Canton on Emergency Management

It’s Past Time To Adopt A Code of Ethics

As emergency management evolves from a technical discipline to a profession, one of the hallmarks that we have been lacking is a code of ethics. A code of ethics has many functions but the most important by far is that it establishes a framework for decision making that ensures that our actions are morally sound as well as legal. This in turn builds trust and confidence in those we serve. This trust has been badly eroded over the past few years and there has never been a greater need for a code of ethics.
Attempts to develop a code of ethics for emergency management have been going on for several years, both in the academic world and supported by FEMA. Professional organizations such as the International Association of Emergency Management have developed their own but these generally pertain only to members of the organization and have not gained general acceptance within the emergency management community.

To address this need, the FEMA Higher Education Project assembled an Ethics Special Interest Group that drafted a code of ethics in 2021 that was then circulated for review and comment. The document was finalized in 2022 and presented at several emergency management conferences, where it was well received. The document, Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct for Emergency Management Professionals, consists of two components: a code of ethics that provides a set of “foundational tenets that guide ethical practice and decision-making” and a standard of conduct that presents “professional expectations for all emergency management professionals and extends across all areas of practice as well as individuals’ representation of the profession of emergency management”. In addition, the document includes several appendices that provide guidance on an ethical decision-making process and examples of the application of the code and standards.
The foundational tenets stated in the Code of Conduct are straightforward:

1. Think ethically, act morally.
2. Obey the law.
3. Maximize the good done for people and society, taking into consideration the needs of the most vulnerable.
4. Respect the rights of people and organizations; fulfill duties and obligations to those served.
5. Build trusting relationships.
6. When faced with an ethical dilemma, use an ethical decision-making process.

As with most things, the devil is in the details. To fully implement the code of ethics, it is necessary to understand and follow standards of conduct that identify the responsibilities inherent in the code. The Professional Standards of Conduct consist of 28 standards that detail our responsibilities to affected populations, the public, the environment, colleagues, employers, the profession and ourselves. Here again the document is clearly written and straightforward:

Responsibility to Affected Populations

STANDARD 1: Emergency management professionals recognize that diversity in needs exist and work to provide services without discrimination or preference.

STANDARD 2: Emergency management professionals use their expertise to communicate clearly, effectively, and appropriately regarding risks.

STANDARD 3: Emergency management professionals collaborate with stakeholders to understand vulnerabilities, exposures, threats, and the unique characteristics of communities in determining risk reduction measures.

STANDARD 4: Emergency management professionals advance the development and implementation of programs, plans, strategies, and initiatives to support life safety, reduce or eliminate damage to property and the environment, and support quality of life.

Responsibility to Partners, Stakeholders, and the Public

STANDARD 5: Emergency management professionals create and maintain robust, effective relationships with a wide variety of partners.

STANDARD 6: Emergency management professionals are aware of and operate within applicable laws and regulations.

STANDARD 7: Emergency management professionals educate, inform, and promote change in programs, policies, regulations, and laws that conflict with the professional and effective practice of emergency management.

STANDARD 8: Emergency management professionals accurately represent their qualifications.

STANDARD 9: Emergency management professionals support and guide evidence-based choices and actions by clearly communicating the adverse impacts of hazards and threats based on scientific evidence.

STANDARD 10: Emergency management professionals stay informed about new research, practice standards, relevant tools, and technologies.

STANDARD 11: Emergency management professionals remain current on issues that affect public risk.

STANDARD 12: Emergency management professionals do not engage in or endorse abusive, harassing, or hostile professional relationships.

STANDARD 13: Emergency management professionals make sound fiscal decisions that support effective practice and the stewardship of resources.

Responsibility to the Environment

STANDARD 14: Emergency management professionals understand the interconnectedness, interdependence, and sensitivities between the human, built, cyber, and natural environments.

STANDARD 15: Emergency management professionals seek to protect the natural environment from harm and, where practical, nurture its recovery.

Responsibility to Colleagues

STANDARD 16: Emergency management professionals support and assist other professionals in meeting and elevating emergency management practice.

STANDARD 17: Emergency management professionals respond appropriately to unprofessional and problematic behavior of their colleagues.

Responsibility to Employers

STANDARD 18: Emergency management professionals take direction from employers without deviating from professional standards.

STANDARD 19: Emergency management professionals have a duty to provide employers with all available relevant facts, data, and resources so that they are able make informed decisions.

STANDARD 20: Emergency management professionals, whether in formal or informal leadership roles, have an obligation to use an ethical decision-making model to help create an organizational culture that promotes and encourages professional behavior.

Responsibility to the Profession

STANDARD 21: Emergency management professionals have a duty to further the standing of the profession through their words, behaviors, and actions.

STANDARD 22: Emergency management professionals have an obligation to advocate for a representative and diverse profession.

STANDARD 23: Emergency management professionals promote the continuing development and improvement of their profession.

STANDARD 24: Emergency management professionals support and assist emergency management students in their learning and career development, including opportunities to engage in relevant internships and practicums, participate in training and practice activities, and contribute to meaningful work projects and initiatives.

Responsibility to Self

STANDARD 25: Emergency management professionals have a commitment to lifelong learning and to continually advance their knowledge and skills to serve their community and the profession.

STANDARD 26: Emergency management professionals recognize how their own cultural and social backgrounds, beliefs, values, and biases may affect competent and just service, and strive to make proactive positive changes for the benefit of their constituents.

STANDARD 27: Emergency management professionals are mindful of the ways in which stress can affect their health and well-being and take appropriate self-care measures.

STANDARD 28: Emergency management professionals practice continual self-reflection focused on professional growth and development.

Surprisingly, the document, although generally praised by professional organizations and practitioners, has not been well publicized and consequently has not received much traction in the emergency management community. It has been removed from the FEMA website and is difficult to find in a web search. At a time when our credibility is at a very low ebb, I think it is essential that we create a groundswell of support. I urge you to adopt the Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct for Emergency Management Professionals in your organization and publicize it anyway you can. It is another milestone in our road to being recognized as professionals.

Note: you can find a copy of the Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct for Emergency Management Professionals as well as the Principles of Emergency Management and its supplement on my website under Resources: Professional Reference.

Abolish FEMA? Not A Good Plan.

In an interview with a conservative talk show host on January 22, 2025, the incoming President of the United States said that he would prefer to end FEMA’s federal mission and return responsibility for disaster response to individual states. He reiterated disinformation about FEMA’s response to Hurricanes Milton and Helen in 2024 that he and fellow Republicans had used to discredit the agency, claiming that FEMA had not performed well in the past four years and “got in the way” of effective response.
Comments such as these and the threat to abolish FEMA demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how the emergency management system in the United States operates and sets disaster relief back by several hundred years. Disaster relief was originally the responsibility of individual communities and states, and federal assistance was extremely limited. As populations grew and disasters became more complex, the role of the federal government in disaster relief increased. It was understood that disasters, by definition, exceed the resources of the state. FEMA was created to consolidate the various relief programs offered by federal agencies into a cohesive framework.

FEMA has always had a troubled history. It was formed from various programs from other agencies with associated staff, operating cultures, and funding streams. This prevented the FEMA director from being able to reallocate resources to where they were most needed and to adequately respond to disasters. Indeed, the FEMA mission, especially in the early stages of a disaster, was not clearly defined.
But FEMA evolved over time. Administrative problems were overcome, and the agency’s mission became more defined. This was particularly true once politicians began to realize the agency was more effective when led by a professional emergency manager. FEMA’s biggest missteps usually occurred when non-emergency managers served as directors or administrators.

The most visible part of FEMA’s mission is the provision of disaster relief. However, this role is misunderstood by most politicians and the public. FEMA is a small agency and provides very few direct services. Instead, it coordinates the activities of other agencies of the federal government in much the same way local emergency managers coordinate local agencies. FEMA uses a system of mission assignments to reimburse these agencies for their support.
FEMA has also developed a mechanism for disbursing disaster relief funds to disaster victims. In this it relies primarily on a large pool of reservists who handle the application and inspection process. Part of this financial mechanism includes a process for reimbursing local governments for the costs associated with response and recovery. This financial process also relies heavily on reservists to review applications and inspect projects

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Much of the bad press that FEMA gets, aside from the recent problem of deliberate disinformation, can be traced back to reservists who are insufficiently vetted, trained, and supervised. In addition, FEMA emerging research indicates that disaster policy in the US harms those who need help the most after a disaster. There is no doubt that there is a need for substantive changes to disaster relief policies in the US and to how FEMA operates.

FEMA’s mission, however, goes beyond just disaster relief. Inheriting the planners positioned at local levels by the old Civil Defence programs, FEMA evolved this into a system of all hazards planners. Many local emergency management programs are dependent on FEMA funding for their existence. In evolving this system of planners through training and publications, FEMA has created a national doctrine that governs planning and response. While there is considerable variance in how this doctrine is applied locally, it has bred enough similarity that programs such as the Emergency Management Assistance Compact and local mutual aid agreements allow for cross-agency support. All this would be lost if FEMA were abolished.

On January 26, 2025, the President signed an executive order that established a FEMA Review Council headed by the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense. The Council is charged with assessing FEMA and making recommendations to the President within 180 days on how to improve the agency. On the surface, this seems a reasonable approach that could considerably improve FEMA. However, the President has made it clear that he would like to see FEMA abolished and the responsibility for disaster relief become the responsibility of individual states with relief funds controlled by the White House. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen and will depend on the makeup of the Council.

Even if FEMA survives, there are other proposals contained in Project 2025 that could affect the agency and have a major impact on disaster relief policy:
• Move the agency to the Department of the Interior.
• Combine it with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and move it to the Department of Transportation.
• Increase the disaster cost share from states paying 25% to paying 75% to encourage more state involvement in disaster preparedness.
• Adjust the per capita indicator to raise the threshold for receiving Public Assistance.
• Privatize the National Flood Insurance Program.
• Require all grant recipients to demonstrate that they comply with federal law, and that their mission and actions support the broader homeland security mission.
• Eliminate the SBA Disaster Loan Program.
• Clarify the mission of the Strategic National Stockpile as the supplier of last resort to the federal government, state governments, or first responders and key medical staff rather than serving the public.

Between deliberate disinformation and continued emphasis on FEMA’s failures rather than its successes, the public has lost trust in FEMA and the emergency management system. The failure to apply for assistance by disaster victims in Hurricanes Milton and Helene is the most recent example of what lack of trust can create. The threat of tying disaster relief to acceding to political demands in the Southern California Wildfires of 2025 is further eroding trust in the government. Trust is essential to successful disaster relief.

One small ray of hope is a bi-partisan bill introduced Congressmen Jared Moskowitz (D) Florida and Garret Graves (R) Louisiana in 2023. The bill, H.R.5599 - FEMA Independence Act of 2023, would establish FEMA as a cabinet-level independent agency. The bill has been languishing in committee since November 2023 and is unlikely to pass the Republican dominated House and Senate or to be signed by the President.

Emergency managers are not completely powerless. By educating politicians and the public, there may still be time to stop the gutting of a vital agency and begin to regain public trust. Three critical areas need to be addressed:
1. Protest any attempts to abolish FEMA.
2. Demand that the FEMA Administrator be an experienced professional emergency manager.
3. Advocate for passage of H.R. 5599

Disinformation and Disasters: A Deadly Combination

A FEMA supervisor was fired recently for instructing disaster relief workers responding to Hurricane Milton to avoid canvassing homes displaying Trump signs. The FEMA administrator called the supervisor’s actions “reprehensible” and “a clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles.” While there is no disagreement that emergency managers have a mandate to deliver relief services equally to all victims, regardless of political affiliation, one must wonder if there is more to the story.

The supervisor argues that her teams had been verbally and physically threatened by victims displaying Trump signs, indicating a community trend that created a hostile environment and danger to her workers. She maintains that her actions were taken in accordance with FEMA protocols that stressed avoidance of high-risk environments and that she is being scapegoated to save the agency’s reputation. More importantly, she claims that the problem is widespread and not limited to her area of operations or her team.

Without knowing more detail than has been given in the media, it is difficult to determine the truth of the matter. However, I believe that there is a larger issue here. The root cause was not the hostile response by some disaster victims but rather the actions that created that hostility.

With a close Presidential election less than month away, the Republican campaign had a vested interest in seeing disaster relief operations in Hurricanes Helene and Milton fail or at least appear to fail. Communications guru Art Botterell’s Fourth Law of Emergency Management states, “Perception is reality” and Republicans took full advantage of social media to create the perception that the response was a failure. This included misinformation such as:

• FEMA had run out of money because the Disaster Relief Fund had been diverted to provide housing for illegal immigrants. The truth is that funding to support immigration was a separate allocation provided by Congress for that purpose and the Disaster Relief Fund was adequate to deal with the disaster.
• FEMA was only providing $7000 to each victim so the agency and no more assistance would be forthcoming. In fact, the $7000 was an initial payment for immediate needs and additional funding would be allocated based on need.
• The Biden administration had not reached out to governors of the affected states to offer federal assistance. This was debunked by the Republican governors and mayors of the affected jurisdictions.

The result of this misinformation was predictable. Many victims refused assistance, and first responders and disaster workers were demoralized and threatened. Even meteorologists received death threats. As the rumors spread and were repeated by the Republican campaign, they in turn spawned outlandish conspiracy theories among its supporters such as that the weather was being manipulated to target Republican areas or that FEMA was blocking donations and confiscating and hoarding goods. Elected officials and government workers had to use valuable resources and time to dispel rumors and misinformation, but the sad fact is that truth travels slower than lies. A 2018 MIT study found that a false news story was 70% more likely to be reposted on social media than a true one. Despite a good effort at rumor control by FEMA and the active support of Republican governors and mayors, the efforts of the Republican campaign and its supporters were able to successfully cast doubt on the effectiveness of disaster relief operations.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that politicians have never used disasters to further political agendas. A study of Presidential declarations of disaster for the years 1989-1999 showed that the number of electoral votes in a state and whether it was considered competitive had a great deal of bearing on whether a declaration was granted. According to the findings, a non-competitive state with three electoral votes was 50% less likely to receive a declaration than a competitive state with 20 electoral votes. Even my personal hero, the Marquis de Pombal, used the 1755 Lisbon earthquake to break the power of the Catholic Church in Portugal and to eliminate his adversaries.

What we see here, however, is a blatant disregard for the well-being of disaster victims to further political ambition. Even more egregious is that many of these victims were and still are supporters of the Republican party. This disregard goes against everything to which we in emergency management have dedicated ourselves. More importantly, it destroys trust in a system that relies on the support of the public. As Edward Conley, a veteran of thirty years with FEMA and author of Promote the Dog Sitter: And Other Principles for Leading during Disasters writes, “The more people trust, believe in, and work with our nation’s emergency management system, the better the system works.”

Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle, and we are likely to see similar disinformation operations in future disasters. This means we now, more than ever, must understand and apply the principles of crisis management information. The age when public information officers put out periodic press releases and gave occasional interviews has been gone for some time, overtaken by the 24-hour news cycle. The old conventional wisdom of ignoring ridiculous rumors to avoid giving them creditability is no longer valid in the day of social media. We need the ability to be proactive with our information and nimble enough to react quickly to disinformation. It’s time to rethink the Joint Information Center and our use of social media and to bring them into the 21st century. I’m afraid that disinformation is the way of the future and poses a major threat to those we serve, and we need to be able to counter it. We won’t win, but we need to do better.

Is It Time to Rethink Disaster Legislation?

In a recent opinion piece for The Hill titled Why America needs disaster reform Now former FEMA Administrator Brock Long makes the case that our emergency management system in the United States has become bogged down in bureaucracy and that there is an urgent need for reform. Brock notes that we have close to 90 recovery programs administered by thirty federal agencies, requiring the submission of multiple applications for assistance. The consequence is a confusing bureaucratic maze that creates confusion and duplication and causes delays in the provision of relief funding.

This is not surprising when one considers the haphazard way in which the system developed. Significant change to disaster relief has always been reactive, the result of legislative action in response to focusing events, disasters with high national impact. This reactive approach means that there has never really been a unified emergency management policy or supporting strategy. Indeed, it wasn’t until passage of the Stafford act in 1974 that preparedness and disaster relief were combined in a single piece of legislation and responsibility for disaster relief wasn’t placed under a single agency until the creation of FEMA in 1979.

The creation of FEMA created numerous problems that are in many ways reflective of what we’re dealing with today. Programs, budget, and staff were transferred to FEMA to form the new agency. However, those budgets were paid through separate funding streams and required reporting to multiple congressional oversight committees. The FEMA Director lacked authority to adjust staffing or budgets, and it was years before this issue was resolved.

The reactive approach of creating new programs in response to focusing events continues. In an article titled A Call for Unified Reform in U.S. Disaster Management Legislation: Answering Brock Long’s Vision in the Emergency Management Network, my colleague Todd Devoe identifies ten separate pieces of legislation currently before Congress:

1. Disaster Assistance Simplification Act – Aims to streamline the disaster assistance process.
2. Disaster Survivors Fairness Act – Focuses on improving the fairness of aid distribution.
3. Disaster Relief Fund Replenishment Act – Proposes automatic funding replenishment post-disaster.
4. Reforming Disaster Recovery Act (H.R. 5940) – Targets improvements in disaster recovery processes.
5. Resilient AMERICA Act (H.R. 5689) – Encourages pre-disaster mitigation and resilience-building.
6. Expediting Disaster Recovery Act (H.R. 5774) – Seeks to accelerate recovery timelines.
7. National Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Strategy Act (H.R. 6461/S. 3531) – Addresses climate adaptation strategies.
8. Champion Local Efforts to Advance Resiliency (CLEAR) Act (H.R. 7178) – Supports local resilience initiatives.
9. Natural Disaster Recovery Program Act (H.R. 9750) – Establishes programs to improve natural disaster recovery.
10. Flood Insurance Program Reform – Focuses on reforming the national flood insurance system.

As Brock points out, the problem goes further than just a complicated bureaucracy. Over the past 20 years, almost 75% of FEMA’s funding has been provided through supplemental allocations to the Disaster Relief Fund, not the annual budget. The result has been that FEMA is limited planning for immediate response and for sustained programs. The need for a reliable and predictable funding stream is critical if FEMA is to be able to prepare and immediately respond to the unexpected.

Perhaps the most urgent need is a strategic one. Brock notes the increasing reliance of local governments on disaster relief funding for the repair of uninsured public infrastructure. The reluctance of local governments to support mitigation efforts and to leverage insurance suggests the need to rethink how such assistance is provided. Brock suggests adjusting cost share rates to reward those governments who support mitigation efforts to increase resilience. He also suggests making use of alternative government funding sources by providing technical assistance to affected jurisdictions to help access programs such as those available under the American Rescue Plan Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act.

These are big ticket items that deal with national policy and strategy. What can a local emergency manager do? Devoe suggests five things you can do and, not surprisingly, they’re already in your job description:

1. Raise Awareness
2. Engage with Lawmakers
3. Collaborate Across Sectors
4. Participate in Professional Networks
5. Promote Public and Private Partnerships

I’ve written before of how you can get involved in the political process by leveraging your jurisdiction’s procedure for taking official positions on current or proposed legislation. This is particularly true if you’re from a large jurisdiction that maintains political lobbyists in your state or the national legislatures. If nothing else, consider joining the International Association of Emergency Managers. IAEM has a very effective lobbying team that has been responsible for some significant legislative accomplishments in our best interests.

Developing a comprehensive bill to address multiple programs under multiple agencies may sound like an impossible task and it well may be. There would be tremendous pushback and turf battles but to continue as we are will ultimately lead to failure. FEMA is stretched thin, managing more than 100 disaster recovery efforts, not counting support to other agencies. If ever there was a time to reform emergency management, this is it.

Effective Presentations: Insider Tips for Improving Your Skills

We’ve all been there. You spend money to attend a conference, select a session from a long list of competing topics, and walk into the room only to walk out several minutes later because the speaker is so boring that even she is falling asleep. Sound familiar?

As both an attendee and a frequent speaker at conferences, I’m amazed at how universally bad some presentations can be. It doesn’t have to be that way. Preparing a good presentation can be easier than developing a bad one.

What’s Your Story?

A presentation is essentially a story. To make sense, it must have a beginning, middle and an end and the flow through these parts must be logical and smooth. You begin developing your story by identifying what you expect to accomplish with your presentation. To be effective, your presentation must do more than just provide an information dump – it must demonstrate the value of that information and challenge the listener to do something with it.

This is where most presentations fail. Many speakers fail to grasp that the point of a presentation is to provoke a change in the audience’s condition. This can be done by providing a deeper insight into the subject, encouraging a change of attitude or raising awareness. Just providing data without some sort of analysis and call to action makes for an extremely boring presentation.

So, what’s your story? You should be able to sum up what you want to accomplish in your presentation in a single sentence or two. I’m not talking about the things you plan to do in the presentation but rather the central theme that will bind your presentation together, the single idea that you want the audience to take away. Once you have that theme, the rest of your presentation will flow from it.

To develop the theme, begin with an outline of your key points. These key points should support your theme and be organized in a logical sequence, e.g. general to specific, chronological, increasing importance, etc.  There should not be too many of them – I’ve seen presentations collapse under the weight of too much material.

Once you have the framework of key points, you can begin to really build the presentation. Under each of the key points, identify two to three items that will illustrate the point. These supporting items could be a personal story, a case study, or historical examples.

This is where you generate interest and hold the attention of the audience. People love to be told stories and to be entertained. You can really reach them if you take the time to select examples that are particularly relevant to the audience.

Recently, I was asked to give a standard preparedness presentation at the annual conference of the Textile Rental Services Association. My contact was kind enough to grant me access to their newsletter archives and to arrange a tour of a local facility and interview with the managers there. By incorporating examples of how laundry services had performed in several disasters, I was able to make what could have been a stock presentation extremely interesting and relevant to the audience.

Fitting the Pieces Together

With the theme, key points, and illustrations you’ve got most of your presentation done. However, the two most critical points of any presentation are the opening and the closing.

The opening is important because this is where you grab the attention of the audience. Fail to do so and you may never get it back. Don’t waste time with jokes that are irrelevant to the presentation. Instead, use a startling fact, an historical example or a story to lead them into the presentation.

I opened the TRSA presentation mentioned above by telling a story about the experiences of a laundry company in the 1993 Midwest Floods. The audience was hooked from that point on because the story was relevant to them and to the presentation that followed.

Our standard method of closing is to ask for questions, then let the audience drift out. This diffuses the impact of your presentation.  The audience leaves thinking about the last question (or lack of questions!) rather than your central theme.

A more effective approach used by management consultant Alan Weiss is to pause for questions and let the audience know that you will have some final concluding remarks. You can then use your final remarks to emphasize your theme and issue your call to action.

The call to action is another thing that is frequently missing from presentations. You’ve just spent 45 minutes or more of my time providing me with information. What do you want me to do with it? The answer to this question should be uppermost in the mind of your audience as they leave the room.

Now that you’ve got the pieces identified, tie them together by rehearsing. I personally tend to rehearse different pieces over time, and then do a full run through at least once to make sure I’ve got my timing down.

One of the most important pieces of advice I’ve ever received came from Alan Weiss. Don’t memorize your speech, internalize it. If you memorize your speech, it sounds canned, and an unforeseen event can throw you off track. If you internalize it, that is, understand what you want to say and how you want to say it, you have a great deal of flexibility. You can lengthen or shorten your speech to accommodate time issues, you can have additional stories and examples on hand if needed, and you can modify your presentation based on audience reaction. Note that this is not the same as “winging it”.

Death by PowerPoint

You’ll notice that so far, I haven’t said a word about PowerPoint. That’s because preparing a PowerPoint presentation is irrelevant to building your presentation. If you have outlined your presentation with key points and supporting examples and if you have internalized your presentation, you really don’t need PowerPoint. You should be able to give your presentation without using a single slide.

The single biggest problem that I have found in presentations is a misuse of PowerPoint. Unfortunately, it has evolved into a crutch for speakers, an electronic substitute for notes.

So, what do speakers usually do wrong? One word: TEXT. We feel the need to use the outline function and put lots of words on the screen.  There are two things wrong with this:

1. If they’re reading your slide, they’re not listening to you.
2. If they can get all the information they need from the slide, why do they need you in the first place?

So how do you use PowerPoint? Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen, suggests the use of pictures and quotes or meaningful graphs. This both conveys information more clearly and keeps the focus on you, the speaker.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. The following slide was intended to describe how local emergency managers evolved.

This rather boring slide can be replaced with a single quote, with the detail contained not on the slide but in the speaker’s notes.

Notice that the second slide sums up the importance of the emergency manager’s role rather than just serving as a set of notes to keep you on track. Which works better for your audience?

Let’s look at another example. Consider the following table of information which is intended to show enormous scope of the Great Flood of 1927. It’s interesting but it doesn’t provoke a reaction.

Now look at the following graphic developed from the same information.

Notice how the scope of the 1927 flood is immediately apparent to the audience? The slide makes this point without you having to say a single word.

Ideally, your slide presentation should be meaningless to anyone that gets a copy after your presentation. After all, if they could get the key points of your presentation from your slide show, why bother going to your presentation?

This brings us to the point of handouts. All too often, we create incredibly complex slides that are unreadable, and then apologize to the audience. Edward Tufte, an expert on information design, says that PowerPoint is the worst way to provide complex information and suggests the use of handouts instead.

Unfortunately, we usually limit our handouts to copies of the slide presentation. If, as I mentioned above, your PowerPoint is meaningless, this is a very poor take away except for those few who used it for note taking.

Instead, consider something that provides useful information. My personal preference is a one- or two-page handout that includes an outline of my presentation, a list of references that I used in developing the presentation, and my contact information. This handout provides the audience with a summary of my key points and resources for obtaining more information without burdening them with 10 pages of tiny, unreadable slides.

Why Not Go First Class?

Preparing a presentation in the manner I’ve suggested does require a change in how we currently do presentations. You won’t have the comfort of the outline showing on the screen and you may have to memorize data or refer to your notes. But on the other hand, identifying your theme and key points makes it easier to put a presentation together. Internalizing your presentation allows you to stay better focused and you can still use the photos and quotes as cues for what you want to discuss.

So, stop boring your audience and yourself. It really doesn’t take all that much more effort to do a first-class presentation.

The Emergency Manager as Mediator

One of the main functions of an emergency manager is to help stakeholders with competing agendas agree to a common goal and the best approach to achieving that goal. The problem is that often those competing agendas and organizational biases can lead to conflict. Consequently, emergency managers may find themselves serving as mediators for the opposing groups.

Here are just a few examples of the types of conflicts that can create the need for mediation between opposing demands:

• Two city departments who have traditionally battled for dominance, distrust each other’s motivations, and compete for resources must now agree on how best to spend federal grant funds. The underlying cause of the conflict is that each wants an equal share of the funds regardless of overall operational needs.
• A homeless advocacy group and the city social services department who distrust each other need to help craft a plan for dealing with victims displace by residential hotel fires. The advocates want more benefits and services than the victims had available before the fire while social services department has budget and policy limitations on what they can provide.
• A shelter working group does not want a police presence in emergency shelters, despite a clear need for some measure of security. The lack trust in the police department’s ability to deal with a population largely consisting of homeless people and foreign nationals.

Mediation is not just a case of just holding a meeting and working through issues. This is the normal approach, and we are very effective at it. Mediation comes into play when there is a deadlock that requires intervention to help the parties in conflict reach an agreeable compromise. It is frequently exacerbated by a mutual distrust among the parties involved. Success in mediation really depends on doing your homework beforehand and being adequately prepared. Here are some suggestions you might want to consider:

• Position yourself as a neutral party. Your success as a mediator depends heavily on the trust of the parties you are mediating. This is not something you can develop quickly and must be built over time. If you cannot be perceived as neutral, get someone else to mediate and support them as necessary.
• Understand context. You’ll need to do some research on what created the problem you’re trying to mediate. By this I mean understanding a bit of history on why there is a conflict and what biases might have a bearing on the problem. For example, in the early days of the Incident Command System there was resistance to adapting it to other departments because it was viewed as a “fire program”. Understanding context can help you avoid pitfalls that can cast doubt on your neutrality.
• Make sure you have the right participants. While it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get department heads, the participants should have sufficient authority to speak for their organization and commit the organization to a course of action, pending ratification by their superiors. This is important or you’ll find yourself holding multiple meetings, each ending with, “I’ll have to get back to you on that after I talk to my boss.”
• Consider meeting with each participant separately prior to a joint mediation session. Depending on your relationships with the participants, you may want to meet with them one-on-one as part of your research before the mediation session. This can give you insight into the causes of the conflict and the positions each is likely to take on the issues at the later meeting. This understanding can make you sensitive to each participant’s issues and help you develop more effective approaches to resolving conflict.
• Be clear about the expected outcome. By this I don’t mind a specific outcome that you force the participants towards but rather the overall end results you’re trying to achieve. The specifics will be determined during mediation, but you need to be able to articulate a clear goal to keep participants on track. Having this agreed to by the participants prior to any session will avoid the need argue about goals instead of issues.
• Use a formal meeting facilitation process. Particularly in the case where there is animosity or distrust, you’ll need all the tools at your disposal to keep the meeting on track and stop it from being sidetracked. An agreed upon agenda, accepted decision-making process, issue parking – all these are extremely important tools in helping participants maintain their focus.
• Focus on agreements. I have found it effective to open a mediation session by developing a quick list of those things that the participants can agree on or have already agreed on. These are easy wins that demonstrate that agreement is possible and there are only a few things that are really problems.
• Don’t try to fix everything at once. Unless you’re doing something like an all-day or multi-day retreat (a whole different approach), keep your sessions short and focused on a single issue. This can prevent participants from getting tired and combative and allows for cooling off periods between meetings.
• Document results. This is part of the meeting facilitation process, but it is absolutely essential to mediation. There will be a lot of people who will be interested in the outcome, and you’ll want a record of decisions made and actions agreed to by the participants. I prefer to share a draft with each participant to make sure my meeting memorandum is accurate.
• You’re not always going to be successful. While it’s rare, there are times when you won’t be able to resolve an issue. In this case, the question for participants is, “At what level would you like this resolved?” The best you can do is to document the results of the meeting and escalate the issue. This is most effective if you can summarize the issue and offer several options for resolution based on the information you have collected in the mediation process. Having clear options makes it much easier for senior managers to render a quick decision instead of asking them to formulate a solution to a problem.

Mediation is not often necessary, but when it is, it is the result of a major conflict between two or more participants. In this case, it’s best approached outside a larger planning group and by focusing on the specific issues causing the conflict. Focus on the problem, resolve it, and move on.

How Do You Plan for Everything?

Anyone who has spent time in emergency management understands that the public’s attention to risk is often either non-existent or fleeting. It takes disaster on a large scale to gain attention and that attention is usually accompanied by demands for swift corrective action in the immediate aftermath which is in turn followed by apathy as the disaster fades into history. This is particularly true of disasters that have a low frequency of occurrence but a high potential impact.

Consider, for example, the Y2K crisis of distance memory. Also referred to as the millennium bug, the problem was caused by computer coding that failed to account for changing the first two digits in a date from 19 to 20 at the turn of the century. The problem was known well in advance and there were numerous missed opportunities to correct it. However, it wasn’t until a year or so before the event that the problem became a widespread crisis, with predictions of catastrophic failures of computer systems leading to the apocalypse. A lot of effort went into last minute planning by emergency managers to help allay public concern. However, within a matter of months all the lessons learned about system interdependencies, critical points of failure, and the need for parallel systems were forgotten.

This tendency of the public to create what is sometimes called the disaster “flavor of the month” poses considerable problems for emergency managers. On the one hand, the nature of the disaster is usually real, albeit often exaggerated to epic proportions and there is a responsibility to respond to a concerned public. On the other hand, with limited resources and competing priorities, emergency managers cannot afford to focus all their resources on a single threat. But how then do you balance these two challenges?

To answer that question, consider the latest flavor of the month, the recent CrowdStrike debacle. The cybersecurity upgrade that created what is most likely the biggest IT failure in history has raised the issue of cybersecurity with the public to extremely high levels and it’s likely that we will see a demand for action on the part of emergency planners. The question is, “How much of this problem do emergency managers own?”

To begin, we need to consider that various issues raised by the crisis, much of which are still being learned. There is the immediate response which is requiring a significant effort on the part of IT departments to manually remove a corrupted file from thousands of individual computers. This clearly in the purview of the IT department. But many organizations also responded by switching to manual systems. Others had never invested in the training and materials needed to do so. One can argue that identifying the need for such systems and encouraging their development is clearly something with which emergency managers could assist, even if the actual development and testing of such systems are the responsibility of the affected organization.

This is the first lesson in “planning for everything”: Recognize who owns the problem. Emergency managers don’t have to do it all but can provide guidance and resources. We can point out problems and suggest solutions. We can assist in the formation of workgroups or taskforces. We can also hold people accountable through workplans and operating agreements.

The CrowdStrike failure highlighted the interdependence of critical infrastructure. This is exacerbated by the fact that something like 85% of the critical infrastructure in the United States is privately owned, making the transfer of information difficult. This means we may not always recognize this interdependence until a crisis occurs. This points to another lesson for planning: think strategically. It is easy to view threats from a purely local level but recognizing interdependencies can allow you to prepare for crisis and provide early warning before a problem arises. Remember that disasters have ripple effects and that events in occurring in locations far removed from your organization can have profound impacts. Consider, for example, the far reaching effects on local economies caused by the terrorist attacks on September 11^th.

More importantly, however, is the recognition that emergency managers do not deal in specific hazards but rather in the consequences of those hazards in relation to an organization's vulnerabilities. For example, had the CrowdStrike failure affected a municipal water supply’s SCADA system, the result would clearly be an emergency management issue. But a cybersecurity attack, a terrorist attack, or an earthquake could produce the same issue. We plan for consequences, not hazards. This is your third lesson in planning for everything: focus on consequences. This is emergency management 101: all hazard planning means planning for response generated needs that remain relatively constant in all disasters. In other words, plan for consequences. Planning for agent generated needs that vary with the specific disaster is more strategic in nature and more like contingency planning.

We really can’t plan for everything, but we can plan for the things that are common to all disasters. To do that, we need to share the load by making use of the broader planning community and recognizing that emergency management is not a discrete process but a distributed one that should involve all members of an organization.

Building Your Professional Library

Back in the day when rocks were soft and dinosaurs roamed the earth, people like me came to emergency management as a second profession. We brought with us a considerable amount of experience in our previous jobs but had very little real knowledge of emergency management. This was not a particular drawback as our focus was largely on the development of emergency plans.

Then came the great awakening. I remember reading a paper by Dr Enrico Quarantelli and thinking, “This guy has finally got it! About time someday figured this out.” I then looked at the date on the paper; it was written the year I was born. It was my introduction to a whole range of books, research papers, and articles on emergency management that I didn’t know existed.

This became more and more important as emergency management evolved from an operational to a strategic emphasis and sought recognition as a profession. One of the principal requirements of a profession is a specialized body of knowledge yet it is only recently that we have begun to recognize this and seen the emergence of academic disciplines designed to provide embryonic emergency managers with access to this body of knowledge.

This is incredibly important. The past is an indicator of what has occurred and may reoccur. Coupled with social science research, it shows how others have solved problems in the past and how people are likely to behave in a crisis. For too long we have been basing emergency plans on disaster mythology and how we assume people will react rather that what history and research teach us are more realistic and likely reactions.

In addition, there is evidence that increasing your knowledge base can improve your ability to make decisions in a crisis. In his book, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, Dr Gary Klein argues that crisis decision making is based on pattern recognition. He notes that the patterns available in a decision maker’s knowledge base can be increased not only through experience but through simulation exercises, reading, and viewing videos.

Since the type of information of use to emergency managers is not always easy to find and may be drawn from numerous disciplines, I have found it useful to develop a personal reference library. The content of your library is your choice. There are numerous suggested reading lists floating around but the best reading list if the one you develop for yourself. For example, if you’re just getting started in emergency management, you might start with books and papers that form the foundation of modern emergency management theory. If you’re looking to improve your ability to deal with disaster, you might choice to look at books and studies related to historical disasters. However, the one thing to avoid is limiting your reading to just emergency management. There is a wealth of information available in other disciplines that have direct bearing on emergency management such as readings in politics, law, political economics, climatology, and so forth.

The obvious starting point in building your library is, of course, to buy books. But many of the books that we find useful are based on academic research and have a limited market and, therefore, a high price. Fortunately, there are opportunities to purchase books second hand and you will often be surprised at the relevancy of some of the older books you find. Never pay full price for a book if you can avoid it. Online and second-hand bookstores are your friends.

Don’t neglect your local library either. Many libraries make books available in electronic format as well as hard copies, making them easy to access when traveling or doing late night research. You can also access materials not in the local library’s collection through inter-library loans. If you are an alumnus or alumna of a nearby university, you can generally gain access to the university library and its resources. This may allow you to access academic journals that would otherwise be too costly to access. Another way is to access academic journals is to volunteer to serve on their editorial board.

Depending on your work environment, you may be able to help your organization build a small reference library for you team. I was successful in this for several organizations with whom I was associated. The plus was that my team had access to the materials, and it was something that could be useful to my successors.

Fortunately, some of the best material is readily available online for free. The University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center houses the E.L. Quarantelli Resource Collection consisting of hundreds of documents. The Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado also offers access to disaster research papers. FEMA’s Higher Education Program used to have a considerable amount of papers and textbooks available for download but their webpage is under development at this writing and a selection of materials can be found at the National Emergency Training Center (NETC) Library. Aside from sites such as these, even a basic search will turn up many resources, including primary resources, after-action reports, and academic papers.

The advantage of internet resources is that many of them can be downloaded without the storage requirements of hard copies. The secret is to have a system that allows you to be able to retrieve a specific document. You don’t want to know how many times I’ve had to search for and retrieve a document because I couldn’t remember if or where I’d stored it.

Not everyone is a reader and not all books and papers are easy to read. But expanding your knowledge base increases your ability to deal with crisis. Remember, emergency managers are generalists, not specialists. We are expected to know a bit about a broad range of topics in way that allows us to engage in strategic thinking. The broader our knowledge base, the more effective we are.

What Makes an Emergency Manager Unique?

In last month’s featured article, First Responders as Emergency Managers, my colleague Tim Riecker wrote about the difficulties many first responders have in transitioning to emergency management. Tim makes the point that first responders and emergency managers are from different fields that require different skill sets that don’t often overlap. Hence, having a first responder background should not be prerequisite for an emergency management position nor is it an automatic guarantee that the candidate will be a successful emergency manager.

My experience mirrors Tim’s and I’d like to expand on this theme a bit as to why I think emergency managers are unique.

When I first came to emergency management, there was no definition as to who emergency managers were or what we did. Indeed, there was no real definition for emergency management. Instead, emergency management was defined by the tasks it was expected to accomplish, as codified in a list of basic preparedness functions. These included tasks such as the mobilization of resources, public warning, caring for victims, damage assessment, and so forth. Emergency managers were defined by the skills needed to perform these tasks.

However, if we look closely at these tasks, it becomes obvious that emergency managers do not perform these tasks. Instead, they ensure that they are performed. Consider, for example, the establishment of emergency shelters. Most emergency plans have a table of some sort designating primary and supporting agencies for emergency functions such as sheltering. I submit that, with a few extremely rare exceptions, none of those tables have the emergency management office as the lead agency for sheltering. Instead, sheltering is usually performed by a team comprised of experts in the various aspects of sheltering, such as shelter management and congregate care. The same can be said of almost all the tasks considered basic preparedness functions.

If emergency managers don’t perform basic preparedness functions, what is it that we contribute to the communities we serve? To explain this, let’s consider an example from the medical profession. Medical professionals can be roughly divided into two very broad categories: generalists and specialists. A general practitioner requires a very broad range of knowledge that allows them to diagnose a patient’s condition. If the patient’s problem is within the physician’s area of practice, they provide treatment. But since their knowledge base is broad but not necessarily deep in some areas, the general practitioner may recognize the need for a referral to a specialist with a deeper understanding of the patient’s condition.

Here's an example of how this works. A patient discusses concerns about the signs of potential heart disease. The general practitioner examines the patient, runs a few tests, and determines that there may be issues with the patient’s heart. The general practitioner refers the patient to a physician specializing in heart disease who confirms a serious problem and refers the patient to a surgeon who specializes in heart operations. During the operation through recovery, the surgeon is supported by a team of other specialists, such as endocrinologist, anesthesiologists, surgical nurses, etc.

Now apply this same concept to emergency managers. We are expected to have a broad range of knowledge that encompasses emergency theory and practices, disaster legislation, historical examples, available resources, and more. More importantly, we need to be able to see the big picture, to think strategically, and to be able to integrate the work of the many specialists with whom we work. Above all, we must be generalists and not let ourselves be distracted by trying to do the tasks that can be better done by a specialist.

Understanding that we are generalists changes the dynamic. Where the old paradigm focused on the what (the basic preparedness functions), being a generalist focuses us instead on the why, which in turn leads to the how and the who. It also shifts us away from the need for just technical competence to include managerial competence and the perception of adding to public value. This in turn demands we develop the competencies that Tim discussed in his article: the personality and people skills needed to support coordination, constantly seeking additional knowledge and training, going beyond a single focus on response, and administrative competency.

There is research to back up this unique view of emergency management. More importantly, we now have an accepted definition of emergency management that focuses on this more proactive role:  

Emergency management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to threats/hazards and cope with disasters.

Note the emphasis on management and on the development of community capacity rather than just on tasks. Being a generalist is more challenging and demanding than being a specialist in many ways. I believe that it is what makes us unique among the many organizations with whom we work.

But That Plan Is Just for Disasters!

Shortly before the recent eclipse, I saw a brief article about several small jurisdictions in Texas who were activating their emergency operations centers during the event. No, this was not in response to the numerous doomsday conspiracy theories that were making the rounds prior to the eclipse. Rather, it was in response to a well-reasoned risk assessment. The jurisdictions were in the path of the eclipse and realized they would be inundated by sightseers who generate a potential for traffic congestion, shortages of food, fuel, and lodging, increased medical emergencies and so forth. In short, while it would not necessarily rise to the level of a disaster, it would provide a risk to the community that could be best handled through a coordinated interagency response.

We sometimes think that emergency management is limited to disasters and that our plans are intended specifically for that purpose. Even if we don’t, this is often the perception that others have. During the after-action review of a major residential hotel fire that displaced just over a hundred residents, I asked why we had not used the shelter plan laid out in the city’s Emergency Operations Plan. The reply I received was that the plan was only for disasters. It took several years and a lot of work to reverse that attitude. Following that painful process, we ended up with a much-improved shelter plan that could be used in both emergencies and disasters.

Closely associated with this attitude is a narrowness of vision. We tend to think that the hazards we deal with are the big-ticket items, things like earthquakes, fires, floods, terrorist attacks, and chemical spills. Yet experience teaches us that disasters, while common in the aggregate, are relatively rare in any given jurisdiction. However, that same jurisdiction daily faces a high risk of an emergency that requires a coordinated inter-agency response. We need to broaden our vision to include any hazard that places those we serve at risk.

Changing your perspective from a focus on disasters to one based on risk can have a positive impact on your relationship with senior officials and their staff. Early in my time at San Francisco, we were faced with a major garbage strike. Since it wasn’t a “disaster,” my office wasn’t privy to the planning being done by the mayor’s staff. At the last minute, I was asked to help by providing maps of the city and, when it was learned I was a native, some advice on potential collection points. As I was about to leave the meeting, there was a discussion on how the city could perform all the necessary inspections of the collection points and identify what city resources would be needed to support them. After eavesdropping for a bit, I suggested that what was needed was an inter-agency team, which was something my office did routinely. My staff wasn’t too happy about this “non-disaster” work but in a matter of hours we had identified and staged the teams using elements of our EOP.

The result of this brief participation in the garbage strike was that my office was acknowledged as a productive member of the mayor’s staff and that we had skills and resources that could be used to support a variety projects. In essence, we were part of the team and not just “plan checkers.” We began to get requests to help support other initiatives. For example, we worked closely with the Mayor’s Office on Homelessness on emergency winter sheltering planning and with the police department on developing a response to child abduction. Our EOC was frequently activated in anticipation of potential civil disturbances, demonstrations, or large civic events. We were the lead for the response to the power emergencies, an event that didn’t pose a great risk but generated a tremendous amount of public concern. Our approach was that if it potentially affected the well-being of our citizens, we were involved, even if only peripherally.

We were not unique in this. One of my colleagues became concerned about rumors of an impending financial crisis and after performing a risk assessment, started developing plans to deal with the potential impact in his jurisdiction. Before it became generally accepted, another colleague began pushing for development of a recovery plan for his jurisdiction. Both met with resistance, both from their own staff and plan stakeholders.

The resistance is understandable. Emergency managers are most comfortable dealing with operational issues and hierarchical organizations. Moving beyond the operational means developing a more strategic viewpoint. It requires developing new skills in uncomfortable areas such a politics and finance. It involves learning to work with a whole range of new stakeholders, many of whom are not used to the hierarchical approach with which we tend to work. Our work on the shelter plan, for example, required working with many small community organizations, many of whom were mistrustful of government.

How do you take on all this additional work with limited resources? You do it by recognizing that this is not in addition to your work but part of your work. Every project you take on is an opportunity to test and improve components of your plan. Every new plan you develop is an opportunity work with new stakeholders and to develop relationships that will be essential in a disaster. Every time you activate an EOC is an opportunity test systems and train first-time attendees.

However, the most important benefit is the visibility these opportunities provide. Ultimately, your goal is to be recognized as something beyond just a type of fire extinguisher that is only used in a disaster. Instead, you need to be able to influence events rather than being controlled by them. You need to be viewed as a key staff member and trusted advisor. Demonstrating you are part of the team of decision makers and advisors is critical to your success.