PREPTalk

Vulnerabilities and Power Outages: 

•Who are the electricity providers in your community? 

•Where are the generating stations that serve your community located? Where are the substations, which convert high voltage to low voltage? Are they located in areas that could be affected by flooding, wildfires, or other hazards? 

•Are electric utilities part of your planning teams? Do they participate in your exercises?

 Gore shares his experience supporting his community in the aftermath of the 2017 Tubb’s Fire in Sonoma County. “Everything is different, every priority that was before is off the table,” said Gore, describing how the fire changed him. “Everything is reset.” 

 Dr. Yossi Sheffi's PrepTalk, “Private Sector Resilience: It is All in the Supply Chain”, explains the modes of failure in supply chain networks, explores new ways to think about disruptions, and showcases a General Motors case study on the complexities of supply chain management.  "Prior relationships between all elements of public sector and all elements of private sector are crucial", said Dr. Sheffi. "Collaboration and communication is key to effective resilience and effective response."  

 Dr. Jarrod Goentzel's PrepTalk, “Aligning Public and Private Supply Chains for Disaster Response”, demonstrates how the private sector has far more capacity to respond than the public sector, explains the role of emergency managers in supporting private sector supply chain restoration, and shows how analysis of supply chains can help with strategic and tactical preparedness and operational collaboration during a crisis. 

 Philip Mann's PrepTalk, "Public Works & Emergency Management: Restoring Lifeline Services" helps emergency managers and public works personnel understand the role of public works and public works role in response and recovery from disasters. The most important goal for response and recovery is “to get our citizens back to their normal life," Mann said, "and to do that the most efficent way is if police, fire, and public works work together.” 

 Dr. Lori Peek’s PrepTalk, “Children and Disasters: Reducing Vulnerability and Building Capacity,” brings to life the progress, ongoing challenges, and possibilities in reducing the vulnerability of children to disasters. Through her experience working directly with children, including a young survivor of Hurricane Katrina, Peek gives emergency managers five specific ideas to reduce the vulnerability of children to disasters right now. 

 Sarah Thompson’s PrepTalk, “Youth: The Key to Building a Culture of Preparedness,” highlights how children are great mobilizers, actors, and connectors within their communities for building a culture of preparedness. “Kids love to learn; they love to share what they learned,” Thompson says “That means they can be really good at bringing home preparedness messages.” Thompson uses her experience and sociological data to show how emergency managers can use the natural curiosity of children to build preparedness in their communities. 

 Michele Gay’s PrepTalk, “Rethinking School Safety” relays her personal experience as the parent of a child killed in the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012. She highlights some of the simple solutions that students and staff needed during the crisis at Sandy Hook, and presents Safe and Sound Schools’ Framework for Comprehensive School Safety Planning and Development: Emergency Management, Community Engagement, Physical Safety, Mental and Behavioral Health, Climate and Culture, and Health and Wellness.  

 In this PrepTalk, Dr. Daniel Aldrich explains how social ties are the critical aspect of resilience in immediate survival, in mental health, and in community recovery. Despite common assumptions that money, governance, level of damage, and inequality are the most important determinants of recovery, Aldrich demonstrates that “disaster resilience comes from internal factors: How connected are we? How much trust do we have in each other? How often do we work together?” Aldrich has studied disasters around the world and is the author of four published books, including Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery. 

 Daniel Homsey is director of the Neighborhood Empowerment Network (NEN) for the City Administrator’s Office of the City of San Francisco. The NEN empowers residents to build and steward stronger, more resilient communities. Homsey has spent the past 25 years as a communications professional in both the private and public sectors.  Homsey shares his tools for building resilient communities at the neighborhood level and why empowering neighbors to help themselves is the best way to prepare your community for any disaster. 

 In his PrepTalk, “We Succeed or Fail Together,” Vance Taylor shares the personal story of a shelter that failed to take into account the needs of people with access and functional needs and how emergency managers can achieve better integrated planning. Taylor explains the importance of understanding the communities we serve and the need to integrate people with access and functional needs within each phase of planning for communication, sheltering, evacuation, and medical needs. 

 In his PrepTalk, Kevelighan shares the pivotal role that insurance plays in people’s lives and communities, both before and after a disaster. “What happens when the water drains, when the dust settles? You have to rebuild an economy,” Kevelighan says. “This is what insurance does. It gets people back in their jobs. It gets people back in their homes.” He describes the deeper values of insurance, including how insurance improves safety, builds resilience, and promotes innovation. 

 In his PrepTalk, Dr. Chen outlines the different ways data mapping can be used to help emergency managers identify those at risk before, during, and after a disaster. He demonstrates how geospatial data combined with socioeconomic data gives emergency managers, the news media, and the public a better understanding of what the risk is and the potential associated effects of disasters. “It’s always good to [use maps to] explain where population centers are and who is vulnerable,” Dr. Chen said.  

 In his PrepTalk, Kaufman takes time to pause, step back, and absorb the big changes occuring across the globe. He explains the evolving trends, where they intersect, and how they will dictate the future of emergency management. 

Brian Fennessy is the Fire Chief of the Orange County Fire Authority in California. This position is his latest of many executive leadership and management experiences in both the wildland fire and metropolitan fire service.

In his PrepTalk, Chief Fennessy describes his leadership journey and urges emergency management to build a mission-driven culture. He argues that a mission-driven culture is critical to organizational success during moments of calm and times of chaos.

 Kristina Anderson’s PrepTalk, “Safety is Personal: Lessons Learned as a Survivor of the Virginia Tech Tragedy,” begins with her experience of the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. She translates her experience into a focus on the importance of threat assessments in schools to identify and mitigate potential threats. She explains that it’s important to improve physical safety, but it’s just as important to encourage people to monitor their environment and to build a supportive culture in a school.