Laura James: [00:00:00] the public is now relying on each other more than they're relying on us. And in some cases, we're not even out there at all because our messages aren't approved and we're not the people.
Matt Green: it is always a capacity issue before it becomes a capability issue. And I think the major indictment there is after nearly 20 years of doing this, is we keep doing emergency management at our communities instead of with our communities.
Anastacia Maynich: it doesn't matter the size of the community, every community need to have an emergency manager.
Anastacia Maynich: And it's not enough of us. It is not enough. Even the prepper. If a prepper wants to be an emergency manager, let them let them be. At least they will teach their own community how to prep for a better future.
Ralph Bloemers: The challenge with for politicians is they're promising the things that people want to hear, but what we're talking about on this podcast is the physics don't care about that. Right. [00:01:00] And the math and the probabilities. Don't care what people want to be promised.
Todd de Voe: how do we expect the community to embrace, like, you know, the zero, um, zones, right? If we don't have them involved in the conversation of what that truly is, because we, we tend to talk to our community, not talk with our community.
Todd de Voe: And that's what we need to change in what we do as a profession.
Kyle King: Hi everybody. Welcome to EM RAP 2025, and this is what I would call sort of a special year end panel, bringing together some of the most influential voices in emergency management content. And so this is a bit like Spotify wrapped, uh, for the EM community. So this episode captures what we've been sort of seeing, what we're seeing across the field, what we're listening to, what we're learning about, and sort of our experiences through 2025.
Kyle King: And so really, I think 2025 was a year emergency management sort [00:02:00] of hit the ceiling of what traditional approaches can handle, so to speak. Mm-hmm. From the LA wildfires to cascading infrastructure failures from debates about FEMA's future, which is a very relevant topic this week to the rise of AI and crisis management and emergency management this year really tested every assumption that we have had in the past.
Kyle King: And so today we're not just really looking back, but we're also asking the question of what comes next. And so here's how we're going to do this. We wanna have a bit of fun with this, but we've got. Five hosts around the table and, and then six, including myself, each tracking the profession from a different angle.
Kyle King: And I think that's what adds a lot of value. So. I'll kick off each round with something that we've been looking at from Crisis Lab and our perspective and what we've been seeing. And then we'll go around the table from Todd to Matt to Anastasia, Laura and Ralph. And then everyone will weigh in and we'll discuss and then we'll move to the next round and we'll do our best to cover sort of the top three things that we've been seeing this year.
Kyle King: And then if we have time, then we will also discuss sort of what some predictions are for the future in 2026. [00:03:00] So before we dive in, let's just do a quick round the table discussion or round the table introductions and see who's joining us today. So Todd, I'll start with you.
Todd de Voe: Yeah, thank you Ka for having us here.
Todd de Voe: And, uh, I'm Todd Deveau, um, the editor in chief of the EMN, um, network Magazine as we have it. And also, uh, the first vice president for the International Association of Emergency Managers. Those are my, my, I guess my side things. And, uh, my day job is I'm the emergency manager, uh, coordinator for the city of Inglewood.
Todd de Voe: California That is.
Matt Green: Alright. I'm Matt Green. I think I'm the newest entry here as far as shows are concerned. My first episode of State of Disaster launched in April of this year, and it has been an excellent journey of elevating really smart voices, diving into the emerging stories in the field, and trying to answer some of the questions that I think we've all had over the last several months.
Matt Green: And looking forward to the future of doing the same full-time. I'm an emergency manager for a county here in the Pacific Northwest [00:04:00] and I love what I do. Anastasia,
Anastacia Maynich: hi. Uh, thank you so much for helping me on this show. Um, Anastasia, I, over 15 plus years experience in emergency management. US Army retired. I worked from MD.
Anastacia Maynich: To work with a NASA as well. I have quite few, uh, pedigrees to name within the education realm, but I do run my podcast. Uh, we just launched. It's a beyond the SOP is the world breaks. We keep going. That's the story. And what happens past the standard up operating procedures. Pass it on to Laura.
Laura James: Thanks so much and thanks so much everyone for including me.
Laura James: My name is Laura James. I'm a Canadian joining you from north of the Border in the Snow this morning. And I am the host of Resilient Heroes and this podcast has just entered our second season. Um, and really idea of the podcast is to promote women in the field of emergency management, whether they're government, employees, new to the field and students close to retirement.
Laura James: [00:05:00] Consultants just giving a voice to women who support emergency management across North America. In my day job, I have worked for various levels of government in emergency management in Canada. I am a forester by trade, um, and currently work for Buffalo Computer Graphics. Thanks so much for having me.
Laura James: Over to you, Ralph.
Ralph Bloemers: Hello everyone. My name is Ralph Bloomers. I'm coming to you from Oregon and I have worked for about 25 years on all things wildfire force management, natural resources. I started as a public interest environmental lawyer representing tribes, conservation groups, and then there was a big fire in my backyard and I got to asked to do storytelling around that fire to help the community make sense of it.
Ralph Bloemers: Took to the air, took to the ground, and tried to figure out how to share what, um, the experts that I'd been exposed to in the, my own personal journey around wildfire to the, to the screen and. One thing led to another, and I found myself six years in barely keeping up with, you know, the paradise, the campfire, the, the Burn [00:06:00] Paradise, the Tubbs Fire, the Woolsey Fire Fires where I lost a friend and many people that I knew lost their communities.
Ralph Bloemers: And we really wanted to tell stories that would help people take action to have aha moments, you know, to take 'em on that journey themselves so they could reach their own conclusions. And now I've worked on several PBS Weathered programs, which is short form explainer videos. They're about 10 minutes, some are 30.
Ralph Bloemers: And then we just did a feature on the La Firestorms and we're doing an anniversary special that's gonna come out on January 7th. And I have other projects around fire technology and some things with NASA and the DOD. So I've left the, uh, legal realm behind, not completely still. Sometimes engage on policy and things related to how do we prepare communities, but it's often linked to, um, to, to the storytelling and filmmaking aspects.
Kyle King: That's great. Yeah. Thanks everybody for the, the quick introductions. Let us know what sort of perspective you're coming [00:07:00] from, and I think this will be a very interesting discussion. And, and to kick it off from our perspective of what we're seeing at Crisis Lab, I think one of the things that, that we're seeing is, is something we also published and wrote about on LinkedIn as well, but it's really about velocity.
Kyle King: And so for us, what we're seeing in is the more sort of that we work in the international space and the more that we see sort of the conflagration of different events all occurring all at the same time and different speed. You know, that's really the first thing I'd wanna put on the table to everybody, which is really the effect of speed in terms of the way that these things not only grow, but escalate very, very quickly and become very complex.
Kyle King: So e even if you take, for example, a. Which many of you're familiar with. You know, the, the LA wildfires showed us what happens when a crisis can actually move faster than our own internal response systems. And this is sort of what I hinted at the very beginning, which is like our traditional systems of how we respond, uh, are, are just really becoming overcome very quickly by the actual response itself.
Kyle King: And so, you know, a, a number of people died, I think it was 17 people died. You know, we had West Altadena [00:08:00] and the evacuation orders arrived late. We have water system failures, we have decisions made about water systems in advance that sort of exacerbated the way that the crisis occurred. And then even we started to see throughout the year like this, this report that was issued, I think it was from the McChrystal group, which was talking about after action reviews, outdated policies, inconsistent procedures, communication vulnerabilities, which is really slowing down the ability to respond.
Kyle King: And yet the way that a crisis or emergency or disaster is happening is only getting faster and faster and becoming more complex. And so all of this really wasn't something. I would say unique to just the LA or even the fire space, but these sort of traditional protocols, by the time those kick in, you know, entire communities are already gone basically.
Kyle King: Right. And in a sort of more dramatic fashion there. But, you know, public information was difficult to keep pace with what was happening, especially with, you know, information disinformation, evacuation orders, couldn't keep up with pace of it, of the movement of, you know, even the, the floods in Texas, for [00:09:00] example, resource deployment can't keep up with the pace of disasters.
Kyle King: And on top of that, you know, as I mentioned, the information environment was its own disaster in some aspects. This is what we're seeing as a, a trending indicator for us coming out of 2025, is that we are starting to get in this space of where it's just like the movies, right? Everything all at once, you know?
Kyle King: And, and this is what we're all having to deal with. And, and that is on top of. Everything else that's happening in the emergency management community. And so this is what I would put forward as sort of the, the first point in terms of what we're looking at is just the, the sheer speed and complexity of things and how they're moving.
Kyle King: So I'll just, I'll hand that over to Todd.
Todd de Voe: Well, that's a great way to start everything. Speed. Yeah. So I kinda wanna, I'm gonna rack some things here. So we have our emergency response things like, you know, specifically as Ralph was talking about last year, we're watching basically two large fires burning at the exact same time and that were burning down communities.
Todd de Voe: So we had eaten fire burning and we had the palates fire to go in at the same time. You know, that wasn't the first two fires that we had. Well that was the [00:10:00] first two fires of 2020. Um, but I mean, throughout 20, uh, 24, we had fires burning all over the place. So it was a pretty, pretty active fire season.
Todd de Voe: That put this into perspective. My son, uh, became a wildland firefighter. And in his first year of, of fighting fire, uh, in the wildland fire, he responded to 86 fires, right. You know, some of 'em are small, some of 'em are large, but 86 fires in his first year. I remember when I first became a firefighter, I don't think I responded to more than five or six fires in my first year as a firefighter.
Todd de Voe: Um, you know, of course I was, you know, but anyway, that's just the difference in, in the way, the way life is right now, you know? So the speed and, and the op tepo of these emergencies are there, but that also plays into what are we doing on our, on our daily, right? Um, you know, as far as training goes. And as far as planned events, you know, here in Los Angeles, what do we have coming up?
Todd de Voe: We have, um, at February 14th, we have the all BL Star game coming up. It's a five [00:11:00] day event then. We're gonna have the World Cup right back, right in the end of June. June 11th is actually the kickoff of the World Cup. Right after that, we're gonna have the, uh, super Bowl, and then after that we have the Olympics.
Todd de Voe: So these large scale world events that are coming into our jurisdictions, Matt as also has the, the World Cup coming to his jurisdiction. And San Francisco Vice Stadium, um, has the World Cup and the Super Bowl coming. So we have these world events that are focusing on our communities, um, as well. And the World Cup, by the way, just to kind of put this in perspective for people who aren't really paying attention yet, is not just here in the West Coast.
Todd de Voe: It's in, it's in 16 cities, Toronto, um, has the World Cup coming to it, right? So we have these planned events that have the world's eyes on on us as we're planning for I regular disasters, if you will. Right. You know. One of the things that we're planning for, for practicing, for, I guess for lack of a better term, is during the World Cup.
Todd de Voe: What if, right? What if there's a wild land [00:12:00] fire that is impacting movement of people? What if there's a wild land fire in the middle of the World Cup that's impacting air quality to where can they play, you know, type of things. So we have to have those other, our natural disasters in play at all times in our head as we're planning for these world events that are coming to our cities.
Todd de Voe: And, you know, so we talk about, you know, complex events and cascading events. This is what's in our mindset all the time, you know, and, and also the other world events that are impacting us. What are the political considerations that are happening? Right? Especially, you know, we're talking about some, we have Iran coming that started off with little political considerations right there.
Todd de Voe: There are some things that they're talking about. That they might even boycott the games, you know? So what are the political considerations that we're looking at, um, as that echo and, and as war is still active in Eastern Europe, you know, so all these things play into what we do on a, on a daily that most people don't think about [00:13:00] when we're looking at what emergency management does for our communities.
Ralph Bloemers: Well, I was just gonna jump in Kyle, and let's unpack this. Did the water system fail? Yes and no. Okay. Yes. In that people saw hydrants running drop. Yes. In that there wasn't enough available water multiple days in, but. Was it reasonable to expect it to not fail in these conditions? And I think that, you know, think about this way.
Ralph Bloemers: You go to a coffee, go get a coffee, and that coffee shop can serve 300 to 400 cups in a day. Can it serve all the sudden 30 to 40,000 cups? No. And it definitely can't serve it if the water line into the building is broken or the coffee machine is broken, which is what my crew who was in the fire about 15 minutes into it, running around with cinema cameras following the community brigade.
Ralph Bloemers: They filmed endless amounts of houses burned to the ground with a waterline with nowhere to go, spewing 20 gallons a minute. Eight hours in the system was still functioning nine hours. It wasn't [00:14:00] because it was depressurized. Was there water available? Yeah, there was water available. There wasn't a water availability issue.
Ralph Bloemers: California's great at moving water around the landscape. Probably some of the best water manipulators in the world. The other piece is a water system is designed to do what primarily provide drinking water. If you were to scale that thing up, then you would be having to treat all that water and have pressure tanks to the top of the hill and everyone's water bill would be so incredibly unaffordable that it's not reasonable, right?
Ralph Bloemers: So how do we solve this problem? And this is the thing we're trying to address in this anniversary special is, you know, appreciate that people feel frustrated that the hydrant outside their house on the next day, on the eighth was empty. While recognizing that the way to make a water system be able to continue to function or make fire response not get overwhelmed, is to not have the millions of embers descended on the community, generate flames that come in [00:15:00] contact with houses.
Ralph Bloemers: So there's 10, 20 houses burning and becoming the dominoes to burn down a whole bunch of other houses, right? So the game is happens before the fire comes. How do we support firefighters? How do we support water managers? By as a community owning our hazard, owning our risk well before fire comes, preventing ember from becoming flame.
Ralph Bloemers: And that action is not by clearing the incredibly steep, rugged, chaparral covered Angeles National Forest. That is in zone zero. That's our beloved shrubs. That's our connected fences, that's our dirty gutters. And look at the new reports from Fire Safety Research Institute, or the Insurance Institute for Business Home Safety.
Ralph Bloemers: It includes your couch cushions and your garbage cans. We have footage of garbage cans flipped over, or garbage cans burning and pitted, you know, holes on them from embers landing on them. And we get a warning three days before, because I think it was the, actually [00:16:00] it was the 3rd of January. I looked back at my text before this podcast and I had a text from my friends down there saying, get ready G Guys, get your cameras ready.
Ralph Bloemers: We got a wind event on the third. So we were rolling into that thing 15 minutes after it started. So if we got that warning, you could bring your couch cushions in and close your windows and do some basic things. Now, you can't probably do a whole bunch of hedge trimming and modifying your landscaping, but I mean, for me, it's like we gotta figure out how to make this culture change piece.
Ralph Bloemers: How do we, how do we make having a wildfire prepared, ignition resistant home? The cool thing to do, and you know, we used to have outdoor plumbing and then when we moved all the plumbing inside, everyone thought that was gross. And we'd get sick and, and now it's the opposite, right? Most people don't know, know how to go to the bathroom outside anymore, right?
Ralph Bloemers: It's all indoors. So we can, we can make the wildfire prepared home, the new curb appeal, I think, and we can [00:17:00] couch that in as this is how we love firefighters up and this is how we keep our insurance and. This is the community thing to do. Nobody wants to be the, the owner of the house that burns up the neighbor's house.
Ralph Bloemers: So I think it's reframing it away from in a fast fire that the response is hose streams out of hoses. It's not because it's a three-dimensional ember storm and you don't spray hose streams on a three-dimensional ember storm. What you do is you prevent those embers becoming dangerous flames again. I think it's, I appreciate you teeing it up that way.
Ralph Bloemers: And I am fine to admit that water systems failed, but they failed for a reason. It's because the community was not prepared before the fire came. Not because the water system failed, but you know that it shouldn't have failed. So,
Anastacia Maynich: so I, I'll, um, um, I'll take over from this one. So from a big planning perspective, we wanted to plan for worst case scenario and then scale down right.
Anastacia Maynich: And for within emergency management, we always think about us. We always think about community, but we also [00:18:00] need to reorganize the, the way we teach the community. They're regular fire preventive classes or anything that the really small classes that the community receives at senior centers or anywhere else, we need to rephrase those and teach the community to actually, from the lessons learned to, um, basically to identify like any kind of, any kind of dangers, anything that you really have within the community itself.
Anastacia Maynich: And that's why we come in. And then that, that's why we can like, rephrase those classes and then see how we can teach the community better in other things. Like from a planning perspective, we cannot forget about those unincorporated areas because one thing that I saw, um, during the, during the LA fires is Altadena, Altadena is unincorporated, it belongs, um, to the county.
Anastacia Maynich: The evacuation routes. There are certain evacuation routes within the unincorporated areas. Were not, um, actually in the plans for the, uh, for the connecting cities itself. So that's what, that's what recommends with the city and the [00:19:00] county planning. They have to manage it together when it comes to those areas.
Laura James: I'm gonna jump on, to piggyback on what you just said and really tie it to what Kyle started out with, which is the speed at which things have been happening for us this year. I feel like, and Todd mentioned this as well, traditionally when we had planned events coming, like fifa, like the Olympics, emergency managers are brought in 18 months, 24 months before we start planning.
Laura James: We have our planning cycles and we, it's the same here up in Canada, but for this year, it felt like we went from winter storm to spring flooding to forest fire season, and we didn't even have time to really have fulsome after action plans To then change our operations to then adapt to the next thing.
Laura James: 'cause we were already in the field doing the next response. And to, to that point, that leaves us from a planning perspective for those planned events that are worldwide right now, that we know we have kind of behind the [00:20:00] eight ball from his, when historically we weren't back to back in every environmental response, which is how I've been feeling this year and I know many of my counterparts are.
Laura James: And what I would say is that communication piece, I think the public is beginning to see that you have an emergency manager. It's really up to the community to understand the risk, as we've sort of said, and have to adopt and change the way we do things. Because the ones and twos of us in each and every community, we can't possibly go response to response to response.
Laura James: And so we need to begin to teach the public what is your risk and how are you going to be ready? And I really think that will help us deal with the speed at which incidents are happening and the speed at which the public is sharing information around that, and that's making our lives difficult. So I really just wanted to bring it back to the speed at that, that these things are impacting us as career emergency managers.
Matt Green: I am very [00:21:00] happy to bring this point home, uh, with nothing if not the data. Right. If you take a look at the Argon Labs report, the EM study that was, uh, sponsored by, uh, IAEM and neman and big city emergency manager. The majority of local emergency managers are under-resourced. They don't have the capability and they don't have the capacity.
Matt Green: To do the work as it stands. And they also indicated that overwhelmingly so that if they had more time, more money, more resources, they would spend that time doing community preparedness activities and they would spend that time getting to know their communities. And I'll say I've, I've worked several disasters.
Matt Green: I've worked from the EMT perspective of being the first on scene to the command post to the EOC, to living on an island for three to six months doing long-term recovery. And what I can tell you is that it is always a capacity issue before it becomes a [00:22:00] capability issue. And I think the major indictment there is after nearly 20 years of doing this, is we keep doing emergency management at our communities instead of with our communities.
Matt Green: And I think that is the best way to sum up everything, all the points that you've all made here. I,
Todd de Voe: I wanna celebrate that, Matt. Um, and thank you for that because, One of the things that, that we're doing, uh, is, and, and kind of stealing from Kyle King here, is the idea of capacity building within our community.
Todd de Voe: And this has been our focus here at, in, in Inglewood, um, to do this and very important for, we have one person now, and it sounds like, sounds terrible. We only have one, but we're a small shop. Right. We we're lucky to have them eight people in our shop. We have one person that's able to be dedicated to go out and to, and to go out and talk to the community groups, to talk to the churches, to talk to the, you know, whatever, whoever wants to, whoever wants to talk to us right now.
Todd de Voe: And to go [00:23:00] out and help build that capacity and having that one person dedicated to do that is amazing. And now we're just bringing on a second person who's doing it with businesses. Um, that's, that's one of the things that we're focusing on is, is capacity building. Thank you, Kyle, for, for actually put putting me onto that in the conversations that we had many years ago about that.
Kyle King: Yeah, thanks Todd. And so I'll bring that back and it sort of rolls into one of the second points I was thinking about as I was, you know, sort of contemplating this, you know, what I would talk about today. And that is where, you know, we, at least in my line of work, we started talking a lot more about governance.
Kyle King: And when I talk about governance, I'm specifically framing it and, and even down to Ralph, what you're talking about, individual communities. And I'll, I'll just, I'll build on your example, Ralph. So if, if people were notified that they were able, you know, a weather pattern or change is coming and you need to prepare your teams, where was the decision that people would actually be notified in the communities right.
Kyle King: The governance decision of city administration, emergency management offices, governor's offices, even up to a national level based on scale of a [00:24:00] disaster that something is happening. And, and, and this is something that has been growing in our, in our work recently, is like, okay, who is making these decisions and who's involved in the decision making process?
Kyle King: And then how is that sort of affecting the communities? Because you can take the alternative view of that as well, which is now Ralph, after all that you've seen the importance of water, who's making decisions for infrastructure investment, right? And then so that governance decision on the back end as well, after recovery into mitigation.
Kyle King: And the, the way that we're making decisions and it's, those decisions still remain siloed, don't necessarily always involve the communities who were affected by this. And it, and it's still, you know, as Todd you mentioned, it sort then is affected by policy and even politics to a certain example. I mean, the most recent case of that is just even this week with the FEMA review council, right?
Kyle King: So all of these things happening all at the same time, and it just draws into this question of like, how do we govern societies, especially those that are [00:25:00] under-resourced up to even ones that are majorly resourced, like New York City and LA and others like that, these big urban areas. So how, like this decision making process is one of the things.
Kyle King: And so this is where, you know, we have lots of research, argon labs, you know, all these other things that keep telling us the same thing, same things over and over again. There's. Ralph rightly mentioned, sort of the need to change sort of culturally at a, at a individual level in communities. But at the same time, there's an obligation, there's a first principles approach to emergency management, which is like, the role of government is to protect the communities, right?
Kyle King: And so where is that happening, right? And if it needs to be resourced, then resourced it isn't that sort of the first principle that we always have is to protect the people that live in our communities that drive the economy, that drive the sort of the, the livelihood of our communities and themselves.
Kyle King: And we're seeing this on so many levels. I, I could probably go on for, I'll just, I'll stop there and throw it back to you, Todd. 'cause that's what we're seeing is like this process of up and down and these [00:26:00] decisions are the things that are having the most either impactful or detrimental sort of effects on communities.
Todd de Voe: Well, I'm gonna get a soapbox here for a minute, and I'm hoping that my fellow emergency managers here will, might back me up here. So when it comes to, let's talk about emergency management first, and then we can get into the decision making matrix. You know, you talk about assets and compared, let's compare LA City, LA County, and then the, the surrounding 88 jurisdictions that are in LA County.
Todd de Voe: Um, only LA County has around 40 emergency managers, give or take, right? I think it's 38 right now. LA City, same thing around 40 emergency managers and most of the 88 jurisdictions in LA County have maybe one emergency manager. Some of them have a half, right? and so if you think about the, the population in LA County and the threat.
Todd de Voe: Assessment outside of just the earthquakes, but the wildland fires that are [00:27:00] there. And then of course, then you have the, the human caused disasters, whether it's terrorism potential or just, you know, a plane falling outta the sky, which we've had some of those occur. They got the early ness, you know, but, but those type of events that could pot potentially happen within this county, um, is tremendous.
Todd de Voe: Right. You know, you go back to New York City, um, you know, yes, it's more, more condensed area, but they, they have the assets that they've, they've taken emergency management seriously, and, and it's put basically their, their, their money where their mouth is at when it comes to emergency management and has their office of emergency management has like, I forgot how many ma maybe you might be able to fix me on that one, but at least like over a hundred and so odd members, right?
Matt Green: Yeah. Um, I, I formerly worked for the Port Authority Office of Emergency Management and, and we were, um, you know, we had a team of like 20 compared to, you know, they looked like they had like an army and they were excellent partners.
Todd de Voe: Right. You know, and, and so, I mean, so where are we putting, when we talk about, you know, investing [00:28:00] into what emergency management is and then, and then going back to our previous conversation, investing in emergency management truly is invested in community capacity, right?
Todd de Voe: Because this is what we should be doing. Not sitting behind a desk, as I say, tell people all the time, writing plants, you know, I, I jokingly say we could, and I'm possibly, you know, I say half jokingly, I, I'm being serious about it. And one aspect of it is it's not my job as an emergency manager for a city.
Todd de Voe: Should I be sitting back and typing and writing plants? Well, yeah, you can say that. Or the other side of it is, is invest and bring in a, a consultant to write the plan and you are able to, uh, facilitate that plan writing, taking your, taking that off of your plate. And going out into the community and, and, and operationalizing that plan to the community is what you should be doing.
Todd de Voe: And as to Ralph's point, bringing that community in on the conversation of what that plan looks like. And that's what we fail to do, I think, and it as an indictment on our, on our profession maybe, or as an [00:29:00] indictment on the governance is do we we fail to, to actually go out when we're writing plans and bring the community in on that conversation and having them be part of that.
Todd de Voe: How, and, and, and one last point, and I'll give it back to the rest of the panel here, is how do we expect the community to embrace, like, you know, the zero, um, zones, right? If we don't have them involved in the conversation of what that truly is, because we, we tend to talk to our community, not talk with our community.
Todd de Voe: And that's what we need to change in what we do as a profession. And, uh, whoever wants, wants to jump on that talk beat up.
Anastacia Maynich: I'll jump on this one. I'm a really huge advocate for leveraging content creators to leveraging your community content creators, the ones that they're beloved, the ones that they're actually going out into the community, the ones that actually get to see everything.
Anastacia Maynich: So if we can create some kind of messaging, specific messaging for the community itself, or actually talk to them, [00:30:00] talk to the people who know their surrounding, but it's not just the content creators with the, within the community. It's content creators like us, the professionals, the professionals that have, uh, emergency management background, that have fire response or any kind of like medical response or any kind of response like that.
Anastacia Maynich: Those are the voices that we can push out. Those are the voices that we need to support. I know, um, there's a media involving, and nobody, nobody has like just a regular news channel anymore. Everybody's just jumping into the YouTube to get their latest news, to like see what's going on. For example, when the wildfire started in LA and last year, so last year I was running my own separate platform.
Anastacia Maynich: Um, and what I was doing is I was reporting on the fire as it was progressing. And then what I was gathering, I was getting, gathering all the different news channels and then all the different neighborhoods I had that like watch duty pull pulled up to see like all the evacuation, and then the [00:31:00] people were coming in.
Anastacia Maynich: They're like, oh, wow, where do you go? What do I go, what do I need to do? So this is, this is where we come in and then kind of push that messaging out because we know where to go to get the information. As emergency managers, we know that we need to go to the A city website or. Or um, county website to see were any kind of evacuation things going on or we know what kind of news to pull up.
Anastacia Maynich: And then when the one of the press conferences are coming, coming out and we can actually digest it and then push that messaging more of a simpler messaging out to the community members itself. So that's why leveraging content creators is a big, big advocacy for me, especially the professionals like us.
Ralph Bloemers: Yeah. I love that you say that, Anastasia. I mean, I've been trying to think what else I can do. Besides making films that appeal on PBS, because that reaches a specific audience. And while that was an achievement, and I feel good about the various films, elementals on, you know, apple TV and Google [00:32:00] Play, and it's been translated into 42 different languages and it's been in Europe and Canada.
Ralph Bloemers: And it's led me to a lot of other thinking, like, what can we bring in terms of humor for hazards? So I've been developing this thing on swipe left, swipe right for embers, and it's a sort of a play on what do you do to prepare your home? And Ember is, is the character and then the swipe left and swipe right are, are different forms of either not good looking and good looking men who she can swipe left and swipe right on.
Ralph Bloemers: That are the things you do to your home. Right? And so I think this piece of bringing humor for hazards might work for some people, right? It might work for some content creators. And then for the, after the LA Fires our special, we're actually making kits, some of them just. You can just share a thing that we've made.
Ralph Bloemers: Others are, you know, make your own, basically make your own, build your own message. Because as you know, like content creators have their own vibe, have their own way of telling things. [00:33:00] They maybe are more fun. They want to do something in a fun way. And so I've been thinking about that a lot of this piece because in LA there's this really amazing organization called the the Community Brigade.
Ralph Bloemers: And it's gotten a lot of attention and I think people see them as a fire response organization a bit too much. But the founders of that organization, they don't see themselves as a fire response organization. They see themselves as a, uh, bridge to the community representatives of the community. And how do we get the community to act and own their hazard, which you heard me say earlier, before a fire comes.
Ralph Bloemers: And that's how they're interacting with the community. And Chief Maroney and Assistant Chief Drew Smith has been huge proponents of it. Because of their deep commitment to taking action before fire comes. And that and that culture change piece, right? So while they are able to do fire front following, they are able [00:34:00] to do bump and run and certain tactics, you know, that are appropriate in a fast fire.
Ralph Bloemers: And they're highly trained and trusted. Most of their work is home assessments and here's how you prepare. And, and I've seen that in a lot of other places, like with the Yurok and Northern California. They're very intimate with their place. It's very context based, right? And who are the trusted messengers.
Ralph Bloemers: So I super, uh, you know, second if you will, what you just said and applaud that kind of approach. And you, you know, you see people scaling this, this activity before fire comes. And, and I think with like the watch duty app, which I'm sure emergency managers love, right? It is. You know, now you can see the wind layer.
Ralph Bloemers: Now you can see where the aircraft are. If you wanna pay a little bit more money, you can get a certain number of alerts based on your zip I. If I'm planning to go camping, I can look at that thing to decide I'm gonna go to this [00:35:00] national force. It's not just for emergency management, it's just like for knowing my landscape.
Ralph Bloemers: Right. And being more knowledgeable about the place that I live and understanding it. So I I, I'm super heartened by all of you all seeing those kinds of things. 'cause I think that's where we need to head and be, become more personalized.
Laura James: And I'm gonna jump in to, to, just to add to that, I think some of that comes from our hesitation.
Laura James: 'cause most of us came from a government background and or still work there, right. Where our communication tools are ones that traditionally have had to been approved. You know, they have to go to various levels of folks before they can get pushed out publicly. And the landscape has changed before our policy and procedure around that has changed.
Laura James: Right. And you know, years ago when I was deep in flood risk, um, preparedness and education, I wanted the logo to be, do you float? And that would not pass. Right. I couldn't put that on a shirt. I couldn't put it on a bumper sticker [00:36:00] because obviously that's, you know. That's not great. But people, we all have a great sense of humor.
Laura James: We need to in order to continue to survive. But some of it is real talk, right? The way that the communities relate to each other on every social media platform these days is real talk. So as emergency managers, exactly what Anastasia and Ralph have said, we need to take that upon ourselves to say, Hey, this is coming your way.
Laura James: Are you ready? What are you doing? And those little snippets of not, not pre-canned, not ready to go messaging, but that real time thing, you know, I can see the embers, we can see the flames. You know, what are you doing? What can you do right now? And being. The advocates and taking that voice upon ourselves, you know, away from sort of that policy and procedure manual to say, Hey, this is how we communicate now.
Laura James: This is how we, this is community resilience. They're talking even if you're not. And you know, there was a really great example of this up here, [00:37:00] this past winter, huge ice storm impacted multiple communities. No power for days, no water, no heat. No sanitary. And, and the messages were really around the public communicating the public, letting the other public know where they could find a warming center where they could get water.
Laura James: And really, the public is now relying on each other more than they're relying on us. And in some cases, we're not even out there at all because our messages aren't approved and we're not the people. But I, I think we really need to own that. We need to own the 24 7 news cycle as emergency managers and become, as, um, Anastasia and Ralph has said, the, the talking heads just, and I'm not shy to say, Hey, it's dry out there, no fires.
Laura James: That's how it is. You know, and, and remind people. And, and to that end, I think the more we're out there and the more people get used to seeing us, they will start to see us. And they should start to see us as some of those mitigation [00:38:00] conversations come to light in the community. Right. If we're talking about infrastructure improvements, well, that's all about.
Laura James: Flooding and you know, all types of other things where emergency managers should be one of the people that's included in those discussions all the time. And the public should say, what does emergency management have to say about that new infrastructure? Is that gonna work for us for the next 20 years?
Laura James: And we should be at the table as part of that mitigation conversation.
Ralph Bloemers: Yeah, I mean, totally Laura, like the Nova Scotia, right? They said, don't, we can't go in the parks. Why? Yes, because 'cause fires are inevitable. Risk is too high and nine outta 10 are human caused. Correct. And if we, you know, we know that there's gonna be, there could be a rekindle, a super unfortunate, there could be a firework, there could be a chain on a truck there.
Ralph Bloemers: Fire's inevitable. And I think you're hearing more from emergency managers and firefighters basically saying that we focus so long on prevention of [00:39:00] ignitions. But you know, the reality is we're not gonna be preventing all the ignitions. I think the other thing is have we really led the public like a horse to water?
Ralph Bloemers: I don't think so because we say the problem is in the forest. Or we say the problem is with fire response or the problem is with the water system in a fast fire. The problem is the unadapted community, the solution is the adapted community. It's not all fires that are a problem, it's 3% of them. 3% of ignitions burn communities to ground.
Ralph Bloemers: 88% of those are very fast fires, wind-driven uns, slope wind events with fire in it. So like we have to truth talk about what are the conditions we're dealing with for conflagration and that's not all fires. Right? And we love to, you know, sort of, not all of us, but the media sort of demonizes and talks about a wall of flames.
Ralph Bloemers: Well, that's not what it is. And I think whatever it is with flood, it's a different [00:40:00] set of messages. You all are probably more adept at speaking that world. I'm Mr. Fire guy, so I can just rattle on all day about that thing, but, but I do think that this like consistent messaging from the insurance industry, from emergency managers and firefighters of like, we live in fire country.
Ralph Bloemers: It's gonna happen. Here's what you can do to support us. Here's what you can do to support your neighbors and yourself. And there's a really important layer that you have to own instead of, we got this, we're the experts, we're gonna solve it for you. And then you're creating an incredibly unreasonable expectation on behalf of the public that then what you see, like Anastasia, I'm sure you've observed this in LA, is a lot of people that are hurting, maybe they're hurting 'cause they lost their homes.
Ralph Bloemers: I get it. Like. I have friends, but saying things and finger pointing in Monday morning quarterbacking, because the unreasonable expectation was created beforehand of, uh, we've got this with firetruck and hoses. It's, it's a bit on the, it's a bit [00:41:00] definitely on those of us in the, uh, spaces of being responsible for figuring it out, for creating that expectation.
Ralph Bloemers: And, and we sort of need to, I think Laura, we need to do some truth telling around that piece.
Matt Green: I, I think on the governance piece, where we're missing the mark is that I, I think governance, like alert and warning and, and like these communication methods, they should be happening as close to the problem as we can get them.
Matt Green: And, and I think because we're starting from 30,000 feet with governance top down, uh, I think that's where we start to miss the mark as it, it doesn't scale down as well as it could. And I think that also scales to emergency management being in the room. I've, I've learned quite a bit throughout my career from the disability advocacy groups specifically the phrase, nothing about us without us.
Matt Green: And I think that agency and empowerment and collaboration is so important from the community to the emergency manager and then the emergency manager to the, uh, electeds or however that may work. And if there's anything I've learned throughout working [00:42:00] multiple disasters is, and it's been a through line through my show, which is disasters are weird.
Matt Green: Disasters are never going to behave the way you think they're going to, you know, whether it's three, three dimensional, uh, embers or, uh, flood that, that scales to a chemical spill to, but. Disaster indicators are just as weird of knowing that this is going to go from something that may be quote unquote typical to something that is truly a disaster.
Matt Green: And more times than not, it is the people closest to those indicators that understand them the best. And the last thing I'll say on, on this particular topic of, of governance and understanding is that I have been interviewing, um, a gentleman by the name of Gregory Igneo, my, he's a wild and firefighter turned academic.
Matt Green: And between the two of us, we've been talking about complex adaptive systems and complexity science and about how communities are complex adaptive systems, which means they are unique and they have unique agents, whether it's a. A political group or whether it's a business that had opened or [00:43:00] closed, or whether it's the volunteer firefighters, uh, versus the paid firefighters in the community, or these are all independent agents that react to and with each other and external stimuli, and they also carry their history on their back.
Matt Green: Right? If you tell Christchurch New Zealand that experienced massive earthquakes to prepare versus Paradise California where they had a massive wildfire to prepare, they're going to behave differently based off their history. I have a multi-part series coming out with him early in the year, uh, which is basically what if we're doing all of this wrong?
Matt Green: Which from a governance to answer the governance perspective and, and wrap up, uh, my perspective on this particular question is, what if there's no best practice? For emergency management, planning and policy and governance within a community, because each community is so unique. And when it comes to best practice, the best practice for us is to understand and engage our community within the context of themselves.
Matt Green: Like Laura, you were saying, you know, I am able to use humor because they, I know it'll engage X, Y, and Z people, but governance says it's not appropriate, or best [00:44:00] practice says it's not appropriate. But within a specific, where I'm from, that is exactly how people want to and need to be engaged, and that's how they will re respect, respect us, and engage themselves.
Matt Green: So understanding that, yeah, wearing a a shirt or creating swag that has something that might be more snarky probably won't work for every community. But if we're working closest to the problem and respecting communities within the context of themselves, maybe that's perfect for your jurisdiction and it should be allowed to be.
Matt Green: And that's what I'll add there.
Kyle King: So I'll, I'll sort of build on what Matt said for, for this next round because, well, there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack from, from what everybody said. And I'm just trying to find a way to keep my thoughts concise enough to keep it to like a minute if, if communities are so specific, and, and this is one of the things that I've seen throughout this last year as well, if communities are very specific and everybody is sort of conditioned, shaped, trained by their experiences in that community, and we [00:45:00] recognize this and it comes back to governance now, one of the, the conversations I've had throughout the year is at what level or size of a community do you have emergency management?
Kyle King: Like when does it become a thing? Because I've worked in many countries and, and a lot of times in sort of post-conflict countries and things like that. And at some point there's always an international program or organization that comes in and says, we need to build police stations and we need to build, you know, security forces in the military and enhance the, a safe and secure environment.
Kyle King: Um, but nobody builds fire stations. Nobody builds 9 1 1 centers. Maybe if the WHO maybe UN might help with building hospitals, but it's all the community's responsibility at the end of day for those other things. So when I reflect on the United States, and I think, okay, we, we talked about sort of big cities, you know, more, you know, rural urban environments, but at what level is that like 10,000 people need an emergency manager?
Kyle King: Is it 20, is it 50,000? And this is one of those key points about governance is like, [00:46:00] when does it actually say like, okay, you need a court, you need a police station, you need a fire station, and you need an emergency manager, right? Like, what is that? You know, it should be a type of box decision. No, what do you call it?
Kyle King: Something like a decision that should be fairly easy.
Matt Green: I love the meme of like, if this band has a million fans, I'm one of them. And if they have no fans, I'm dead. And I think that's, I think that scales to emergency management in any community or home, if, I just think that applies. Everybody needs an emergency manager.
Matt Green: Everyone should be the emergency manager of their own home, um, and, and their own community.
Todd de Voe: I always think of the Wild West, right. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm a big fan of the Wild West. In the old, in the old stories and every town had these three things. They had a jail, they had a saloon and a hotel. Right. You know, you never saw them have the firehouse, you know what I mean?
Todd de Voe: It was because it just wasn't a thing. It was like, but everybody was expected to join the bucket brigade when, when a [00:47:00] building caught on fire. You know, the community comes together to do a crisis. And to answer the question, Kyle, I think every community, no matter what, the size has to have somebody or a group of people that think about.
Todd de Voe: What is the threat when it comes to natural hazards, right? Because we jail there, right? The the law enforcement side is for the manmade, the human cause, you know, crisis. Right? What do we talk about when we're looking at the natural? And then I'm gonna kind of push this back to Ralph because I know the, he's done some great work with, um, with the Native American community and, and documentary was great, but I mean, I think even our indigenous ancestors were thinking about, even though we didn't call it emergency management, but emergency at least, uh, crisis management when it came to food, water, and also Fire Ralph.
Todd de Voe: Uh, one, take it.
Ralph Bloemers: Wow. I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time with the different communities [00:48:00] from North Slope of Alaska, um, you know, throughout Oregon, some in Washington, and some in Northern California. And you know, most recently I've been working on this series that's. A couple years in called Fire Safe People.
Ralph Bloemers: And you know, the, the tagline is, be your own hero. And I, and I think we just heard that what this common thread is that's coming forth is that I was mentioning earlier is this intimacy with place and seeing one self as interconnected with that place. And I was there filming, um, a segment with Robert McConnell, who's the burn boss for the Cultural Fire Management Council for the Yurok.
Ralph Bloemers: And he has 20, maybe two years prior to that in fire suppression. And then he went, returned to home to become a fire lighter and steward that landscape. And he took us fishing on the Klamath with his kids and caught a number of silvers and then several sturgeon. [00:49:00] And each one of the sturgeon he let go because.
Ralph Bloemers: Where they were in their, in their development and how they would contribute to the river's health and, you know, and so that was very forward thinking, right? And systems thinking and a really, really interesting moment to see and then to speak with him after on camera and have him reflect about that.
Ralph Bloemers: But I see that same, like, I see that same wisdom with some of the other characters that we're following. And each one of these pieces is intended to be 45 minutes where it's our food, our family, and our security is the A story, right? And the B story is our relationship to this thing fire. And, and I think what you're hearing from people is, you know, these, they, they accept natural processes.
Ralph Bloemers: They don't deny them. They, what you're hearing these common threads I think that you're getting at Todd is right. The, the food family security piece is first for [00:50:00] everyone. It's our primal needs. That story is powerful and how people relate to that. And I think the job of emergency managers is to be dialed into that.
Ralph Bloemers: Right. And, and really understand those things coming and, you know, to not, to not be a burden, to be a helper. Right. And that's what I see with these folks. I think they're fairly universal stories. You know, I'd love to do this internationally. I've met people at the, um, world Fire Congress, Dr. Lori Moore.
Ralph Bloemers: Merrill invited me too, and I met people from all over the world in the fire space. And I, I'd love to go see in other countries culturally like it's been interesting spending some time, Laura in Canada. Because just for up there, for example, I'll throw another fire thing out. It's the, uh, crossover, right?
Ralph Bloemers: Is is how they talk about on the nightly news, we don't talk about crossover. We do red flag, but crossovers, you know, when relative humidity is dropping below temperatures, degrees C 'cause we're [00:51:00] Fahrenheit people, we don't think that way, but like in, uh, central and South America, they do the 30, 30 30 rule, which is 30 degrees tamp, 30 mile an hour wind speed and, and 30% or less relative humidities and, and it's 30 kilometers an hour, right?
Ralph Bloemers: And so they're just like, I think it's sort of this being dialed into environment and how people talk about it, how they relate to it, seems a bit more mature maybe in some other countries. A little bit of a ramble. But I did get to know. The tribal chief of Theto in Canada, who's sort of the head of indigenous emergency management.
Ralph Bloemers: Todd and I got to know him because of Elemental and how that piece that Margot expresses in the film of fire has a right to exist and we need to appreciate that and learned to live with it and how that's tied to not just taking care of the home and the community and the village, but like it's tied to food and the landscape.
Ralph Bloemers: And, um, so I [00:52:00] think, is that what you were hoping to have me reflect on? I get a little nervous sometimes 'cause I don't wanna speak for indigenous folks. I, I think it's best for me to let them speak for themselves and tell their stories, but those are the things that I have. What I was sharing is not speaking for them, but just the things that I've appreciated from being able to spend time.
Ralph Bloemers: And I think they're fairly universal. Like Elizabeth, who's Ku Yurok says. You know, we're native to this place, but we're all indigenous to this land. Mm. Um, and I love that when she said that, and it was in a very special, intense moment in a q and a after a screening of several hundred people. And I just, so there's a universality right.
Ralph Bloemers: To all of our needs. And so I think there's a, even though each community is different, we need to figure out how to speak to them and what their channels are and how they get their information and who they trust. There is a universality nonetheless, right. That we can tap into. And I think it's not fear-based.
Ralph Bloemers: Certainly [00:53:00] people need to understand a bit of the intensity of the natural consequences of things. But then it's leading into like, so what, what can you do and how can you be different? And the idea between fire safe people, of of fire safe people is to show these really interesting people that have a healthy, not broken relationship.
Ralph Bloemers: So people can be like. I can be like that and that it's not this like weird prepper thing, you know? It's just human.
Todd de Voe: Well, I think it's the weirdest thing that we do to people is like we tell them as emergency managers to be prepared for disasters. And we go through this whole thing about being prepared.
Todd de Voe: Being prepared, and then we. We label people who get prepared for disasters as this like, weird subset of like preppers, you know? And I, and I always thought that was kind of interesting, like, we're like, why do we make fun of them once we get them to the points of where we want them to be? Oh yeah. Some of 'em take it to the extent and that TV show is terrible for it, but I just think it's interesting that we go, go, go down there and sorry about that anesthesia.
Todd de Voe: I did. I thought, no worries,
Anastacia Maynich: no worries. No, I, [00:54:00] I actually 100% agree with you. I, I like to talk to all these preppers because they know exactly how to prepare for the disaster and I actually take some points from them as well when I write my plans. But, uh, one thing that I do wanna mention, so it doesn't matter the size of the community, every community need to have an emergency manager.
Anastacia Maynich: And it's not enough of us. It is not enough. Even the prepper. If a prepper wants to be an emergency manager, let them let them be. At least they will teach their own community how to prep for a better future. So one other thing that, you know, emergency management is built on three pillars, right? Is a preparedness response and recovery.
Anastacia Maynich: And then recovery aspect is the one that we don't talk enough about. So right now we're talking about prepare, and prepare and response response, but the recovery, like the insurance, dealing with insurance afterwards, dealing, dealing with the debris, removal afterwards, those are the things that people don't understand and they don't see.
Anastacia Maynich: But if we can show them the struggles some of the other communities went [00:55:00] through, like for example, with a, with a debris removal within LA County, that was, um, by the way, that was the fastest debris removal in U US history. And thanks, uh, US Army Corps of Engineers for that. And they pushed and pushed and pushed, but.
Anastacia Maynich: Also it was the fastest removal it was, but what is really fast recovery? Because the recovery goes on for years and years and years. So just because you said, oh, we just came in and removed all the debris. No, you can see that there are still multiple houses are still, they're going through abatement process.
Anastacia Maynich: They're going through, you know, going through all of this recovery because they couldn't afford it because their insurance pulled out or anything else. So that's another thing that we can teach our community is about what happens afterwards.
Matt Green: If you look at the data from the FEMA shelter in temporary Central Power program in, in Puerto Rico, which is something that I worked actually for, uh, BCG on under [00:56:00] Laura.
Matt Green: But if you look at the outcome and the a a r, the report from the pilot is that recovery was significantly delayed just due to administration. And the getting the right of entry for 108,000 homes to do minimum viable recovery work. I have, I, I'm very, very, very, very fortunate to have been able to work on some of these long-term recovery projects because I see how chronic and exhausting and laborious it is.
Matt Green: And I think, you know, when it comes to the much of the administration stuff, you know, maybe that is getting ROEs, like having that as part of a home insurance process is, Hey, part of being insured means that you're gonna sign these three pieces of paper, meaning that when your home is adjusted or whatever it is, and it's evaluated after a declared disaster of whatever threshold, the government has the right to come in and clean it.
Matt Green: That's it. And I know that's, it's a, it could be a term of whatever it might be for insurance, but I think that would expedite actual recovery and certain things [00:57:00] left of the bad thing as actually intrusive as that might sound. But, you know, we're talking disaster. We're talking about nothing really being left regardless.
Laura James: Hmm. And I'm gonna jump in there on the real talk. 'cause that's what I'm all about is, you know, to say I'm living in Ontario right now and we have regulated people out of the floodplain, so you cannot build a new home in the floodplain. We will not allow that risk to be, to be rebuilt, you know, we'll compensate at market value and where we can, the government or other, um, authorities such as they may be, um, conservation authorities here in southern Ontario, purchase that land to keep it natural, to keep it naturalized and recognize that while it would be great for us to run all our infrastructure through the floodplain, and it would be great to put some high rises in places where we have not enough housing, the risk is too great.
Laura James: And we recognize that we communicate it and it's very well known. You know, you cannot insure [00:58:00] a property if it's in the floodplain. So the, you know, having some real talk around. I know we don't like to have our rights taken away as humans, but there is a reason why we're doing that is because it doesn't matter what we engineer.
Laura James: We have learned that water is going to engineer itself around what we've engineered. So let's try and start keeping people out of the risk. Um, and those are some hard conversations, right? But, but in places where there has been success, you know, Canada's not one, not the only country that has had a lot of success to, to keep people from rebuilding in places that are high risk, that are annual risk, um, and, and starting to have some of those conversations so that at least it's out there to say, is that the best idea for all of us to get back in there, to recover and rebuild in the same place that we know that same amount of devastation can occur?
Todd de Voe: You know, uh, to, to build on that, Laura, one of the problems that we're having here in California specifically, um, is people [00:59:00] building, um, on the bluffs to oversee the beautiful ocean. San Diego has it. Um, we have right here in Palos Ver estate, um, where buildings are falling into the ocean. Um, and the insurance stuff is, is the conversation.
Todd de Voe: So much so that, um, in PVE, um, and Portuguese Bend, they cut off power and electricity to people. And, but people said, okay, fine. Um, I'm gonna live off the grid then. And they created their own and they still wanna live there, even though the, the buildings are falling into literally falling slowly into the ocean.
Todd de Voe: Um, you know, and so how then there goes to the questions like property rights and things like this, and how do we, then there, then there's the expense, right? And this is the word that gets kind of interesting on the politics, on, on the uh, uh, side of it is now if we do a buyback. What level are we purchasing back at?
Todd de Voe: Are we, because, you know, California's a very expensive real estate. Are we buying it at that, you know, multimillion dollar home with a [01:00:00] beautiful view, uh, um, you know, uh, level Or are we buying it at the true property value, which is truly nothing at this point because it's gonna fall into the ocean, you know?
Todd de Voe: And then how do we make people whole? And that's the big conversation we're having right now on, on the buyback programs is like, what level, I mean, do we spend 5 million? I don't know how much the homes are out there. I'm making this up right now as far as numbers go, but are we saying, are we gonna spend $5 million on a home that's on the cliff side that is really gonna fall into the ocean?
Todd de Voe: You know, is that the appropriate use of taxpayer's dollars? You know, um, in, in those conversations. And there's, these are deep conversations with emotional attachment to these homes, right? And so it's a, it's a, it's more complicated to say, Hey, you can't build here. You know, we're gonna buy your property back.
Todd de Voe: It's like, how do we go with the buyback programs, especially in these, uh, areas? And that's one of the things that we're struggling with.
Ralph Bloemers: Todd, you really unpacked the small subjects, man. I mean, the thing is, California doesn't have the treasury printing press so they can't endlessly print money and make money [01:01:00] to pay people.
Ralph Bloemers: And, and the fact is, the, the scope and areas of at risk are growing. You know, we were, we were gonna, I was, I was keen to get to some predictions and make a wild one. Maybe not a wild one, but I think that this, this piece of, that Laura was talking about, and you're touching on Todd, is how, how direct and, and honest and will a maybe mercenary direct we're gonna be about some things, right?
Ralph Bloemers: What kind of truth talk You know, I think that the challenge with for politicians is they're promising the things that people want to hear, but what we're talking about on this podcast is the physics don't care about that. Right. And the math and the probabilities. Don't care what people want to be promised.
Ralph Bloemers: The water flows downhill and it gathers and it's gonna flood you if you're in the wrong place. And yeah, we, property rights are a big deal. And the United States and investment backed expectations are a big deal. And people have [01:02:00] bought a lot of things without their eyes wide open that they're in a swale where the water's gonna flood or, or they think the fire thing is, you know, just a Southern California thing.
Ralph Bloemers: Or maybe they don't even think it's that big of a thing, right? They didn't really, even though they Altina and Palisades and the Santa Monica mountains have a long fire history, fairly frequent fire history. And so, I don't know. I'm not really a big believer and we should compensate people. I know it's painful, I know it hurts, but the reality is, if we don't get real, we're gonna be become uninsurable and we can.
Ralph Bloemers: We can't tell the reinsurance world in, in Switzerland and Munich and London to cover our butts, you know, with laws. It's a private contract, so we have to start to just get real about where we've chosen to live. I'm not thinking we are gonna be able to retreat from it, but I think being able to compensate [01:03:00] everyone for their investment backed expectations not gonna happen.
Ralph Bloemers: I'll just say, not gonna happen. I'm not sure it should happen, but maybe that's another show where we can get after that.
Kyle King: And I do wanna get into predictions on this next round because, um, I, it it's gonna be a lot more fun to sort of see what you, you have to think about what's gonna happen next year.
Kyle King: But one thing that I would say, and, and maybe this will be my sort of prediction going into 2026 as well, is, okay, so we have all of this information, emergency management, we have all these problems. Problems, right? But we have all these things that we're working on from plans to world cubs to events, managed retreat, you know, insurance, reinsurance, all these sort of different things that we're thinking about our mitigation plans, long-term recovery, community engagement activity, all these things.
Kyle King: And, and you might have heard of, uh, I don't know if you've heard of Cal Newport, right? But he, we wrote this book, it was about deep work and things like that. And then I started thinking sort of towards the end of the year this year and I was like, you know, emergency management as a field is [01:04:00] absolutely the worst in terms of context switching.
Kyle King: Right, because you are absolutely jumping between everything all the time. And if you're doing more than like an hour of context switching, you're dropping like 20 IQ points, right? And so we are effectively by profession, making ourselves dumber. You know, the more we work, the more we try to fix things, and the more that we try and actually deal with all these different subjects, we're actually less effective.
Kyle King: And so it comes into this whole conversation. I think that we have to really get to a core truth about which is how, and it's sort of, you know, we've sort of indicated to a certain extent, it's like how much of this do you actually offload to the community as it's your responsibility? You know what you're getting into and you need to be responsible or individually or as a community, you need to be responsible.
Kyle King: How much is that offloaded to different departments of government? How much is it actually emergency manager's responsibility? And, and then how is that actually, you know, sort of diversified? Because as we go into 2026 and as [01:05:00] there's sort of political initiative or will. We'll see what happens, but to, you know, sort of restructure FEMA for a polite term and push that, that sort of responsibilities down to the state, like who's gonna end up eating all of that responsibility, you know?
Kyle King: And it's like, it's all has to go somewhere. It all has to be offloaded somewhere. And simply Grants don't really remove work. It's just a financial tool. It's just somebody still has to rebuild communities and somebody still has to go outta the office and do all this stuff. And maybe they'll fund more positions.
Kyle King: Maybe not, but that's sort of the issue of that we're, they're sort of getting into is this massive sort of issue of context switching in 2026. And I, and I'll, give like two different sort of perspectives. 'cause we have, we have a community and, and a couple people wanted to offer some ideas.
Kyle King: One of 'em is that we we're doing all this context switching against the backdrop of sort of having these hard truths. Laura, like you're talking about this real talk, which is like, okay, we. Even if we were able to do all this [01:06:00] stuff, we're not really being honest with ourselves about like the state of critical infrastructure in the United States.
Kyle King: Yeah. Like, we'll throw a trillion dollars into ai, but you know, have you seen our roads and bridges? And it's like we're not really having an honest conversation around that. And the second thing is, with all these trends like ai, like cyber, like all these things we're developed, especially in the business space and organizational space, you're developing tunnel vision and then you, you forget about the physical threat environment that you have or anything else in your community because, well, we're just really worried about cyber attacks or ransomware or the next trend.
Kyle King: The next threat. And so we've got this weird space going into 2026 and my, my trend or my prediction for next year is we have to really come to grips with context switching. 'cause we can't be everything to everybody. And that's gonna force a massive offload of responsibility to individual and community responsibility.
Kyle King: Which they may not and they probably will not. Like, I'll leave it at that.
Todd de Voe: Well, Kyle does, Rosie. Um, I think I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna sort of piggyback on it a little [01:07:00] bit. You know, one of the things I've been really looking at is, uh, you know, the context of emergency management in the, in, in the light of federalism.
Todd de Voe: Right. And especially with the way our government, um, right now is, is wanting to push things back, uh, to the states. And I don't think we've ever. Truly. And, and I think that some of this is political rhetoric where it was saying, you know, the local government, you know, is responsible for the disaster. And, you know, I think it's always been that way.
Todd de Voe: I shouldn't say I think, I know it's always been that way. You know, we've just been funded by the federal government, and the federal government has always been, for lack of a better term, that checkbook. Um, we have seen some mission creep, if you will, uh, where the federal government's been leaning forward and positioning some assets.
Todd de Voe: I think we saw this because people don't understand what emergency management is, and we are truly the only profession, right? Where we look at the federal level to prove who we are, right? Fire departments don't say, oh, look at the Federal Fire Department. Law enforcement doesn't point to the FBI, but as emergency managers, we have to tell people, oh, we're like [01:08:00] fema, but for the local government, right?
Todd de Voe: And I think it's kind of an odd thing. My prediction, and this is my prediction for 2026, is you're gonna see an uptake in local emergency managers. Actually, people are knowing who we are. And that's what, and I think I'm gonna keep it as a, as a. Positive prediction for 2026.
Anastacia Maynich: They have safety. So that's why, that's why it takes us to kind of recognize that and actually go to the meetings, uh, to the city meetings and talk about it.
Anastacia Maynich: And maybe in 2026, this is some kind of, some kind of messaging that we can push is to go to those city meetings, even though I'm an unincorporated within the, within the city limits of Pinole. But I still went to the meeting and I said like, Hey, have you guys thought about actually building a separate emergency management?
Anastacia Maynich: I know you have funds, you know, I know you located some funds for EOC that's run by the police department, but who is your emergency manager themselves? So, or we have a safety plan, [01:09:00] but it doesn't matter if the plan can comes across at the moment, but it will hit, eventually, it will be like, oh, wait a minute.
Anastacia Maynich: They're talking about emergency management aspect. So I think maybe a good prediction is a. You know, spike in emergency management departments actually
Laura James: have a lot of hope. And, you know, at the end of each Resilient Heroes episode, I usually ask, you know, a guest one question, what can you say for emergency management for next year?
Laura James: And a recent guest said, you know, I have great hope. And I, and I thought to myself, most days, I don't have great hope. So I, I internalized that a little bit to think, what does that actually mean for us? We have the ability to dial in more resources than we've ever had before. And with AI, now I can say, tell me every time this particular place has flooded in the last 50 years, and all the data you have on that.
Laura James: And that can be on a board for me in less than 30 seconds in ways that we've never been able to access information before we have [01:10:00] to be in it with them. So, you know, Todd's. Spoke a lot about how we sit behind our desks. We need to be out there, whether that's our faces in social media, whether that is this type of collaboration where we can support each other's project.
Matt Green: I'd like to double down or triple down on what everyone's been saying so far. And I think, uh, the fact that there are new shows, new organizations, new initiatives this year, more so than I think I've seen in my career, uh, is, is kind of an indictment of the agency and authority and empowerment that people are craving right now.
Matt Green: That emergency management is craving emergency managers and our communities skills. We don't hire marketers who are used to doing psychographics, uh, and technographics of communities. We're used to running campaigns and AB testing. The type of communications that we're putting out to our communities, and I will myself double down on, on my theory here for [01:11:00] 2026, is that we are going to continue to.
Matt Green: Decolonize the practice of emergency management by giving our communities more agency and more authority and more empowerment by shifting the hierarchical model of doing emergency management at our communities to more of an ontological model, which puts us as a node in the center of the community.
Matt Green: And on the left is our private sector partners who do enterprise risk management really well and might have plushies that they create and sell or candy that they can give out at disaster resource centers. And on the right is our coad in our VOADs that are so enthusiastic and ready to provide as much as they can, but we hold them back because of the perception of liability.
Matt Green: And we have our nonprofits and our volunteers and our Coast Guard auxiliaries. All these really fantastic people and skills that we have underutilized because they don't fit uniquely into our hierarchical model [01:12:00] of governance and of response and recovery. And I think that type of decolonization and empowerment not only is, but I think the only, it is the only way we can move forward with having the capacity to deal with the billion plus dollar disasters that we are seeing.
Matt Green: 'cause we will never defeat them on our own. That's, that's my perspective. And I'm, I'm excited to have my, some, my assumptions challenged because I think that has been the epitome of this journey in the show that, that I've been on
Anastacia Maynich: Matt, um, to, to your point, uh, that the, they're not hiring, uh, or some businesses not hiring emergency managers, but the thing is, like they don't know what emergency manager looks like, so that's why.
Anastacia Maynich: That's why as a part of the consultants, what we can do, we can actually advertise it to the business saying like, Hey, we can come in, we can, we can create something. We can evaluate your current plans. We can evaluate everything. This is what we can do [01:13:00] for you, and find the right candidate to place into the position that you business specifically requires.
Anastacia Maynich: And then this is something that we should like, really think about as, as in getting into advocacy for other businesses to say, this is the right people that you need to hire. And this is my dog in the background.
Matt Green: Amazing. To, to your point, Anastasia, I'm, I'm running the pilot for a statewide, uh, certification in Washington State through our emergency management association.
Matt Green: And part of the conditions of creating or piloting the certification is there must be buy-in by hiring authorities, whether it's private sector, public sector, nonprofit. Without the buy-in of the people who are hiring to say, okay, when I see this certification or this credential, I know what it means. I know what I'm getting, I know to ask for it, and I know what type of salary it demands.
Matt Green: Without that level of buy-in on one side, the credential is functionally useless on the other side, and that requires marketing and engagement and [01:14:00] pulling them into the conversation of does this meet the mark of the type of emergency manager that needs to work within your organization? And if you don't understand that, how can we better portray what these skills are and what these people come ready with?
Anastacia Maynich: You're absolutely right about, uh, the salary, especially with, as we all know, within the Bay Area, our salary expectations are very high. And if you come out with a way under the salary for emergency manager that you are not going to get the right credentials, the right people into the position.
Kyle King: Yeah, definitely.
Kyle King: So, Ralph, anything to add to your 2026 prediction?
Ralph Bloemers: I would just say that it seems like we're gonna get some, some communications from the natural hazard space that is going to, you know, be less, Hey, it's not, it's 90 minutes of emergency responders talking to the public, but it's gonna be 10 minutes of, Hey, let's choose your own adventure.
Ralph Bloemers: Where do you want to engage? Trying to find fun ways. I love, you know, I'm all for AB [01:15:00] testing. I do it. I love hearing that from you, you know, helping nurture, I see a prediction of things manifesting in my world of helping nurture communities to be their own hero. We've heard that several times today, and I hope, and I can't predict, but I hope that Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is gonna decide to be a hero and help pass zone zero.
Ralph Bloemers: So we'll see if that happens. Uh, I hope to be a part of making that happen. I think that, you know, we need, we definitely need sticks, but we also need carrots. I think there's movements afoot to, um, support people to make these changes, right? And tie it to insurance. So I think we're gonna see a lot more communication around how this helps you keep your mortgage, help you keep your insurance, and that is a kitchen table issue.
Ralph Bloemers: That is a food family security issue that is a, an affordability issue. Um, and I think that those, those [01:16:00] messages will resonate and they will, they're gonna get people to act. And, and that's my belief and my hope
Matt Green: and where I put my time and energy. Ralph, I'm 100% behind. Passing funded mandates through or grant dollars through to the household itself.
Matt Green: Even if we're investing a couple thousand dollars a year, it could be life changing to the household and it will save tens of thousands. Statistically, these are real numbers. Totally. Every dollar we give to a household, we'll save six to 13. So why aren't we passing this through to the people who could benefit from it and really use it?
Kyle King: So Ralph has got a lot of sort of good clips from this, from this, uh, this event. So I really like the choose your Own adventure thing, right? And because if you can get that message to the community and be like, you gotta, you're a participant in this, right? Like, you're not just sort of gonna be, you know, the victim in this.
Kyle King: You need to be a participant and these things are gonna happen. It's gonna affect your life, your house, everything else. So you gotta choose how you're [01:17:00] gonna sort of. Support the effort. Yeah. And I think that's a, a great sort of idea.
Ralph Bloemers: And, and I'll just say like instead of saying, Hey, here's what's in your, go back, let's do an exercise.
Ralph Bloemers: Imagine you're at work, your kid's at school, and then the fire comes, what are you gonna do? You know, I think turning that over very brief presentations and a lot more sort of, let's, let's think through how we would react in this situation and therefore what we might do before it comes. And I think that's where the choose your own adventure idea comes from is like, what part of the brigade do you want to be in?
Ralph Bloemers: Right. Do or do you want to be the person that goes to your neighbor asking for water? Do you wanna be a burden or do you want to be a helper in this life?
Kyle King: Yeah. Alright. Good. Well, this was super interesting. I really appreciate everybody, you know, joining in and, and having a conversation and sharing your experience over the last year.
Kyle King: And so as we wrap up, one of the things, of course before we close out, I would just wanna make sure everybody knows where to find each of you and, uh, [01:18:00] the work that you're actually doing. So, I, I see Todd's on the phone, but we can always find Todd on LinkedIn and also with IAEM and he is waving right now at us and also the Emergency Management Network podcast.
Kyle King: So he is available there. Matt, where can we find you?
Matt Green: LinkedIn, Matt Green. I'm [email protected], which is my substack in publication. And you could find me on all the show, you could find on, you know, Spotify and, and iTunes. And I also have the Disaster Discourse Book Club. There's about 200 international emergency managers engaged at that.
Matt Green: That's disaster discourse.com and I am at the underscore, Matt Green on all other channels. Great,
Kyle King: thanks. An Anastasia
Anastacia Maynich: Anastasia Mani. Um, uh, you can find me on LinkedIn. I do write quite a few articles of my own on LinkedIn, and I just started the, beyond the SOP podcast and I don't have the website for it yet, but it will be coming.
Anastacia Maynich: And then there's two episodes released. I am on almost all of the platforms right now. I'm still trying to get on Spotify, [01:19:00] but it's, it's there. And also the, I do run a YouTube channel. It's a small YouTube channel. It's a little bit more fun of a friendly neighborhood emergency manager. And the YouTube channel is Zana ma.
Anastacia Maynich: It's XA and a
Ralph Bloemers: LinkedIn kind of extracted myself from the others. So I'm mostly behind the camera. Uh, so if you have ideas for a story that needs to be told, and then, you know, my stuff is on various streaming services, but it's, you know, collective efforts, big teams, small teams making the things, and they're on YouTube, they're on Amazon, apple Play, uh, excuse me, Google Play, apple tv.
Ralph Bloemers: Look, we're working on a thing that I hope to get on one of the big streaming services. We'll see what happens, and then the PBS special comes out January. Uh, check it out and we're gonna do social stuff along with it. Um, we're releasing a new photorealistic animation of what happens in a fast fire and what happens if the community's prepared and what if happens if the community's unprepared.
Ralph Bloemers: So I'm pretty excited about that, but I'm always open to new ideas. [01:20:00] So reach out to me if you, if you wanna connect.
Kyle King: All right, perfect. Yeah, and we'll definitely include all this in the show notes as well. So everybody can just click the link and reach out to everybody. And I would encourage you to do so.
Kyle King: Subscribe to their podcasts, check out the videos, and things like that. So just to close out, you know, 20, 25, I think really sort of tested us both mentally, physically, with all the different disasters and all the sort of changes that we've been seeing across the entire landscape and the community. A lot of downward pressure politically, and a lot of upward sort of pressure from different disasters and communities.
Kyle King: But if there's one thing that this panel actually does prove well, it's basically that the emergency management community isn't really waiting for permission to evolve. And so we are building networks, we're building trust before disasters and re-imagining our relationship, not only just with fire, but also with elevating, you know, sort of diverse voices.
Kyle King: We're connecting through stories and bridging technology also with equity. And that's the work that actually matters. And so thanks for listening, and we'll see you all in 2026. [01:21:00]
