Feed For The Fema Podcast

In this episode, FEMA speaks with emergency managers and a member of FEMA’s National Youth Preparedness Council who are working to make preparedness a part of Pacific Northwest schools and communities. Hsin Ya (Jessie) Huang, a student at South Eugene High School; Scott Zaffram, Federal Preparedness Coordinator at Region 10; and Bryce A. McKenna, Emergency Management Director at Oregon Department of Education - Office of Student Services share their perspectives on youth preparedness.

In honor of national preparedness month, we sat down with Alex Amparo, assistant administrator for FEMA’s national preparedness directorate, along with Mike Hernandez, Vice President for housing access and disaster response and rebuild at Fannie Mae. We discussed the importance of preparing for better financial outcomes after disasters.

When disasters occur, an emergency savings fund can be one of the primary resources to handle natural disasters and jumpstart recovery. This can include temporarily evacuating to a hotel, paying for a generator, or beginning to pay for damaged or lost items. This applies to all citizens and residents, particularly young adults who increasingly become more aware of the perils natural disasters can bring. In this episode, we talk with the Operation HOPE’s Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Anita Ward, to learn the key steps Millennials, specifically, can take to become financially prepared for any emergency crisis or storm.

Large earthquakes in populated areas make the news, but many people don’t realize that earthquakes actually happen every day, all over the world. The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden not only monitors these earthquakes, they initiate an earthquake response protocol designed to give first responders and recovery staff critical information in the hours and days following a major earthquake. Paul Earle, the Director of 24/7 Operations, explains the mission of the NEIC.

Each week, a National Preparedness Month weekly theme will focus on a different aspect of preparedness, including the importance of making an emergency plan, saving early for unexpected costs of disasters, getting involved in community preparedness efforts and teaching young people to prepare. On today's episode, we'll focus on youth preparedness during a roundtable discussion with a few members of the FEMA team. We'll learn more about the important roles children can play in creating a systematic shift in the culture of preparedness.

In this episode, we recognize an organization within FEMA with a unique mission to plan for the dangerous man-made events that we hope the world may never face. Join us as we talk to experts from FEMA’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear (CBRN) office. We’ll gain a better understanding of their work through an in-depth scenario-based discussion focused around how FEMA and other federal agencies would deal with an improvised nuclear device detonation.

Recently, the mitigation framework leadership group, the mid flag released the National Mitigation Investment Strategy, which is intended to be a single national strategy for advancing mitigation investment to reduce risks posed by natural hazards and ultimately increased the nation's resilience to those hazards. On today's episode, we sat down with the co-chairs of the group to talk about this strategy and how it's transformative for the way that we seek to prevent future loss from disasters.

On this episode we sit down with leaders from Private Sector partners in Disasters, to examine best practices among all sectors coming out of recent disasters, and the opportunity for the private sector’s continued support to build a culture of resilience.

On this episode, we sit down with Shawn Dahl, a forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. Shawn sheds some light on space weather, describing what it is and how it can affect people on earth. He also provides insight on how the agency forecasts space weather and communicates with partners, like FEMA, to ensure that critical space weather information can be used to plan day-to-day operations.  

On this episode, we’ll talk to the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) President Greg Forrester and FEMA’s Voluntary Agency Coordination Branch Chief Liz Gibson about how the NVOAD fosters a more effective delivery of services to communities affected by disaster and their coordination with FEMA to help people before, during and after disasters. (Host: Cassie Ringsdorf)

Today we're sharing a previously released PrepTalk with Amanda Ripley, who's a journalist and a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. She combines the inspiring stories of disaster survivors with research into how the brain works when confronted with unusual events to provide advice on how emergency managers can help individuals become more decisive in an emergency.

On this episode, we discuss the process of designing massive national level exercises with FEMA’s national exercise division. Jeff Blizzard and Ted Robinson from the national exercise division at FEMA headquarters, join us to discuss what goes into a large-scale national exercise, how FEMA participates, and how we bring the inner agency to participate into these exercises.

Since 2013, the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network has connected and supported people and communities who are striving to live more safely with wildfire. The Network has served as a catalyst for spreading best practices and innovations in fire adaptation concepts nationwide. At their annual workshop in Ashland, Oregon we interviewed  Michelle Medley-Daniel with the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network, Ali Lerch and Chris Chambers with Ashland Fire & Rescue, and Hilary Lundgren with the Washington Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network to learn about the successes, tools, and growth of the network from eight to twenty-four communities.

On this episode of the FEMA podcast, Roberto Hylton, FEMA's Director of the Office of Law Enforcement Engagement and Integration, spoke about his team's mission to integrate emergency management and the law enforcement community. Hylton believes these efforts will help strengthen our nation, reduce risks, and improve our country's capabilities to prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate potential disasters.

On this episode Dr. Dan Kaniewski, FEMA’s Deputy Administrator for Resilience, joins us to talk about how FEMA’s new strategic and structural focus on Resiliency will make America safer, stronger and better prepared for future disasters.

On this episode, we talked to Dennis Jones, emergency management director for Chatham County, Georgia. He shares his experience leading his county through Hurricane Matthew and the lessons learned that led to more efficient contracting in the aftermath of disasters and emergencies.

Today on the FEMA Podcast we talk with Rebecca Wiggins, Executive Director of AFCPE, to better understand FEMA’s partnership with her organization and how it will benefit the nation when it comes to being financially ready for the unexpected.

Today, FEMA turns 40 and we’re throwing it back, highlighting a history of milestone events, landmark legislation, and the rarely told story of how the Agency got to where it is today. In the 40 years since its creation a lot has changed, but there’s been one constant through it all – the Agency’s commitment to protecting and serving the American people. FEMA undoubtedly has a rich history to share with you today, on this special episode of the FEMA Podcast…. 

FEMA created the Student Tools for Emergency Planning or STEP program, a curriculum for fourth and fifth grade students, to teach students how to prepare for emergencies and disasters and trains them to become leaders in family preparedness. On this episode, we dive a bit deeper into how this program works and discuss how, in one FEMA Region, these efforts are helping to move the needle of overall national disaster readiness.

A community lifeline enables the continuous operation of business and government functions and is critical to human health and safety or economic security. The lifelines concept reframes incident information to provide decision makers with impact statements and root causes and is intended to maximize the effectiveness of federally supported state managed and locally executed response. FEMA recently released the community lifelines implementation toolkit, which provides our partners with the information and resources to understand lifelines, coordinate with entities using lifelines, and serve as basic guidance for how to implement the lifelines construct during an incident response. On this episode, we talked to Jeremy Greenberg from FEMA’s Response Directorate about the lifelines concept and how the toolkit will be used to support all units of government in disaster responses.