NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - 48

STORM SEASON
AN NFPA JOURNAL SPECIAL REPORT

Logistically, how is FEMA able to
handle so many different disasters
simultaneously across the country?
FEMA is organized by region, with
administration and incident management teams in each region-sometimes
two or three teams-as well as national
incident management teams. So Harvey
happened in Region 6; Irma was in
Region 4; Maria hit Puerto Rico, which
is in Region 2. People and supplies
were already stationed in each of those
regions. Obviously, on this large of a
scale you also draw from other places,

Salvation Army, the Team Rubicons, as
well as the faith-based communities
and many other volunteer agencies
organized by NVOAD, the National
Volunteer Organizations Active in
Disaster. The private sector can, should,
and must play a big role in helping in
the response and, more importantly, in
the recovery going forward. The most
important part of that are the people in
these communities.

Current FEMA Administrator Brock
Long has said that civilians need to
take more individual responsibility
in preparing for and coping with
disaster events. Do you think
engaging private citizens to take
on a bigger role is necessary going
forward?
While I was at FEMA we coined the
term "whole community" to describe
that concept, and we tried to shift the
mindset to look at the public as an asset
rather than a
liability. I think
we need to ask
how the public
can play an even
bigger role. Government plays
a huge role, but
working together
with the private
sector and individuals is the
only way anything is going to
get done. That's
what helped with
all the responses
in 2011 and it's
what will help us
THROUGH THE EYES OF A SURVIVOR Serino talks with a flood
get through 2017
victim in an emergency shelter in Minot, North Dakota, in 2011.
as well. But we
can't just expect
but the infrastructure is in place with
the public to do this. We also have to
regional administrators who take the
educate people and make sure they're
lead with federal coordination officers
part of the team and not isolated. It has
assigned to those regions.
to be everybody all together.
But people also have to realize that it
is not just FEMA doing this work-it's
It's been eight or so years since
the whole community. It's bringing
FEMA started focusing more on
together all of the federal government
utilizing the public as an asset.
agencies, as well as the state, local,
What does it look like in practice?
and tribal governments. It's bringing
I think we are seeing that develop.
together nonprofits like the Red Cross,
Look at what happened in Harvey and

48 | NFPA JOURNAL * N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 7

Irma, how we saw people utilizing the
whole community and neighbors helping neighbors. At one point, the mayor
of Houston called on anyone with a
boat to come help out and help rescue
survivors-that would have been
unheard of 10 years or even seven
years ago. Very few people back then
looked at the public as an asset.
The reality is that after a disaster,
it's members of the community who
are the first responders. They're the
ones who are there first to help each
other out. They're the ones who are
going to pull people out of a building
after an earthquake, or the ones who'll
get people out of a flooded area. We
also now look at civilians as people
who can provide initial aid, and not
only in major natural disasters. We've
seen it in events like the Boston Marathon bombings and the shooting in
Las Vegas. We've seen civilians help
injured people by applying tourniquets. FEMA recently started a
program called Stop the Bleed that
teaches civilians how to apply tourniquets. That has saved lives and will
continue to.
How do you build those skills, and
how do you get the public to buy
into the idea of becoming active
participants in their own community's resilience and recovery?
We have a whole section at FEMA
dedicated to individual and community preparedness. It can be as simple
as teaching people what to do in an
emergency, and helping people understand what kinds of things to prepare
for based on where they live and what
steps they can take. In Boston, we
certainly know about hurricanes and
blizzards, but we don't have to worry
too much about tsunamis. In Hawaii,
they might not have to teach people
about blizzards, but they should know
about hurricanes and tsunamis. If
individuals are prepared, you'll have
prepared neighborhoods, which makes
for prepared communities, prepared
cities, prepared states, and ultimately
a prepared and resilient country.
We can also teach children. FEMA
has a program called STEP that
teaches fourth- and fifth-graders about

PHOTO COURTESY OF RICH SERINO

demolished. And there was also Hurricane Irene that year, which caused
extensive damage in Vermont, and
upstate New York, and Tropical Storm
Lee, which caused flooding along the
east coast. We also had one of the largest ice storms ever. There was extensive
flooding of the Mississippi River. It was
an extraordinary year.



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - November/December 2017

Contents
NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - 1
NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - Contents
NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - 3
NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - 4
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - 6
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