but it's like that 1978 flood insurance policy act or whatever that the flood insurance act that's what caused all the states to be like, wait, I don't need to put this in my budget because you'll bail me out.

If we say we don't have the budget, it's like, oh, sorry. I put that all towards another project. Sorry, I don't have any money you need to come in. Something to think about, really fascinating stuff.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (28m 52s):

You're absolutely spot on with that. A lot of the states, even though it's a hundred percent cost share, they're not incentivized to do it because they know we'll bail them out. I think at some point when we're going back to him saying, we don't have this resource, you know, it's incredible to see that it's almost, we are not a plan A. That's really the thing, people look at us too much as a plane A, like 911, just to give an example, because the fuel thing is very popular right now with the colonial pipeline. If you need fuel in Maine, for example, the state of Maine can go and get fuel a lot easier than the federal government. We have a fuel contract, National fuel contract, it’s about $60 a gallon for unleaded. That's because that fuel had to be sourced, handled, shipped, somebody has to monitor it, there’s a program management office, all of that. By the time it gets from the refinery to your gas tank, it costs $60 for that tank of fuel for that one gallon of fuel. Whereas if the state just went and did it locally, you'd cut out so many of those project management costs and they're all still reimbursable. So that's the other thing, especially right now, this is a 100% cost share for the vaccine campaign, right? So, for me to go to a local hospital in current commission, a nurse that's already working in that state to pick up extra shifts for FEMA, that cost of that nurse is going to be $150 an hour with all of the project management costs that are incurred.

Whereas at the state just went and said, hey, nurse, so-and-so what do you make an hour 30? Okay, we'll give you 35 to come pull an extra shift for us. If they did that locally, they could cut down on so many of these costs. But a lot of the time we are the easy button and that is a moral hazard as Brock Long would say, because the more and more you continue to feed the animals, the more and more they rely on you to be fed. So that's a real challenge that we run into.

Host: John Scardena (30m 48s):

The burden, the French fry analogy, right? If you give a bird a French fry, they'll never eat anything else. Yeah. It's a really good call out. Okay. So, you've given several solutions at the federal level. You've given a couple of solutions at the state level to say, Hey, you know, don't use us as your easy button. You can do it a lot cheaper and it's reimbursable. It's just, it's fiscally responsible. It's that get rid of that moral hazard. Let's talk about the local level. I always like to pull on the local level, even the Tribes, you know, we've been working with Tribes here at Doberman, and we're really grateful to do that and sometimes they get left out of the conversation. So, whether you're a Tribal Nation or you're a local emergency manager, and you're still dealing with COVID and you're looking at all these different things, what would you tell them if you were like, if you were representing FEMA and you just said, Hey, as a FEMA guy, this is what you should be learning from us right now. What would, what would be some of your solutions to them?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (31m 47s):

Locals and Tribes are both very similar in the fact that they are the lowest level of government for whatever their locale is. We are dealing with several Tribes direct, and we're also dealing with a couple on that are coming through their state, we're dealing with them as a sub grantee. A couple items, one, all disasters are local, right? We've heard that a hundred times. So as a Chief Elected Official of a Tribe or at Marin city, you should want your flag to be on that recovery obligation. If I was the Mayor of Washington, DC, I would not want a bunch of people wearing FEMA shirts or Air Force uniforms or whatever, running around vaccinating my citizens.

I would want somebody wearing a DC patch, vaccinating my citizens. The same should go for Tribes, right? It does start locally and, you know, a robust Medical Reserve Corps, for example, most large UASI or Urban Area Security Initiative cities have a Medical Reserve Corps having a robust relationship with hospitals. I'll do a shout out to my home state of Connecticut. Connecticut is by the way leading the country and vaccinations per capita. It, Connecticut is almost an 80% vaccinated, which 80% of their citizens are vaccinated.

We anticipated that coming into June, that will be 80% in Connecticut. We'll be the first state to cross the threshold. The reason for that is they have a very strong medical community. There is a lot of research with their universities up there, certainly. But the other thing is their State Public Health has a robust network of private sector departments. They have four or five hospital networks that they are utilizing to staff mobile vaccination clinics. So, depending on where the mobile vaccination clinic is going to be that week, they send their personnel from the local hospital and it does two things. One, it provides the local doctor, nurse EMT, kind of that sense of ownership and satisfaction that they're helping fellow countrymen, people that are in their cities, they may be vaccinating their friends and family.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (33m 57s):

So it provides that sense and also it does a great thing for us because we're not taking staff from another state, another locality and taking them out of their job as a nurse at a hospital in Indiana, and now putting them in a hospital in Connecticut to do the same job. We're not robbing Peter to pay Paul. All they're doing is saying, Hey, you normally work Monday through Friday. Can you pull an extra shift on Saturday? We're going to do a vaccine and if you do that enough times, you'll step out the whole week. Connecticut has done that. They have three, what we call mobile vaccination units that roll around the state. They're basically a double-wide trailer that gets towed around set up. It's got a Sub-Zero freezer on it to store a vaccine and they are distributing vaccines.

They're staffing it with the personnel that work in those localities, the best way to do it, that's a model we should replicate it across the board. Obviously, some states don't have the capability to go to rural areas of Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon. You're not going to have that level of, of medical capability, but you also have less people. So, there are things that could be done in that landscape that I just thus far, I think a lot of states have been pushing the easy button and not taking that ownership.

Host: John Scardena (35m 14s):

I'm surprised that Rhode Island isn't going to be the first tape to cross the threshold. I learned that to the side, Yosemite National Park is the same size as Rhode Island, and then I just lost it. You know, it was just oh my gosh, man. Like, that's pretty incredible to think about that solution. Again, mobile vaccination sites. You're talking about all these solutions and love that. Remind me of the role or the title that they gave you for this, the Vaccination Coordinator?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (35m 46s):

Yeah. National Vaccination Coordinator, a dollar district cup of coffee.

Host: John Scardena (35m 52s):

Hold up. Wait. Oh my gosh. Well, you clearly deserve it. I just loved hearing; you talk about all the innovative solutions. This happened last time too. I talked to you. I was blown away by all the innovation that had to happen to get up testing Coca-Cola, Sriracha and you know, others like now making the vaccination, the vials, and the mixing and everything else. Now you're talking about all the different federal agencies and people working to do the mixing and keeping it up and do vaccination sites and mobile vaccination sites. To be able to have the data, to be able to say, hey, they're doing it phenomenally in Connecticut.

All disasters are local and to all the innovation that has had to go in there, you should be the Chief Innovative Officer for FEMA. That's what it sounds like on my end, but it's just incredible to hear this and to get that like running total, I have to get you to come on like every six months or so to give us the update, because I feel like every time you're going to come on, you're like, yeah, we talked to Elon Musk and we're just going to like rebuild the earth now. No big deal, because that's kind of what you're doing, but you're like the ELA, oh, there you go you're the Elon Musk of FEMA. That's basically your role, no big deal, but that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool stuff that you're doing over there. As I asked last time, because we're going to wrap it up here in a second because I respect your time and I want to get to saving lives or innovation again through FEMA, I guess, but I really appreciate you coming on here. The same question I asked you last time when they ask you again and see if it's either changed or if it's solidified at all for you, if you could change one thing in the career of emergency management right now to impact the future in a positive way, what would you want to see emergency management change?

Guest: Joe Dellamura (37m 52s):

So that's a really good question, and I just want to, before we break, I just want to point out one thing last time I was on this, you asked me when you think we would be vaccinated. I believe we both landed on July and I believe we're both going to be correct where probably about 70% of this country by July. So, a close with you on that one. That's yeah, that's cool to think about.

Host: John Scardena (38m 19s):

Really cool to think about how we talked about that. I've been vaccinated. I'm proud that I've been vaccinated and like the faster, more anybody is holding off at this point, I'm like, you realize you're the reason why everything's still shut down. Right? Like I don't even care. That's why I got the vaccine. Do I think it's life-threatening for me? No. Do I kind of care about the next guy down the road? Yes. That's why I did it, but I also just want to return to normal. Just give me this stupid shot, we're fine, move on. You know, anyways, so that's awesome that you're going to be on target for that goal though. Congratulations.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (38m 55s):

Third time. Fourth time. All right. To your question though. I think this whole thing of emergency management as an emerging profession in an emerging industry starts with a public information campaign and it goes down to people in businesses thinking preparedness and agencies that aren't FEMA thinking about contingencies and preparedness and local and state thinking about the next step. But because really in emergency management, a lot of it just like anything else in the public sector comes down to budgeting. In emergency management, we are asking our budget committees to give us money for things that we all hope don't happen. So, we're asking people for money, for tools and programs, we hope we'll never have to use. We want preparedness money in case we get bombed. We hope we don't get bombed a budgetary person. You're going to have a hard time putting money into the counter bombing fund if you don't ever use it because that's how people, budgetary folks think. So, getting that culture of preparedness, where people are thinking about the, what if COVID-19 has done anything, it's helped businesses think about the, what if right.

Okay. I do have to go down to 25% capacity in my restaurant. What does that look like for my staff? How do I do this? What does it look like for my shipments that I get in a food? Obviously, it's going to be less. What does it look like for my prices? My hours of operation, the cost of rent on my building. So, building that culture of preparedness, that culture of what is, is what everybody needs to be involved in from a macular level, because this could go to 20 couldn't come. I don't know this could happen again so we could be in a situation where we need to be prepared. And it would really be unfortunate if we threw the baby out with the bath water after this whole thing is over with and we didn't take those key lessons learned.

So new emergency managers, I'm seeing constantly new programs, collegiate level programs emerging for emergency managers. I was part of a planning cell that worked on, the coast guard is finally developing a degree program for emergency managers to Coast Guard. All of these things, because people are realizing this is an industry that isn't going away and the more complex the battlefield is, the more of a contingency is possible. So, there's more threats with new technology, with all kinds of new development, emerges new, and we need to be prepared as emergency managers because the best emergency management plan is one you don't ever have to use because your mitigation plan was that successful in that well thought out. So that's what we need to be thinking about from an enterprise level.

Host: John Scardena (41m 48s):

Okay. That's a drop the mic quote moment for sure. We just found our quote for the show, by the way, if I would have closed my eyes and listen to you, I would have been, I don't know, maybe that's a stupid way to say it. If I would have read, there we go, if I would have read your text without use, without knowing it was you, I would think that that was peak gainer, peak gainer. Last week on the show said almost everything you just said, verbatim education stocking, it's all about preparedness, mitigation, everything you just said. I'm going to put it my first vote.

I don’t know if I get a vote, but first vote for Joe Della for next FEMA Admin in eight years or whatever. So seriously, like what you're saying is people who are very influential also say the exact same thing and there's a reason. It comes back to that point that I said earlier, you talked about luck and opportunity and I don't really think you had a lot of luck. I think you have prepared very, very well. I think you're an extremely hard worker. I think you get the job done. I think people know that they have that level of trust and confidence because you're able to just to get out there and do it. I am really proud that we're friends and I'm grateful that you have been just been crushing it for our country for the last, you know, 18 months on this and continue to do so.

I just thank you again for coming onto the show and for saying some really good things. I think emergency managers have to hear that. I think its time that we start addressing colleges and universities and saying, you need to up your programs, you need to do better in your programs, and you really get people prepared for going into a field that you're right. If you're talking to a budgetary person, they're going to be like, wait, why do I need this? People are starting to wake up. They're starting to realize that this stuff it goes and it goes away in their life. It gets exponentially more difficult without preparedness, whether they're a federal employee or whether they're a, they're a municipality. They're trying to mitigate a threat mitigation and preparedness changes the game for everybody. Great call-outs so with that being said, I got to find my que over here, Joe. Thanks again for coming on the show and seriously the great advice. We got to get to come back in like six months or so, four months and actually maybe right after July and see if you're cross that threshold and where the nation's at. So, thanks again for coming on the show.

Guest: Joe Dellamura (44m 24s):

You got a job to look forward to July. The mission success will be in direct correlation to how much hair I have left. So, a snapshot, I was going to say.

Host: John Scardena (44m 34s):

You actually have more hair than the last time you were on the show. So, I don't know, maybe that shows that the country's doing better. Maybe you'll have like, have you ever seen Fletch the movie Flax? He falls asleep and he's in the dream and it's Chevy chase and he's dribbling a basketball, and the announcer goes he's 06-5’, 06-9’ with the Afro. He has this giant Afro, maybe that'll be you in like August, just be like on some beach, somewhere with a giant thing of hair. So that would be awesome. But yeah, I hope that we make a major turning point. I hope that people get vaccinated. I hope that we just keep driving down the road. In the meantime, I'm going to do one more call out. I usually don't do this for my sponsors, but you know, the electronic putting it on your arm or usable COVID tests, that monitoring thing to be able to get people back in schools or whatever that is so huge.

You know, I got to get that call out, shout out to them because I've done the nose swabs. I'm sick of the nose swabs to put it on your arm. Why, you know, let's just get over this COVID thing. I think that's a big game changer there. Okay, I've never done that for a sponsor before. So, you're welcome FS Global Integrity Tech. Let's send the show so if you liked Joe's show, give us that five-star rating and subscribe, as we always say, you can send us an email. If you have a question or you need some more advice about Joe, what Joe was talking about, do work with Doberman Emergency Management, you can send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com.

But if you have a question for Joe, you have a comment, you'd like what he had to say, please, please, please use our social media channels. You can either use Disaster Tough Podcast on Instagram, or you can use a Doberman Emergency Management on LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever, send us that. That'd be the fastest way that Joe can see and respond to it and then tune in to next week when we come back. Thanks.

#57 Trailblazing Emergency Management- Interview with FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor

FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor is a trailblazer and highly accomplished. He oversaw FEMA’s first Pandemic response, the most active hurricane season in U.S. History, and the most aggressive infrastructure program to date. Pete Gaynor has an amazing insight into setting the standard, increasing the capacity of emergency management across the field. Pete shares lessons learned of the SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) Response, provides advice on making a difference in an EM career, and talks about the direction disaster management for the future.

Pete also promotes better national preparedness, importance and role of education, and the need for increased focus (and dollars) for mitigation. All emergency managers should be mitigation experts.

FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor is a trailblazer and highly accomplished. He oversaw FEMA’s first Pandemic response, the most active hurricane season in U.S. History, and the most aggressive infrastructure program to date. Pete Gaynor has an amazing insight into setting the standard, increasing the capacity of emergency management across the field. Pete shares lessons learned of the SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) Response, provides advice on making a difference in an EM career, and talks about the direction disaster management for the future.

Pete also promotes better national preparedness, importance and role of education, and the need for increased focus (and dollars) for mitigation. All emergency managers should be mitigation experts.

Department of Homeland Security - Biography of Pete Gaynor

"On January 11, 2021, Peter T. Gaynor was designated as the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. Mr. Gaynor was officially confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be FEMA Administrator on January 14, 2020. Previously, he served as the Senate-confirmed Deputy FEMA Administrator.

"Since his selection by the President, Mr. Gaynor led FEMA’s response to over 300 presidentially declared emergencies and major disasters. Mr. Gaynor oversaw the agency’s close collaboration with federal, state, local, tribal and territorial partners, making it possible to serve millions of Americans in their time of need through locally executed, state managed and federally supported disaster response.

"During the historic year of 2020, Mr. Gaynor oversaw FEMA’s first ever operational response to a nationwide pandemic while simultaneously responding to a record amount of disasters. As a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Mr. Gaynor directed FEMA’s operational coordination for the whole-of-Government response to COVID-19. During this time, FEMA deployed over 5,300 staff and obligated over $57 billion from the Disaster Relief Fund in support of the nationwide pandemic response.

"In 2020, Mr. Gaynor led the federal response to the most active Atlantic hurricane season in history, with a record of 30 named storms. Mr. Gaynor also directed the response to a historic West Coast wildfire season, resulting in 78 Fire Management Assistance Grant declarations to assist governments in fighting wildfires.

"As Administrator, Mr. Gaynor oversaw FEMA’s award of the agency’s largest infrastructure project grants in history to assist with Puerto Rico’s ongoing recovery from hurricanes Irma and Maria.

"Gaynor has more than 13 years of experience in emergency management. Prior to coming to FEMA, Gaynor served as the Director of Rhode Island’s Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA) in 2015. During that time, RIEMA responded to numerous small and large disasters, including one presidentially declared disaster and at least seven pre-existing active federal disasters. Gaynor oversaw response and recovery efforts to blizzards, floods, tropical storms and public health emergencies. He also coordinated evacuations, mass care, special events, and school safety.

"Gaynor served as the policy advisor to Governor Gina Raimondo on emergency management matters. He was also the Chair of the State Interoperable Communications Committee, the State Emergency Response Commission, and was Vice Chair of the State Emergency Management Advisory Committee. Additionally, he served as a Commissioner and a member for the Program Review Committee for the Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP), which fosters excellence and accountability in emergency management and homeland security programs across the nation.

"From March 2008 to December 2014, Gaynor served as the Director of the Providence Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) and Office of Homeland Security, where he was the only Certified Emergency Manager assigned as a municipal emergency manager in Rhode Island. He was responsible for ensuring the planning and operations of the agency, coordinating community exercise programs, managing the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and advising the Mayor of the City of Providence on local government emergency operations.

"During his tenure at RIEMA and PEMA, Gaynor oversaw multiple response and recovery operations and managed numerous federally declared disasters.

"Under Pete Gaynor’s leadership, in 2010, PEMA became the first municipality in the United States to receive accreditation from EMAP. In 2017, Rhode Island became the 36th state to be EMAP-accredited, making Gaynor the first emergency management director awarded EMAP accreditation at the local and state levels. In January 2018, under Gaynor’s direction, Rhode Island was the first state designated as StormReady by the National Weather Service.

"Gaynor was awarded the International Association of Emergency Managers USA & Global Partners in Preparedness Award for Operation SMART EXIT, a planned full-scale evacuation of several high-rise commercial buildings in Downtown Providence, RI.

"Prior to his experience as an emergency manager, Gaynor served for 26 years as an enlisted Marine and Infantry Officer in the United States Marine Corps. During his tenure in the Marines, he was assigned as the Executive Officer responsible for the security of Presidential Retreat, Camp David; assigned as the Head of Plans, Policy, & Operations at the Headquarters Marine Corps during the September 11, 2001 attacks; and deployed in support of Iraqi Freedom with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force where he coordinated combat operations in the Al-Anbar Province of Iraq for Multi-National and Marine forces.

"Gaynor received a bachelor’s degree in history from Rhode Island College and a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College in Newport, RI. He is also a graduate of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s Executive Leaders Program.” - https://www.dhs.gov/person/peter-t-gaynor

#56 Mitigation In Action - Interview with Jack Krolikowski

Jack Krolikowski is the Georgia Emergency Management Agency’s Deputy State Hazard Mitigation Officer (The Deputy SHMO). Jack walks through why mitigation is critical, how to create a proper mitigation program, and provides emergency managers with examples of mitigation in action.

Climate Risk Adaptation, population centers shifting towards the Coast, and financial insecurity are just some of the issues that mitigation officers must address in their work. Jack Krolikowski, Deputy State Mitigation Officer (or The Deputy SHMO) for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency talks to us about the importance of mitigation on this week’s episode.

#55 Lessons in Leadership by CalOES Chief of Response - Interview with Lee Dorey

Lee Dorey is the George Washington of EM Leadership. He is able to organize and lead like few others. Lee is the Chief of Response in Support of Operations at the California Office of Emergency Services.

We are calling Lee Dorey the George Washington of EM Leadership because of his amazing skill to lead in high stress environments. Lee has been in a Chief in almost every aspect of emergency management and response, he talks to us about his experiences, the great people he has worked with, and provides advice to emergency managers that will increase their influence, build a successful emergency management program, and produce favorable results in the face of disaster.

#54 U.S. Special Forces MedEvac Pilot to Emergency Manager - Interview with Margaret Larson

Margaret Larson served 9 years in the Army as a MedEvac Pilot for Special Forces she is now a Mom and an Emergency Manager. Her lessons in discipline, leadership, and working under pressure help the EM field.

Are you in the Military and are thinking about switching into emergency management? Are you in emergency management and want to increase your ability in decision making or leadership? Take note of Margaret Larson, she has major accomplishments to her name. She is a mother, an United States Army Veteran with 9 years active duty as a Special Forces MedEvac Pilot, and an emergency manager. Her experiences and lessons learned are of high worth. She shares her experiences and advice on this week's episode!

#53 The 'So What?' of Emergency Management - Interview with Former FEMA Admin, Craig Fugate

Former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Head, Craig Fugate, shares advice on prioritization, explains the speed of disaster, the Waffle House Index, and more.

Craig Fugate led the Federal Emergency Management during the President Obama Administration. Craig famously used, 'So What?' as a way to help emergency managers prioritize tasks, created the Waffle House Index, and changed how FEMA staff operated in emergency (by making all staff members deployable emergency managers). Craig Fugate is a change agent and shares advice on how to improve in every phase of the disaster life-cycle. He know leads One Concern, focusing on mitigation through artificial intelligence. To view Craig's latest project, you can check out One Concern here: https://oneconcern.com/en/

By McCammon, Ross

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TESLYAR

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#52 The Purpose of Training - Interview with Jayson Kratoville

Informing students is only half the battle. Jayson Katroviille returns to the Disaster Tough Podcast to discuss training and reviews scenario-based education ideas.

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Customized Home Hazard Vulnerability Assessment

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PILOT

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Jayson Kratoville is the Interim Director of the National Center for Security & Preparedness (NCSP). Jayson believes that change management is critical to the homeland security field as it adapts to new technologies and a dynamic risk environment. Effective training and exercises are critical tools, challenging participants to link their practical experience with new ideas and approaches in a way that shifts their mindset. Jayson has managed the development and delivery of training and exercise programs that have reached tens of thousands of practitioners across New York State's homeland security enterprise. He has also guided the NCSP’s strategic vision and implementation, contributed to rapid growth at the NY State Preparedness Training Center, and advised on the development of UAlbany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity.