Disaster Tough Podcast

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 experi...

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 pha...

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...

Kevin Pigg is an expert practitioner of emergency management, serving in roles across the Local, State, and Federal levels. Kevin shares lessons learned and personal experiences on our show in the advice style format. We talk about the challenges, tasks, and personality that is required in this field. Essentially, Kevin Pigg lays out the DNA of an emergency manager.

Patrick Campion, owner of Preparedness Advisors, specializes in improving situational awareness through data science. Patrick understands first-hand the importance of emergency managers understanding and using data in their roles, both in blue sky operations and in grey sky operations. Whether your tracking grant dollars, or identifying gaps in mitigation, using data can make you more efficient an...

This Spring marks 11 years since the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. It marks 10 years since the Tohoku Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Disaster, 30 years since the Kuwait Oil Fires, 32 years (almost to the date of this episode) since the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, and so many other major disasters that were major game changers in emergency management and disaster response. Eric Helpenstell has...

Dr. Stephen Johnson and host John Scardena discuss the intersection of emergency management and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN) field activities. Steve provides advice on how to become an expert, talks about the differences between CBRNe and HazMat, and next steps to protect the public from these catastrophic events. We also talk about the Beirut Explosion on this week's episode...

Messaging is everything. COVID-19 has shown us once again how incredibly important it is for us to understand how to work with media. Whether it's collaborating with stakeholders like CDC, FEMA, public health, and local emergency management groups, or managing and informing politicians, the handling of rumor control from the 24-hour news cycle like CNN, Fox News, CNBC and their local affiliates, a...

Emergency managers need to watch The Last House Standing Documentary. It shows in phenomenal detail how critical it is to build to our local environments and why that isn't happening now. Watch The Last House Standing Documentary at: https://www.thelasthousestanding.org/movie Director's Statement: As a former weatherman and reporter, I've covered countless stories about people who lost everything...

Data analytics improves the life of an emergency manager. Whether it's determining where to place shelters, forecasting weather events, providing a risk assessment, or providing trustworthy situational awareness. Caitlin Von Stein is a subject matter expert in emergency management analytics. She provides the Federal Emergency Management Agency with need to know information, working on projects acr...

The complexity of mitigation in the National Capital Region, combined with the changes caused by climate adaptation, create a perfect storm for emergency managers in Montgomery County Maryland. Dr. Earl Stoddard is the Director of Emergency Management & Homeland Security for Montgomery County and is taking a hard look at future risk compared to historical data and has found several irregularit...

Today we dive into all things related to Brock Long's impressive career as a change agent and leader in emergency management. We talk about the complexities of a FEMA response in coordinated response, the need for disaster declaration reform, moving forward with a career in mind, and how to better prepare for disaster through mitigation. Brock speaks extensively about the mitgation process and cha...

Emergency managers are faced with natural and man-made threats every day. Because the Department of Homeland Security just raised the threat level of domestic terrorism, we brought on expert William Jackson Jr. , to talk to us about risk management, protection, training, and purpose. We discuss several scenarios including mitigating riots, active shooter, general law enforcement activities, person...

Domestic Terrorism, fueled by extremist groups, are a major concern for emergency and disaster services in 2021, especially due to the events caused at the United States Capitol Building on January 6th and the federal response coordination surrounding the events of President Joe Biden's Presidential Inauguration. Clearly the threat of violence was strong enough to cause swift reaction by law enfor...

Emergency managers and first responders have close coordination, but their roles and responsibilities are different. Doug Baiton is an expert in emergency response and can speak to the differences between the tactical level and strategic levels of our field. As a New York City Firefighter, "on loan," to New York City Office of Emergency Management as a Citywide Interagency Coordinator, Doug is pro...

This episode is all about the task force assigned to tackle the logistics of the COVID-19 Pandemic testing and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) logistics perspective. Joe Dellamura is a FEMA branch director who was assigned to work with a a task force of federal agency partners to find and innovate solutions in order to exponentially increase the supply chain of COVID-19 testing. He...

Emergency Managers can learn from what happened at No-Man's Land during World War 1 between Dec. 23rd to Christmas day Dec. 25th, 1914. A moment of peace in a world of chaos as two armies could not cross 60 meters. We need to find both internal truces and external ones in order to overcome the battle of disasters.

Santa is coming to town! We are experiencing Space Weather via the Northern Lights as we record this episode. Emergency managers must include space weather in their emergency planning process. It impacts communications, critical infrastructure, commercial travel, and of course Santa with Rudolph's GPS tracker in his nose. Or is it a lightbulb?? Who knows- join us this week as we talk about the com...

Tim Britt, Ops Chief on the National Strike Team, housed within FEMA's National Incident Management Assistance Team Red, talks about response in 2020, lessons learned throughout his own career, and provides advice on leadership in emergency management. Tim's experiences include service in the US. Marines, police officer, CalOES emergency manager, and now the federal government. Tim has worked at e...

Between the Supreme Court ruling siding with religious groups and economic pain, we have a lot to be reminded of from our 'Pilgrim Fathers.' The faced disease, death, food scarcity, and religious persecutions... but they made it through. The Mayflower Compact and collaboration had a major part to do with that. John Scardena, our host, talks lessons learned and how they can be applied in today's wo...

The 2020 Wildfires provided unique challenges to response organizations due the the pandemic conditions. Patrick McGinn overall the feeding program to survivors in behalf of The Salvation Army, a critical VOAD member that works with the State during large-scale disasters. Working with several partners, Patrick coordinated food delivery to 160 hotels. This provided him with great insight into the c...

We can’t say enough about Joe Hernandez. His 30 year career as a USAR operations expert includes deployments to the Okalahoma City Bombing, 9/11 Twin Towers, the Haiti Earthquake, and more. He has been instructing FEMA personnel for the past 10 years and talks about the mental and emotional tole as well as tools to dealing with extreme event.

We can’t say enough about Joe Hernandez. His 30 year career as a USAR operations expert includes deployments to the Okalahoma City Bombing, 9/11 Twin Towers, the Haiti Earthquake, and more. He has been instructing FEMA personnel for the past 10 years and talks about the mental and emotional weight, as well as tools to dealing with extreme events. Make sure you check out Part 2 of Joe's show next w...

Cynthia McCoy is a former member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and now works for the City of Seattle. She has deployed to numerous disasters including Super Storm Sandy and Hurricane Harvey, two events that have created innovation within emergency management. This is Part 2 of her episode. We dive into the details of hazard mitigation from a theory and practice perspective. She...

Cynthia McCoy talks about her background in Urban Planning and Emergency Management. On part of on this episode, we talk about how historical data needs to better integrate with future trends to better define the scope of threat as well as address mitigation with data informed decisions. We heavily focus on the socio-economic impacts of disaster and the increase in events.