Most emergency operations plans die quietly on a shelf. They get written for a compliance deadline, approved by a board that never read past page three, and pulled out only when someone needs to prove the jurisdiction has one. After twenty-five years in this field, including writing a regional health [...]
Ask anyone who has worked a major disaster what broke first, and you will almost always hear the same answer: communications. After twenty five years working in emergency management and public safety communications, I have come to see this not as a series of unlucky accidents but as a predictable [...]
Most emergency management programs in small and mid-sized jurisdictions run on thin budgets, and the capability you wish you had usually gets built with grant money or not at all. I have spent twenty-five years in this field, and one of the most useful things I ever learned was how [...]
Exercises exist for one reason: to find the gaps in your plans, people, and equipment while the price of failure is still a red face in a conference room instead of a bad day in the field. After 25 years in this business, I have watched exercises change agencies and [...]
Most people picture emergency management as sirens, sandbags, and someone in a windbreaker pointing at a map on the news. That is a small slice of a much bigger profession. Emergency management is the discipline of reducing risk before disasters, coordinating the response when they happen, and guiding communities through [...]
