Brandy Mai, emergency management consultant and disaster communications specialist, provides insights on how to best communicate risk, with a look back at Hurricane Ian.

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Transcript:

00;00;02;17 - 00;00;24;04
Hal Needham
Hey GeoTrekkers. Welcome to GeoTrek podcast number 58, an in-depth look at Emergency Management with perspective on Hurricane Ian. With Brandy My while we've made it to 50 podcast I know a lot of our GeoTrek family loves outdoor excursions and hiking, so I thought it'd be fitting to pause for a moment as if we're on a long hike together and assess our landscape.

00;00;24;04 - 00;00;40;02
Hal Needham
You know that feeling when you're on a long hike and you have not quite summited the mountain, but you found a nice little ridge to take a seat, pull out an apple and enjoy the view. I wanted to do that here together. As we start this new podcast, we've covered a lot of ground in the first 50 episodes.

00;00;40;11 - 00;01;05;17
Hal Needham
We've explored Alaska together. We've looked into building better in hurricane country and heard this story about how Waffle House established a central role in disaster recovery. Last winter, we went north learning how to build stronger roofs in the snow belt and how to protect against brutal ice storms. In the spring, we chased wildfires and tornadoes on the plains and learned a lot about other severe weather hazards like straight line winds and hail.

00;01;05;26 - 00;01;27;19
Hal Needham
We spent a lot of time in Florida together where we learned about vulnerability to sea level rise, did a swamp hike in the Everglades and learned about how telecommunications work in disaster zones. We've also chased a few hurricanes along the way. Last year, we recorded a podcast in the middle of Hurricane Ida in Houma, Louisiana. And this year we did the same in Hurricane Ian in southwest Florida.

00;01;27;28 - 00;01;51;01
Hal Needham
Both hurricanes made landfall as upper level Cat four hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. We continue this week's podcast by diving deeper into Hurricane Ian, but from a from a lens of emergency management, we'll investigate the importance of disaster communications before, during and after catastrophes. I mentioned Houma, Louisiana, in the intro here. Our guest is actually originally from there.

00;01;51;01 - 00;02;21;28
Hal Needham
It's Brandy, my a trauma informed emergency management consultant who specializes in coordinating public information efforts during disaster and crisis operations. Her education includes a juris doctor from Mitchell Hamline, School of Law, graduate coursework in Strategic Communications from Purdue University, a Bachelor of Journalism from Northwestern State University, Military Public Affairs Training from the Defense Information School Certification as an Emergency Manager.

00;02;22;10 - 00;02;49;24
Hal Needham
Qualifications in Civil and Domestic mediation. Raised in South Louisiana, Brandy as an Army vet and mother of four. She serves as a guardian ad litem and advocate for veterans, children, mental health and disabilities. Brandy is based in Savannah, Georgia. Hey, before we start our conversation with Brandy, a bit about the podcast, GeoTrek investigates the impacts of extreme weather and natural disasters on individuals and communities.

00;02;50;02 - 00;03;09;28
Hal Needham
Our goal is to help you improve your decision making, risk assessment and communication related to extreme events so you can take action to make yourself, your family and your community more resilient. Hey, before we get into this episode, we have a quick favor to ask of you. We'd really appreciate if you'd take a minute to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

00;03;10;09 - 00;03;31;14
Hal Needham
Your subscription helps us mark progress, which enables us to make more professional partnerships moving forward and ensures many more episodes of the GeoTrek podcast in the future. Well, hey, make sure you have your thinking cap on for this episode. Brandy My super sharp with topics like disaster communications, emergency management and law, and she loves to question the status quo.

00;03;31;20 - 00;03;51;10
Hal Needham
So you definitely want to be thinking for this episode. It's going to be a thought provoking episode of the Geo Trek podcast. Brandy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I am so excited. I could hardly sleep last night. You're such a great communicator with with emergency management, all these disaster things. I just thought, this is going to be a really great podcast.

00;03;51;19 - 00;03;53;21
Brandy Mai
You're too kind. Thank you for having me.

00;03;54;06 - 00;04;08;07
Hal Needham
Brandy So you have this interesting background in emergency management, but also law, right? So that it's like this multidimensional professional thing going on. How did your interest in those fields develop? And then like walk us through your journey to get into those fields.

00;04;08;27 - 00;04;29;25
Brandy Mai
Well, I'll say if anybody looks at my LinkedIn profile and that is not a shameless plug, my career is kind of varied, but looking back on it, it makes sense. So it started I was a public affairs, a photojournalist in the Army way back when. And when I got out of the service. Then I went into public relations.

00;04;30;02 - 00;04;56;29
Brandy Mai
I did some journalism, public relations, marketing, and then I started maybe about, I don't know, ten years ago, kind of getting an interest in specializing in crisis PR And that was kind of around the rise of the Internet, the interwebs and the 24/7 news cycle. And I started to develop a keen interest in that, which led me to being the lead public information officer for GMA, which is gorgeous Emergency Management Agency.

00;04;57;00 - 00;05;22;27
Brandy Mai
So I was their lead PIO for a couple of years and that's where the love for emergency management really came in. I think it probably drew on my military background that having a specific mission, having a duty, and then it merged my communications background as well. So while I was there, I took all the classes and learned as much as I could and became a certified emergency manager in Georgia.

00;05;23;07 - 00;05;47;13
Brandy Mai
And fingers crossed, in a few weeks I'll have the International Association of Emergency Managers designation of ACM. But when I got into emergency management, I've always had an interest in law and how it intersected with PR. You know, lawyers and PR people are always your two people at the table when anything bad happens in the world, but especially in disasters.

00;05;47;13 - 00;06;13;05
Brandy Mai
I really saw how politics and law affected and changed or could change disaster response or what you could say or what you couldn't say. And at that point of my life, I was like, I am tired of fighting with lawyers. Be right back. I'm going to go become one. And so because I really wanted the knowledge, it wasn't so much about like, I want to be a lawyer so I can beat you.

00;06;13;05 - 00;06;26;05
Brandy Mai
It was like, What do they have that makes leaders and CEOs listen to them? When I'm also on the other side of the table going, You can't do that. You can't say that. And I really wanted to understand that at a deeper level.

00;06;26;16 - 00;06;40;00
Hal Needham
Bernie, how did you see this playing out with like lawyers involved with the conversations in emergency management, public relations at the state and local level? I mean, how did you see lawyers and the legal side coming into play words?

00;06;40;06 - 00;07;01;27
Brandy Mai
I'll start with words first with, you know, I'm kind of a straightforward, direct person. You know, the first time I ever saw an elected official really do communication the way that I would want to do it was Rick Scott in Hurricane and Hurricane Michael. And he was like, you need to leave. This storm will kill you. You need to go.

00;07;01;27 - 00;07;26;00
Brandy Mai
And I was like, Yes, that's how we should be communicate. But of course, legal and elected officials and leaders, you know, the whole gamut would be like, you can't say that you have to just give them the information and tell them there's an evacuation and let them decide. And I was like, we need more risk communication. And when lawyers get involved, it's more public information.

00;07;26;12 - 00;07;37;23
Brandy Mai
But if you kind of let emergency managers say what we really want to say, it's really more risk communication. And there's just kind of an intersect there that that happens behind the scenes that a lot of people don't see.

00;07;37;29 - 00;07;47;22
Hal Needham
Do you feel like that risk communication sometimes is more direct, more dire? You need to get out of harm's way as opposed to maybe the legal conversations which are like, wait, we have to be careful about every word we say.

00;07;48;17 - 00;08;20;01
Brandy Mai
Yes, I think risk communications is a little bit more in-depth than that, but I feel like there's a gap in Yes, we're giving people the information, the forecast, the here's the evacuation order, but we're giving it to them very plainly. And I really think that that there needs to be an element of if you are accepting this risk, these are the potential hazards and just saying turn around, don't drown or don't drive through standing water or using terms and this is in your field house.

00;08;20;01 - 00;08;56;19
Brandy Mai
How storm surge. People don't know what that means. People need to see and hear stories or see photographs of, let's say, the most recent memory, Hurricane Ian. God forbid, when the next storm comes, we need to show people what storm surge looks like and what risk they're accepting. You know, either people don't have the capacity because information comes at them from a million different places, so they don't have the capacity to understand the risk or they they don't have the experience, they don't have the context that goes with it.

00;08;56;19 - 00;09;11;09
Brandy Mai
And I feel like that's greatly missing. And it does keep me up at night sometimes because I feel like some people might not have suffered as greatly as they have if if they had truly understood the risks that were in front of them.

00;09;11;17 - 00;09;28;16
Hal Needham
So, Brandi, it sounds like you're saying the more accurate, vivid picture that we can paint for people if you stay, this is what you're looking at as far as death and destruction, casualties, I mean, complete obliteration of the landscape is what we saw there in southwest Florida at Hurricane Ian. You mean painting that a little clearer for people like this?

00;09;28;16 - 00;09;32;24
Hal Needham
Is the risk you're accepting by staying may help people make a better informed decision?

00;09;33;08 - 00;10;05;00
Brandy Mai
Yes. And I you know, I'm saying that very directly. There are some considerations that I would put into that. You know, I wouldn't just bombard people with 24 seven images of, you know, death and destruction there. There's some trauma considerations there that need to be brought to the forefront. But, yes, I do think that there are ways to incorporate those images or those stories at the right time to help people really understand.

00;10;06;04 - 00;10;28;17
Brandy Mai
But I also understand the time constraints, these rapidly intensifying storms that we're seeing in the last few years. There might not be time for a long, drawn out campaign of, you know, selectively putting the right images at the right time. It's just response. You need to go this storm will kill you or can kill you.

00;10;28;24 - 00;10;47;20
Hal Needham
BRADY The work that emergency managers do is so important for that. We I think you mentioned in a conversation we had about the important work that broadcast meteorologists do as well, that what's their role? I mean, do they have the ability to maybe be more direct in some ways with some of these things because they're not government employees possibly.

00;10;47;20 - 00;11;15;23
Brandy Mai
So, you know, way back in my career, I was a journalist and I did PR, so I worked with lots of news stations and worked in lots of newsrooms. If they're producers, editors and their news company will let them. Yes, you know, it really they also have bosses to answer to. But I think, you know, from an emergency management standpoint, we always tell people, you know, follow your local meteorologist.

00;11;15;23 - 00;11;39;26
Brandy Mai
They are going to know what is predicted for your area. Pardon me. And and so I think they are in a prime position and they're the ones that people turn to, people are friends with. You know, the local communities know them and trust them. And so presuming that, you know, their newsrooms and their producers and, you know, their big corporate owners, let them.

00;11;39;26 - 00;11;41;11
Brandy Mai
Yes, absolutely.

00;11;41;20 - 00;12;05;08
Hal Needham
Yeah. Often they really do have a trusted voice. They have not only weather knowledge, but local weather knowledge of how this plays out in this urban area in this coastal area, whatever it is. And often they do have a strong science background. They can maybe help walk us through some of these things as well. Radio getting back to emergency management, I know we have layers at the federal level, state level, local level.

00;12;05;17 - 00;12;10;06
Hal Needham
How are those different layers similar to each other and how are they different?

00;12;10;06 - 00;12;35;29
Brandy Mai
So the National Incident Management System, you know, under FEMA, has an incident command structure and that structure is scalable. It can be done for a small event. You know, that's just a few people or, you know, a very localized event. But it can scale up to something as large as Deepwater Horizon or, you know, Hurricane Michael or Hurricane Matthew.

00;12;36;20 - 00;13;03;29
Brandy Mai
And so the response and how the operation centers look are and the functions that each division or branch or group plays, those are all pretty much the same. So I can walk into any EOC and understand how it's laid out if they follow that structure. So whether I'm walking into, you know, a field office that FEMA that's responding, usually they embed in the state SES.

00;13;03;29 - 00;13;17;02
Brandy Mai
But but I can walk into FEMA and understand how they're responding. Or I could walk into a city or a county operations center and understand how they're operating. So it's very standardized and it's also scalable.

00;13;18;00 - 00;13;33;25
Hal Needham
Oh, that's interesting. So it sounds like it's repeatable. It's it's basically there's a standardized format to how this is structured, who's at the table, who's talking. And those are a lot of the similarities. What are some differences between them or do they is it pretty much the same thing? Just repeat it at different scales.

00;13;34;19 - 00;13;54;27
Brandy Mai
So I'll give you a little anecdote here. When I first started working in emergency management, I was naive to lots of things, and I have this presumption that, you know, the city and the county level, you know, they did things a certain way. And then if the state got involved, the state's in charge and it was very, very fast.

00;13;54;27 - 00;14;26;25
Brandy Mai
The biggest light bulb moment for me is that the larger that an incident gets, like if the state gets involved, the state activates, the state becomes a support function. Disasters are local. They start in local. And so the state, yes, they're, you know, providing resources and doing everything and they're following the ICF structure, but they become a support function for your localities and municipalities once an incident or an event is so large that local infrastructure and resources can't support it.

00;14;27;07 - 00;14;33;26
Brandy Mai
And so it was very fascinating for me to understand that it wasn't the state comes in to take charge, the state comes in to help.

00;14;34;13 - 00;14;45;13
Hal Needham
Oh, that's really interesting. I would have thought of it maybe like the states coming over to take over. That's not what's happening. You're saying really the response is local. The state saying we're there to support you. You may need additional resources.

00;14;45;19 - 00;15;06;24
Brandy Mai
Yes, absolutely. And the same with federal. You know, a lot of times your your federal partners will deploy to a region or they'll deploy and embed with your state operations center. But they're not there to help. They're not there to take over. They're there to OC What are you, local emergency manager? What do you need? You need food and water and you need emergency shelters.

00;15;07;01 - 00;15;23;01
Brandy Mai
Great. We will help you. And so it it really is kind of like having a bunch of bodyguards, right? I'm just using some Hollywood visual. It's like something gets so big you can't do it. And then the heavies come in and they're like, We got you. We'll help.

00;15;23;09 - 00;15;41;09
Hal Needham
Yeah, they provide that support. And we've seen if you've been on the ground in a catastrophe, sometimes it's very clear there's no way, just the local resources could handle all this. It's just overwhelming. Brandi, you've spoken about the six most dangerous words in emergency management communication. What are they and why is it so important?

00;15;42;14 - 00;16;07;14
Brandy Mai
So I think they're the six most dangerous words in any profession, but I like to bring them home a little bit. And they are I'm going to use quotes. That's the way it's always been. You know, there's processes, procedures, standard operating procedures, all those sorts of things. And they're very standardized and they're passed down, you know, from iteration to iteration employees to employees.

00;16;07;14 - 00;16;37;11
Brandy Mai
And and I understand that if it's not broken, don't fix it. I totally get that. But I think that when you have a mindset that prohibits you from maybe making your life a little easier or freeing up some capacity or this mindset that just dismisses any ideas coming your way, well, that's the way we've always done it. I feel like that's a real disservice to your community and to your fellow employees.

00;16;38;14 - 00;16;59;23
Hal Needham
Brandi, how do you navigate that? I mean, that's so common. I heard that this last week I was talking to some weather professionals about how we map hurricanes and this cone of uncertainty from the hurricane center. It shows the position of the eye. It implies to most people that's where the most dangerous part is. It actually the eye you can make an argument that's kind of the western periphery of the impacts.

00;16;59;29 - 00;17;14;05
Hal Needham
The impacts go far outside to the right of the eye tract. So there have been a lot of conversations lately about changing that. And I actually heard someone say, hey, for 75 years, that's how we've done it, right? So how do you navigate that when people say this is the way it's always been?

00;17;15;05 - 00;17;41;16
Brandy Mai
So that's where I that's that's the area of fascination for me. I think it comes down to communication and I think it comes down to risk communication, like, okay, that's the way it's always been. But let me tell you, the risk that you're accepting and doing it that way. You have 100 plus deaths or the potential for, you know, you start pulling data and statistics, you have the potential for lawsuits, you have the potential for this.

00;17;41;24 - 00;18;12;21
Brandy Mai
So, you know, once you start getting data and information that tells you or people that are telling you, look, this is not working, I think you need to remove. That's the way it's always been from any conversation or even from your mindset. And I really think that leaders and people in general need to make space for those new ideas because the practitioners on the ground, they're the ones that are that can tell you exactly how to do it the best way, the most efficient way.

00;18;13;11 - 00;18;29;16
Brandy Mai
Listen to them. It might not roll up into something that works well at a higher level, but creating that that inclusive space for people to bring their ideas has value. And and in our profession, that value can save lives and resources.

00;18;29;26 - 00;18;57;06
Hal Needham
I imagine if you have well-defined goals as well, if your goal is to save as many lives as possible. All right. Showing the position of the hurricane, I may not be as target with your goals as showing the storm surge inundation map. Right. So, I mean, it comes down to maybe if we have well-defined goals and say, okay, how do we get to those goals, maybe then that's kind of a to our way we can say, okay, we want to make some change, but not just for the sake of making change, but to reach our goals of saving lives.

00;18;57;17 - 00;19;12;06
Hal Needham
Randi We're watching Hurricane Ian come in. It's 2022. We have so much technology. We have the technology to see clouds coming off the coast of Africa. Now, we don't get blindsided in the same way we did 100 years ago from these hurricanes that that came.

00;19;12;10 - 00;19;13;16
Brandy Mai
In 89 in the middle.

00;19;13;16 - 00;19;31;09
Hal Needham
Yeah, Well, I think the satellites were down that night. There was some night there was a family. We saw their boat on the satellite trying to trying to get to safety. But in general, we have so much information, we expect we're not going to be blindsided as much. And here we have Hurricane Ian where it looks like we have more than 100 deaths.

00;19;31;22 - 00;19;48;11
Hal Needham
I mean, walk us through what's been going through your mind with that. It seems like it was a natural catastrophe. Now, there's been a lot of talk about was it handled well from a response perspective? I mean, this is your area of expertise. I mean, what are your thoughts as you saw this storm? Do you see any maybe changes coming out of this?

00;19;48;16 - 00;19;49;25
Hal Needham
Just share your thoughts with us.

00;19;50;20 - 00;20;21;25
Brandy Mai
Sir. My thoughts are wide and vast. I put a couple of disclaimers in there, which is I haven't dug very deeply into policies and laws and regulations. I'm really looking at it from a lens of what I'm seeing online and not just news media, but also survivors, their social media posts. Local meteorologist. So I haven't dug in too deeply, but from the 30,000 foot view, I think there's a lot of things at play.

00;20;22;08 - 00;20;50;11
Brandy Mai
I think they're a rapid intensification of a storm. I think, you know, maybe not understanding full risk. You and I have talked about this previously. There's also some psychological considerations in communication which are anchoring, which is people kind of hold on to the first bit of outlier information that they hear. So in the beginning of this storm, you know, and this is not absolute, this is just what I saw.

00;20;50;11 - 00;21;14;05
Brandy Mai
Most people saw Tampa and everything else just didn't compute. And there wasn't a lot of time to keep checking. It was just Tampa, Tampa. And here's this cone of uncertainty making people think this is where the storm is going to hit, when really it's just the eye. It does not show the magnitude of the winds and the wind field and the flooding and the rain and all the water.

00;21;14;05 - 00;21;32;06
Brandy Mai
It's going to pick up, you know, out in the Gulf before it gets there. And so I think there's a lot of elements that go into it. Lack of time anchoring. The other psychological kind of term is milling effects and that's kind of the old school like, hey, man, did you hear there's a storm coming? What are you going to do?

00;21;32;07 - 00;21;53;07
Brandy Mai
Are you saying, are you leaving? Well, that all happens online. That happens in Facebook groups or texts or things like that. But nobody's going to hear an emergency manager go get out and then leave. They're going to ask their friends and see what the other people's opinions are. You know, maybe call their local TV station. You know, people are going to which is good.

00;21;53;07 - 00;22;04;13
Brandy Mai
We want people to do due diligence and question things and learn and get context. But there's a time where it's like, you don't have any time left. You need to go.

00;22;05;05 - 00;22;26;04
Hal Needham
Brandi it sounds like you're saying people prefer to have this time to process where they hear the evacuation order. They call their grandma, they call their friends. They start if if eight out of ten of their social network is leaving, they're maybe going to leave. If one out of ten is leaving, maybe they won't. It's just this sense that we're more connected than we may realize to the feedback from others in our community.

00;22;26;04 - 00;22;39;28
Hal Needham
But it also sounds like you're saying in a storm like this, where the track was quite uncertain and it shifted quite a bit toward the end and came in really fast, maybe people didn't have as much time for all that milling to take place. The storm was on their doorstep and they needed to take action.

00;22;40;18 - 00;23;09;08
Brandy Mai
Sure. And, you know, there's lots of legal, if you would, or policy considerations in that. To how so? For instance, if there is not a mandatory evacuation order and I don't know the laws of Florida, I'm speaking in generalities here, but in most places, if there is not a mandatory evacuation order and you choose to evacuate, your job doesn't necessarily have to hold your job for you.

00;23;09;14 - 00;23;39;04
Brandy Mai
So if your boss says, you know, you got to come into work, it's not a mandatory evacuation. Nobody's going to it's rare. You're going to find somebody that goes, okay, I can lose my job over this. You know, they need that economic stability. They need a job. And so if the leaders don't issue those kind of orders and make those decisions, then it becomes a lot more complicated for people to even do the logistics in their own lives in order to leave.

00;23;39;21 - 00;24;04;15
Hal Needham
Brandy I pulled into southwest Florida the day before landfall. I had ten days food, ten days, water, all this extra gasoline. I anticipated a ghost town. I come in and it's just completely fully functioning. Publix was open till 6 p.m. the day before landfall. If you're a cashier, are you going to say, Sorry, y'all, I'm leaving that, you know, the massage parlors, the the barber shops, the swimming swimming pool, supply company, all.

00;24;04;15 - 00;24;17;21
Hal Needham
I was going down the strip mall just looking at all of these businesses, all of them open. So again, that that makes a hard case for people to say, defy their employer and say sorry, even though it's not mandatory, even though things are open, I'm leaving anyway.

00;24;18;06 - 00;24;45;05
Brandy Mai
Right. It does make it very difficult. And, you know, if schools don't close, you know, people have lots of dynamics in their lives, work school family members, family members in the hospital. You know, there's lots of dynamics that play in each individual person's life. People might not have money in the bank to travel for an evacuation that may, you know, a for a storm that may or may not hit.

00;24;45;14 - 00;25;15;18
Brandy Mai
And, you know, if you don't have the leaders telling you, like, get out, you need to leave, then you kind of make that presumption that everything's okay. Conversely, coming out of two years of COVID response, which is we don't have enough podcast hours for that conversation, but people also are a little gun shy. You know, there were parts of COVID, you know, where people are like, Oh my God, you got to leave or you're going to die.

00;25;15;18 - 00;25;35;29
Brandy Mai
And rightfully so. There was some science out there at certain times that made those really big announcements relevant. But, you know, if people survived all that and survived previous storms, then it's kind of like the boy crying wolf. And so, you know, there's just lots of psychological and community trauma, things at play.

00;25;36;00 - 00;25;56;10
Hal Needham
I see where people may say, look, the authorities, the media, they're always everything's always the end of the world. We're going to be fine. We've written out all these storms. We've written out the pandemic pandemic. We've learned to just not listen to the authorities or the media. And all of a sudden it makes it complex for a case like this where a 12 foot storm surge is just going to rip apart a city.

00;25;56;23 - 00;26;12;11
Hal Needham
You know, this is it's going to be a dire thing. Randi, could you walk us through in general terms why may a county or a local entity delay an evacuation order? I mean, why not just order this way out in front it just in general terms, what are the incentives to waiting a little bit longer?

00;26;13;03 - 00;26;44;06
Brandy Mai
Sure. And this is not all inclusive. And again, this is not specific to any county. You know, it's each however, the state is structured, each county or municipality or state laws kind of govern all of it. But there's a couple of things at play. One, it kind of depends on your city or county charter. One thing that really stuck out to me and I won't name counties and one of the counties in Florida is that their emergency operations plan had a very specific evacuation triggers, which is not a bad thing.

00;26;44;06 - 00;27;11;16
Brandy Mai
As emergency managers, I'm like, yes, if this then this great, nobody gets to fight about it. And maybe they didn't follow those or I again, I didn't read them. So you might have binding documents that prevent those sorts of things. You also have let's say you have two counties side by side, one counties like, well, we're going to do a mandatory evacuation and the other counties like we're not.

00;27;12;03 - 00;27;34;06
Brandy Mai
And then you you have conflicting information. And so that, you know, so sometimes it's kind of like, well, what's my friend over there? And X, Y, Z County going to do, you know, then and county managers and state's know that as soon as you issue an evacuation order, some other county is going to get your people and their infrastructure is going to be burdened.

00;27;34;10 - 00;28;04;24
Brandy Mai
And so it's kind of a, you know, kind of a conversation that has to be had, like, hey, just like, you know, once people are heading your way, but you also have cost so disaster funding, federal funding for a federally declared disaster, all of that funding comes after and state, you know, funds for disaster. All of the money comes after, you know, they might do a state of emergency beforehand.

00;28;04;24 - 00;28;29;19
Brandy Mai
But that just means, hey, we agree that you can use whatever resources you need over time for public safety, whatever that checkbook is open as you need it. But the money comes after if there's not a state of emergency or declared disaster, then the county or, you know, the local municipality oftentimes is on the hook for that expense.

00;28;29;19 - 00;29;00;03
Brandy Mai
So it's like we can activate a bunch of people. We can tell people to evacuate, we can shut down businesses and take the economic impact. But if that storm turns, we're on the hook for all of that overtime pay for all of those resources for the economic impacts. And so it's it's very valid that there might be like a well, do we want to risk $10 million in losses just in case the storm might not hit us or get weakened?

00;29;00;03 - 00;29;02;20
Brandy Mai
And so it's kind of a you're sitting there hedging bets.

00;29;02;20 - 00;29;19;16
Hal Needham
It seems like a delicate balancing act if you're on the edge of those potential hurricane tracks, Right, where you're saying, well, if this does turn and we did a mandatory evac, we shut down the government offices, we open up shelters, we're paying police overtime because we have curfews. I mean, there are all these different expenses that comes into play.

00;29;19;22 - 00;29;29;26
Hal Needham
You're saying if the storm turns and you never really got strong wind or flooding, you may not be part of that disaster declaration post storm and not get reimbursed for it. You might be out a lot of money.

00;29;30;09 - 00;29;54;13
Brandy Mai
You might be out, you know, individual assistance money, hazard mitigation grant program money, public assistance, money. You know, and a lot of times states will do, you know, state governments will do states of emergency so that the state can maybe be on the hook for some of that. But, you know, it's not a a full refund and it depends on so many different factors there.

00;29;54;13 - 00;30;12;07
Brandy Mai
But holistically, looking at it, yes, it's do we do we want to be on the hook? Do our taxpayers want to be on the hook, You know, for and there's also the consideration of if we cry wolf again and the storm turns, then people aren't going to listen to us next time.

00;30;12;12 - 00;30;33;02
Hal Needham
Well, that's that's true, too. We really have to think about that next storm. I've heard people say just just do a really broad evacuation, go way beyond the border and just air on the side of caution. I get that. But if you've lived in these vulnerable places, if if your residents feel like they've unnecessarily evacuated two or three times, it gets really hard to evacuate them next time when they maybe really need to.

00;30;33;14 - 00;30;49;13
Brandy Mai
Absolutely. I'm not sure if it was you or if it was another colleague of mine that told me that there was there was a lady they spoke to during Ian that had evacuated for three or four previous storms and decided this time was like I I'm just saying.

00;30;49;13 - 00;31;08;17
Hal Needham
And this was a a British woman I talked to. She had been there 31 years. She said she had evacuated for all the storms and she's is sick of it. She's tired of it. Again, in her perception, each evacuation was unnecessary. This time the water came up so fast, she panicked. Her friend down the street had a two storey house.

00;31;08;17 - 00;31;26;18
Hal Needham
She had a one storey house. She swam in the rapidly moving four feet, you know, four feet of water, but it's moving rapidly. This isn't like a swimming pool. This is like a river. And she actually made it to her friend's house and survived. But you hear these stories where people panic and they die trying to swim somewhere, to go somewhere.

00;31;26;28 - 00;31;47;18
Hal Needham
So but she had obeyed all these other evacuation orders. So it does get tricky. I mean, these are complex stories and this brings me back to one of the last questions I want to ask you. A common concern I hear of residents is saying if I evacuate, I won't be allowed back in. And there are a couple of reasons why people want to get back in quickly.

00;31;47;18 - 00;32;05;09
Hal Needham
Number one, they may feel like burglars may come and loot their property. They may feel like if I do flood, I want to get on treating that flood that my my building, my house right away before mold and mildew sets in. I don't want authorities setting up a perimeter, saying I can't go into my own house for a week.

00;32;06;02 - 00;32;26;10
Hal Needham
I can understand from emergency management perspective, there's often a statistic that sometimes more people die from the indirect impacts, from a storm. They get electrocuted. They all these all these other things, animal bites, carbon monoxide poisoning from generators, a disaster zone, even after the storm is still a very dangerous place. How do we balance that out? How do we think about this?

00;32;26;10 - 00;32;38;05
Hal Needham
I can understand both sides of it. Walk us through maybe even how a long restriction of not allowing people back in may discourage them from evacuating in the future.

00;32;39;01 - 00;33;11;25
Brandy Mai
Sure. It's no surprise that my whole career has been communicating. So, you know, to me, it seems like, you know, the start to the resolution for this is to have these conversations with the residents, too. You know, when I worked in the state operations center in Georgia, we had you know, we worked Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Michael, and we got lots of the calls at the state operations center of people saying, I want to go back to my house and and here's why, and listed all of the things you just said.

00;33;12;04 - 00;33;30;26
Brandy Mai
But when we would explain to them, when we would just take that moment on the telephone as they're calling in and say, listen, we understand that you want to get home, we we we totally empathize. But right now, if we let you back in like we can't keep you safe, we cannot keep your family safe and there's no electricity.

00;33;31;01 - 00;33;51;20
Brandy Mai
We don't have the means to get food in to feed you. If all of your food has spoiled, if you are in a car accident or have a heart attack while you're back in there, we don't have the ambulances or the hospitals up and running to take care of you. And as soon as we would say that, they would go, Oh, well, that makes sense.

00;33;51;20 - 00;34;26;23
Brandy Mai
And again, not every time, but as soon as it was explained in a way and, you know, I owe a lot of people always call me kind of like the communication chameleon, even right down to dialect and accents, whoever I'm talking to on the phone, within like a minute I will be using their dialect and accent. And so I really kind of chameleon and mimic and mirror being one of them, even using their accents and dialects and just explaining it to them in a way, matching their vocabulary and their language.

00;34;27;15 - 00;34;53;13
Brandy Mai
You can't do that on social media. You can't do that in a press conference, you know. And so but that's a big lift. Having those conversations at the right time is a heavy lift. So and, you know, it's no surprise that government agencies are short staffed and have other pressing missions. But I think conversations need to happen on blue sky days or, you know, at any time, really.

00;34;53;13 - 00;35;11;18
Brandy Mai
But those conversations need to happen so that people understand, like we're not just being mean. We're not just like, no, you can't get back in. We're busy. It's genuinely like we're tasked with keeping you alive. And there are real risks inside of that barricade that we can't protect you from.

00;35;11;29 - 00;35;28;25
Hal Needham
You know, Brandy, something I really got from your perception today is when the storms coming paint for them what that storm situation looks like with meteorological conditions, but also after this storm, you're not going to have electricity. You're going to be in a hot, dark house. You're not going to have plumbing. Right. That's something that people just assume they flushed your toilet.

00;35;28;25 - 00;35;49;26
Hal Needham
It works. There. There are kitchen sink works. You may not have that for a long time. And like you said, there's no there's a curfew. There's there's no way to provide any emergency services, maybe painting a picture of this is what this actually looks like. Some people really struggle to grasp the long term recovery. This may be weeks or months until these services are restored.

00;35;49;26 - 00;35;52;06
Hal Needham
Maybe walking them through what it looks like can help.

00;35;52;22 - 00;36;14;06
Brandy Mai
When I first came into emergency management and when I'd say that maybe the last 5 to 10 years there's been a shift. They don't know exactly when it happened, but it used to be like, okay, if you're going to ride out a storm, have three days worth of food, you know, make sure that you have battery packs for three days worth of cell phone charge.

00;36;14;12 - 00;36;39;09
Brandy Mai
Like 3 to 5 days was kind of the magic number. And now I've seen a shift to be prepared to live completely on your own for a week or two or longer and and so and I don't know that that that messaging has been around long enough for it to really permeate people's understanding and mindset they're like, Oh, I've got some cans of food.

00;36;39;18 - 00;37;03;24
Brandy Mai
You know, we'll be out of power for a couple of days. I'll take some naps. No, this is like all of your food is going to spoil you know, your toilets may back up, which becomes a public health crisis. And sewage wise, you know, your public safety and ambulances may not be running. So let's just say you're out back chopping wood for a fire and you, you know, slice the ax to your foot.

00;37;04;14 - 00;37;14;06
Brandy Mai
You're kind of on your you know, there's so many just normal everyday life things that can happen that's 911 and public infrastructure cannot support.

00;37;14;25 - 00;37;34;01
Hal Needham
You have these layers. Safety nets that we're so used to, just assuming that they're there, they're not there in a time like this. There was a one of our podcast guests on the last podcast went into Fort Myers Beach the morning after in. There were people, a lot of dead people, a lot of people severely injured. There were people actively looting and ransacking.

00;37;34;13 - 00;37;58;20
Hal Needham
And his thing was like, where is law enforcement? You can make the argument, look, they said this is a mandatory evacuation and they can't put their people at harm's way. So it's just it can be this really chaotic scene. I wonder if painting the picture of what this looks like post-storm may help people evacuate pre-storm, because sometimes people will ride out a life threatening storm, barely survive, and now they're like, well, now it's unlivable.

00;37;58;20 - 00;38;04;12
Hal Needham
They're going to evacuate anyway, right? So why not leave a day or two before and make sure that you save your life? You know.

00;38;04;29 - 00;38;43;18
Brandy Mai
So many I always used to kind of joke, you know, and say, if we could just livestream an emergency operations center or state operations center. No, necessarily audio would be needed. But if you could see, like a bunch of people walking around doing stuff, working, if you could see that energy on like a live feed, if you would, I think people would understand it better because, you know, you have some weather folks that might be outstanding in the storm, which subconsciously gives this notion that, hey, we can it in the storm, it's fine, this dude's good.

00;38;43;18 - 00;39;04;18
Brandy Mai
And his is video guy's good. So we're just going to go out there or you might see a press conference which is well curated and well programed and scripted, if you could see. And it's not it's organized chaos. It looks like an ant farm or an ant pile that, you know, everybody's working to bring food to the queen or something.

00;39;05;07 - 00;39;37;07
Brandy Mai
But if you could see that energy, it's it's probably one of the the most profound. I just got chills thinking about the most profound things to see is all of these people just descending on one place with one mission. Everybody knows what to do and where to go. All politics, all everything is aside and everybody is there. But I really feel like if the people if the citizens could see that kind of energy, they might understand the the level of of danger that's there.

00;39;37;13 - 00;39;42;27
Brandy Mai
And and it might restore some faith in public safety professionals for sure.

00;39;42;27 - 00;40;03;02
Hal Needham
Our friends and colleagues of mine that have worked at EOC, they'll talk about these long hours. But there's this energy, there's this adrenaline. Everyone's working together. That's a great idea to have a little cam in the corner, maybe with audio on mute, but just to show, like people are doing their best to respond. But it's overwhelming, right? When you have a lot of your city completely annihilated, how do you timely?

00;40;03;02 - 00;40;12;18
Hal Needham
It's just moment by moment making the optimal choices. But to see that energy, to see local, state and federal resources are being thrown at this may help encourage people along the way.

00;40;13;07 - 00;40;37;03
Brandy Mai
And you know, and the the almost lawyer side of me is like, oh my God, like, what would that look like? Somebody would be like, Oh, that guy walked across the room. He wasn't trying to say, but I really feel like, you know, one of the things that I've told people during disasters and COVID, I said, look, I understand that everybody's tired of listening to elected officials and leaders and and all and big media and all of this other stuff.

00;40;37;10 - 00;40;55;23
Brandy Mai
I was like, And that's fine if you don't trust them, because I don't trust any of them either. I said, But do you trust me? And they'll go, Yes, you know, except for my family back in Idaho. Do you trust me? Do you trust that I trust the people working on the side of me, that I am there just as much for them and they're there for me?

00;40;55;23 - 00;41;21;13
Brandy Mai
Do you trust the little people? And they'll go, You know, the people that are like you, the blue collar workers? Like, do you trust me? I'm nobody. And they'll go, Yes, And I'll go, Great. Because we're the people that are actually working the storm. So, you know, just have your trust in the little people. And, you know, I'm not telling you to ignore the big people, but just know there's little people like us, hundreds of us that are working really hard to save your life.

00;41;21;13 - 00;41;41;15
Hal Needham
Yeah. And as you're building those relationships like you, I like the term you use blue sky days, right? You're using those workshops and those engagement maybe in February, March, April to build engagement that you may need during flood season or hurricane season as those relationships and trust are built. I like what you're saying, that you can reach out to the community as they build trust in you.

00;41;41;15 - 00;41;52;26
Hal Needham
They can trust, okay, You're connected with people maybe at the state and federal level they're not. But it's you're almost a link in a sense, linking those people in the community to all these different resources at different levels.

00;41;53;07 - 00;41;53;28
Brandy Mai
Absolutely.

00;41;55;25 - 00;42;14;23
Hal Needham
Thank you so much for this insightful interview. We covered a lot of topics from a lot of different angles. And so this was a really interesting conversation. We got a lot out of it. Here are a few of my main points that I walked away with personally. Number one, I hear people often say, Who cares if we have a mandatory evacuation or not?

00;42;15;03 - 00;42;35;24
Hal Needham
People just need to make up their own minds and not wait for the government to tell them what to do. While personal responsibility in disaster zones is paramount, Brandi makes a good point that people may not be willing to leave if their employer requires them to work and their employer is much more likely to require them to work if there is not a mandatory evacuation.

00;42;36;09 - 00;42;57;00
Hal Needham
I saw this firsthand when I got to west central Florida the day before Hurricane Ian arrived. A lot of businesses were open. I was shocked to see society functioning such a high capacity. And it made me think of the employees of these businesses. Are they really willing to tell their employer, Hey, I know you want me at work?

00;42;57;05 - 00;43;15;20
Hal Needham
I know you're trying to operate and stay open, but I'm going to choose to leave with my family. I think, as Brandi mentioned, that's much less likely than if businesses closed down before a disaster. And she had made the point that mandatory evacuations tie into a lot of those businesses to decisions whether to stay open or to close.

00;43;15;20 - 00;43;37;19
Hal Needham
Really insightful stuff. There. Number two, I really liked what Brandy shared about the most dangerous words in any profession. That's the way it's always been. She really shared about how, you know, the status quo can have so much gravity to it, right? It can pull us towards it. And a lot of people just operate out of this framework of just doing things the way they've always been done.

00;43;38;00 - 00;44;01;11
Hal Needham
And that's really a dangerous thing. We should always try to find optimal path forward to reach our goals and not necessarily be stuck in doing things the way they've always been done. Again, in the days after Hurricane Ian, there's been a lot of conversation about reevaluating how we forecast and map hurricane hazards. Like we often use this cone of uncertainty to show the position of the hurricane.

00;44;01;11 - 00;44;28;06
Hal Needham
I, I had a conversation with a meteorologist last week who said, you know, for five years, this is the way we've done it. He wasn't saying necessarily we should or shouldn't do it, but he was making the point that this is the way it's always been done and there's no better time than right now after a big disaster to reevaluate how we how we do things, how we choose to evaluate risk and communicate that now is a great time to reevaluate all of those disaster risk and communication products.

00;44;28;13 - 00;44;53;06
Hal Needham
And the next episode of the GEO Chart podcast number 51 will focus specifically on this topic number three and the last point I wanted to reflect on was the take home point of Brandy's wisdom about painting a picture of a disaster landscape for residents in clear, graphic and sometimes vivid terms to really give them an idea of what they're facing if they choose not to evacuate.

00;44;53;18 - 00;45;17;02
Hal Needham
Many people do not realize the potential severity for natural disasters. They may think, Hey, I've survived hurricanes before, this one's going to be like the other ones. But what they're facing, especially if they're in an area that receives a massive storm surge, it may be something beyond what they can even imagine Painting that picture of what that looks like in very clear terms can help them get an idea and be better aligned with reality.

00;45;17;21 - 00;45;41;01
Hal Needham
Brandy also mentioned painting those pictures for people about what it will look like after the disaster. Right? So people may think, okay, the worst case scenario, I'm going to lose power for a couple of days. But we know in these mega disasters, when you really are in the ground zero for a tornado outbreak or hurricane storm surge, things like that, you can lose services for weeks to months.

00;45;41;04 - 00;46;02;07
Hal Needham
Power could be out for that long. You could lose your water and your sewage and plumbing and all of those types of things that we rely on for for normal, everyday life may be knocked out for weeks to months, but that may be beyond the framework and the scope of what people are imagining. I have definitely come across people who said they risked their lives.

00;46;02;07 - 00;46;22;03
Hal Needham
They barely survived a natural disaster, and then after the storm they've decided to evacuate anyway because all of these services were what were knocked out. Pretty much their town was unlivable. And so if you're going to evacuate anyway, why not leave before the storm instead of risking your life and then you're going to be in an unlivable place anyway.

00;46;22;18 - 00;46;42;02
Hal Needham
Brandy, thank you so much for taking time to share your wisdom with us. We're excited to follow your career moving forward. You're doing so many interesting things. I know you're you're commonly on social media. Your Twitter handle is crisis talker. So just do add crisis talker for our listeners. If you want to follow Brandy online, she often is engaged in very interesting conversations.

00;46;42;02 - 00;47;04;28
Hal Needham
I know, for example, on Twitter, hey, if our listeners have questions for us about the physical processes or impacts of extreme weather or natural disasters, please reach out to us and let us hear about it. We're our tradition of making the double digit podcast episodes interactive, and episode 55 is right around the corner for that episode. We're going to be taking your questions about this past hurricane season.

00;47;04;28 - 00;47;25;02
Hal Needham
So this could be about the meteorology involved. It was a bit of a strange season that was very quiet for long periods of time. Then we have this very destructive hurricane in late September in southwest Florida. Any questions you have about about meteorology, risk, communication, the impacts of these storms, whatever's on your mind, reach out to. And we'd love to address those questions.

00;47;25;09 - 00;47;45;13
Hal Needham
And podcast number 55, which will be coming up in the month of November. Our production and marketing team has said if Baker actually Anderson, Jeremiah Long, Christopher Cook, Amy Wilkins and I am Dr. Howell, thank you so much for taking time to listen. We'll catch you on the next episode of the GEO Track podcast.

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