Jon Stewart shares insights from more than 24 years of working in emergency management and homeland security. His perspectives will help people prepare for and respond to a wide range of disasters, including hurricanes, snowstorms, earthquakes and wildland fires.

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Transcript:

00;00;03;27 - 00;00;33;11
Hal Needham
Hey GeoTrekkers welcome to podcast number 54. This episode has a little bit of everything we'll be talking about wildland fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and winter storms deeper than the storms. And disasters themselves, however, will get a lot of practical insights on preparedness and response from emergency management specialist Jon Stewart. This is one of those episodes that's relevant to everyone, even if you don't work professionally in disaster response or related industry.

00;00;33;21 - 00;01;00;09
Hal Needham
All of us are threatened by extreme weather and natural disasters at some point, and the perspective shared in this podcast will help us all become better prepared. Little bit about the podcast. Audio track investigates the impact of extreme weather and the natural disasters on individuals and communities. 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.

00;01;00;24 - 00;01;24;00
Hal Needham
If you're a fan of the podcast, you can help us stay on the air by subscribing on your favorite podcast platform. Your subscription helps us mark professional progress, which helps us make more partnerships moving forward and ensures many more episodes of the Geo Trek podcast in the future. Okay, well, let's jump into this episode with Jon Stewart. In addition to his decades of professional experience, I think you'll really enjoy his sense of humor and quick wit.

00;01;24;19 - 00;01;47;17
Jon Stewart
Now for a deeper introduction of this week's guest, Jon Stewart has worked in Emergency Management and Homeland Security for over 24 years, working closely with local, state and federal clients. As a former state level chief of preparedness, he knows that there are no pre-scripted answers to emergency management and believes in providing customized solutions to all his clients within the private sector.

00;01;47;17 - 00;02;05;08
Hal Needham
He has a strong track record of acquiring new clients and growing business with existing clients. He has provided direct emergency management support to over 200 different counties and cities in over 30 states Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Jon, so great to have you on the podcast.

00;02;06;12 - 00;02;15;04
Jon Stewart
Absolutely. So do we need to address the elephant in the room that folks tuned in and they saw Jon Stewart? No, not the guy on TV.

00;02;15;06 - 00;02;19;05
Hal Needham
Let's let's start there. I like that for a starting point. So I'm going to explain this.

00;02;20;06 - 00;02;47;21
Jon Stewart
I mean, for 30 years, I've gotten the Jon Stewart joke. Ever since he first appeared. And for folks who don't know, he first appeared on MTV back when they actually shared music videos and it's been since. So it's a blessing and a curse. And I've just come to accept that people see my name sometimes they get confused. I'm not going to lie.

00;02;47;21 - 00;02;51;05
Jon Stewart
It got me dinner reservations in Los Angeles earlier this year.

00;02;51;06 - 00;02;54;24
Hal Needham
Nice to ching ching. Hey, rocket y you can write.

00;02;55;10 - 00;03;06;27
Jon Stewart
When? When we arrived, the hostess was very confused when I said no. I'm Jon Stewart. I just made a reservation. You could see the disappointment in her face, which is like, Oh.

00;03;07;12 - 00;03;11;13
Hal Needham
She's like, Oh, I was thinking someone else, but hey, you got the reservations.

00;03;11;21 - 00;03;13;08
Jon Stewart
And we got a very nice table.

00;03;13;24 - 00;03;23;19
Hal Needham
Nice, hey, it can work out. So have there been times where maybe on paper or somewhere, I mean, there's an example where someone thought you were the other Jon Stewart. Had there been other times like that.

00;03;24;00 - 00;03;49;12
Jon Stewart
Twitter early, the early days of Twitter. And I'm not on Twitter anymore, but the early days of Twitter, I got followers. I got some direct messages from other celebrities. And I you know, I would message them back and be like, hey, I appreciate it. It's the wrong guy. And you should have seen that by the associated with the with the account.

00;03;49;12 - 00;03;50;23
Jon Stewart
But it's cool. But thank you.

00;03;51;04 - 00;04;11;11
Hal Needham
Man. That's pretty interesting. So. My name is Hal Needham and there's actually a famous stuntman by the same name who used to do a lot of work with Burt Reynolds. In fact, I think there was a movie once upon a time in Hollywood. The guy that Brad Pitt played was Hal Needham, as far as I understand. And so, yeah, this guy did a lot of the stunts in the eighties, nineties, like Smokey and the Bandit, all these different movies.

00;04;11;20 - 00;04;29;12
Hal Needham
So when I did my first hurricane film with PBS, they actually put it on the IMDB database. There were like all these action movies from like the seventies and eighties. Then there's this 15 year gap, and then there's like killer typhoon. So for like three weeks, it looked like I was this famous Hollywood guy that turned into hurricane science.

00;04;29;19 - 00;04;51;28
Hal Needham
So I had my my little window of popularity. And then they realized, oh, wait, this a different guy? He's only done one. He hasn't done 300 movies. So I had my my my moment of fame as well, but it was short lived. So, John, you're doing a lot of work, prolific work as well, with a lot in emergency management, working with a lot of counties, a lot of states, a lot of municipalities.

00;04;52;03 - 00;04;58;19
Hal Needham
Could you walk us through, you know, how you got into that work as far as a career and, you know, explain your path to us.

00;05;00;10 - 00;05;30;00
Jon Stewart
Very nontraditional. And I told us when I mentor a lot of kind of the next generation. So I have a very relevant degree to emergency management by trade. I'm an archeologist, so obviously didn't know anything about emergency management. And so I actually was a DOD analyst and this was back in 1999. And a friend of mine said, Hey, we're doing this thing.

00;05;30;00 - 00;05;47;15
Jon Stewart
It's called an exercise. You should come to it. And I said, okay. And I went to it. And this was in preparation for Y2K. Yeah. And I sat there and I did it, and I turned on. I was like, so let me get this straight. People can do this type of thing for a living. And he's like, Yeah.

00;05;47;15 - 00;06;11;29
Jon Stewart
And I'm like, Okay, how do I do it? How do I start to do this? Because I love this. And so it was there. And I went from that to supporting. At that point, it was the president's Y2K command center. So 99 to 2000 for those who weren't around or don't remember, Y2K was supposed to be this big event.

00;06;11;29 - 00;06;42;04
Jon Stewart
And it wasn't. And it was a lot of how this career works through relationships, through meeting people that that that led me to my next job. And then really 911 happened and the industry kind of exploded after that in terms of, you know, opportunities. So it was not a very direct path. But back in the late nineties, 2000, there wasn't necessarily a big emergency management field.

00;06;42;23 - 00;06;51;18
Hal Needham
What did you love about it? Was it the fact that it's so applicable? Was it the fact that you really enjoyed kind of planning and thinking ahead? I mean, what about it really made you interested?

00;06;52;21 - 00;07;18;08
Jon Stewart
So this is funny. My wife cringes sometimes when I tell this, but it's cool now because it's popular. So I grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and it's again, it's cool now it's okay. But back then it was not so cool. And when I grew up playing it being the dungeon Master, creating an entire world, keeping it in my head and moving the pieces, the players around to accomplish objectives.

00;07;18;23 - 00;07;44;04
Jon Stewart
It's a very similar thing to a large scale exercise. If you create an entire world in your head and you want the people in the EOC or in the field to accomplish certain objectives and how do you help navigate and move that? The one it was very familiar to, it was just something I, I loved and enjoyed being able to see those pieces move and execute and having to adapt as they did different things.

00;07;44;04 - 00;07;51;23
Jon Stewart
So it was one of familiarity. It's something I always enjoyed as a kid and then kind of to realizing you can make a profession out of this.

00;07;52;06 - 00;08;06;13
Hal Needham
Yeah. And there's almost is this fantasy. Sometimes you're almost having to visualize things that haven't existed yet. But then there's a strategic piece too, like, Oh, if this thing happens that we haven't seen before, then how do all the pieces play out? Right? So.

00;08;07;02 - 00;08;35;16
Jon Stewart
Oh, 100%. And I remember I'd be I mean, a hardship tour. I had to do a tsunami exercise for the U.S. Virgin Islands. So I no hardship. I had to go to the Caribbean to do work. I got paid for it. Yeah, I get it. But it wasn't until after the exercise that I'm driving around and I was driving around with some folks from my team and the client and I'm like, God, you know, this place is beautiful and they're like you.

00;08;35;26 - 00;08;57;15
Jon Stewart
You've been down here once a month for six months. How do you not realize that? It's like, Oh no, for six months. As we drive around, I'm visualizing water inundation, buildings collapsed. I'm visualizing the destruction that will take place due to a tsunami so that I can map it out for the exercise. Now that that's done, I don't have to visualize that.

00;08;57;15 - 00;09;10;13
Jon Stewart
I can actually see, you know, these places for what they are. So, yes, I mean, there's part of that of meeting. It's the fantasy, it's the visualization to make it as realistic as possible for the people who are playing in it.

00;09;10;21 - 00;09;23;20
Hal Needham
It's almost like you were from the time that you got on the ground. You were kind of living in this other world of what could happen, and then later in the game, you kind of caught up to where like the tourists are like, wait, this. This is a beautiful tropical paradise.

00;09;24;00 - 00;09;31;07
Jon Stewart
Oh, yeah. No, I completely get why people people go there. It's beautiful. And, you know, folks should go there. It's beautiful.

00;09;31;24 - 00;09;53;14
Hal Needham
You know, that relates so well with the fieldwork we just recently did in Hurricane Ian, where even all the science was aligning with. We don't quite know where the eye is going in, but just south of it, we're looking at a catastrophic storm surge. And you had people on the ground that received the message that heard the flood forecast, but just said, I cannot imagine this forecast to be accurate.

00;09;53;14 - 00;10;08;07
Hal Needham
You're talking 9 to 12 feet of saltwater racing across the landscape. There's no way. Right. But that's actually what played out there. Is this sense of of fantasy or of visualizing what hasn't been seen yet. Sometimes with these major catastrophes.

00;10;08;07 - 00;10;46;24
Jon Stewart
And that's a huge challenge when communicating with the public about them. I mean, you think can you tell someone 9 to 12 feet of water and that just seems not just improbable but impossible and getting them to treat it serious. And we've seen that. And we saw it in Katrina. I mean, we've seen it time and time again where it is very much a challenge when doing community prepared is because people or people either can't believe it or they're like, Oh, they're just they're making a big deal out of it because they want us to leave our homes.

00;10;47;11 - 00;11;02;13
Hal Needham
Sure. So some people might suspect, okay, I don't trust the government or I don't trust the messaging, but the science is aligning with like, wait, what's coming down the pike is really catastrophic. Even though you haven't seen it before it. It's possible or even probable.

00;11;02;27 - 00;11;03;18
Jon Stewart
Absolutely.

00;11;04;01 - 00;11;28;08
Hal Needham
Yeah. Really interesting stuff. And then so that's a really interesting example. If you go in to the Virgin Islands, I know you've got a lot of places you've worked with a lot of entities, whether it's federal government, state government, territories, you know, local municipalities, counties, parishes. You mentioned in your LinkedIn bio that you've realized that really these solutions need to be customized, that you you can't just generalize a one size fits all.

00;11;28;17 - 00;11;33;07
Hal Needham
How do you do that in your profession? How do you customize these solutions for the place you're working in?

00;11;33;26 - 00;12;06;23
Jon Stewart
Yeah, it's about listening and it's going in and talking to communities, talking to the Emergency Management Agency and other stakeholders, and understand their needs and concerns. And I also talk about when sometimes I present you have emergency operation plans and we've all when it comes to plans, even trainings and exercises, we've all big part and stolen from one another in this industry.

00;12;06;23 - 00;12;33;26
Jon Stewart
But that's not sufficient. It's not knowing where, especially when it comes to response, where a community is going to gather in times of disaster. And old mentor of mine when I was with the District of Columbia told me, if we know the little bodega, the little grocery stores, the churches, the community centers that day in and day out, the communities know, hey, that's where we're going to go in time of disaster.

00;12;34;18 - 00;12;56;19
Jon Stewart
Well, that's where we need to send our resources to help them get ready before, during and after disaster. At the same time, you're not going to know that by looking at a map. You're not going to know that by necessarily reading a plan. Again, within emergency management. I again, it's a theme I tell folks and I tell them, I think it's the relationships.

00;12;56;19 - 00;13;18;23
Jon Stewart
You got to get out there and talk to people and have those interactions and get them to tell you what their community is like so you can help solve their problems if you go in and just and again, part of it is I'm from D.C., I tell folks, I go in places like, oh, someone from D.C., federal government, FEMA, this and that.

00;13;19;04 - 00;13;39;08
Jon Stewart
You know, they're just going to tell us what we need to know. I, I very often diffuse them from the start, like, yes, I'm from D.C. I can't help it. That's where I grew up. But at the same time, I'm also going to tell you right now, I don't know your community. And it's sometimes that bare honesty of help me, help you, I don't know.

00;13;39;23 - 00;13;48;09
Jon Stewart
So tell me, teach me so that I can help you. And sometimes you have to have that vulnerability to admit I don't know yet.

00;13;48;09 - 00;14;16;21
Hal Needham
I think that builds a lot of trust, right? When you come in and say, hey, you're the expert because you're the local here or, you know, like you said, getting to know the local landscape before the disaster, even heads. I think when you can come in with with a teachable perspective like that and deferring, you're going to get so far right, because you're not coming in as the expert in a sense, although you have a tremendous amount of expertize and a tremendous amount of knowledge of where to get resources still you're it sounds like you're you're really wanting to build those relationships and network locally.

00;14;17;13 - 00;14;41;28
Jon Stewart
It is. And then it's helping them say, you know, in a small community in Florida, hey, we work with another community in Iowa and they had a similar problem. Here's how they solved it. Not saying it from 1 to 1, not saying that's the solution, but saying, hey, it's drawing upon these national lessons learned that we can all learn from one another.

00;14;41;28 - 00;14;53;17
Jon Stewart
And that's the one of the advantages of being a consultant, is I get to go into a lot of different communities and help them and draw those lessons learned from them.

00;14;54;09 - 00;15;03;22
Hal Needham
John, you've been at this for a long time. I'm curious for your perspective through time, like how has emergency management changed now compared to, say, one or two decades ago?

00;15;04;26 - 00;15;25;02
Jon Stewart
Think it has. And when you look at, you know, I talked about Y2K and pre 911, it was a very different industry. I mean, first of all, we tended to call it domestic preparedness or I mean, there were different kind of catch words that went with it. And when I told people what I did, they're like, you do?

00;15;25;08 - 00;15;27;00
Jon Stewart
I don't we don't even understand what you do.

00;15;27;02 - 00;15;28;19
Hal Needham
They hadn't even heard of that back in the day.

00;15;28;28 - 00;15;56;14
Jon Stewart
No, I mean, they really hadn't. And 911 happened and we definitely had a shift. And that's where we saw a lot of the grants that states and counties and cities use. I mean, that's where you actually came from. That's where the National Homeland Security Grant program came from, post-9-11. And, you know, we saw this influx of money and some of it spent well, some of it not so well, you know, and that kind of continued on.

00;15;56;27 - 00;16;31;25
Jon Stewart
But there was very much the focus on terrorism and human caused hazards. Fast forward, then we got to Katrina and again, we saw this huge shift post-Katrina. So more focus on natural hazards and things like at first it was global warming and climate change and some of those things started to come up. And I would say post-Katrina, there's kind of been that kind of level setting between natural hazards and human caused.

00;16;31;25 - 00;16;55;02
Jon Stewart
We obviously saw some different whether they be, you know, disasters or even things back exterior became a prominent thing that a lot of jurisdictions looked at. So a lot of it has been hazard driven. I think the next big event in our industry was in what we're going to look like coming out of COVID. I don't know yet.

00;16;55;12 - 00;17;26;21
Jon Stewart
I mean, we saw some huge gaps. We saw things like virtual and hybrid training come about where you don't have folks dedicating a week to sit in a classroom and be lectured at. We saw a shift to online training because training had to continue on, but we couldn't all gather in a room. So we saw a shift to virtual exercises, especially when it came to things like tabletop exercises, where folks realized we just needed to be talking.

00;17;26;21 - 00;17;52;13
Jon Stewart
We didn't necessarily need to be around a table. We also began to see a shift in how we do planning and realizing that I'm pretty confident saying pretty much every jurisdiction in America, if you were an employee of that jurisdiction, you became a responder during COVID because it was an all hands on deck perspective and realizing how many of our folks and the force multipliers.

00;17;52;24 - 00;18;20;04
Jon Stewart
I was in a branch during COVID and we had people anywhere from our Department of Energy and Environment who did field assessments to look at invasive plants, who became situation unit leaders. We had people who worked in public schools who, you know, became dispatchers and worked in operations section Y because they wanted to help their jurisdiction and they needed to fold in.

00;18;20;24 - 00;18;38;28
Jon Stewart
And they realized I mean, they didn't know if the form saying, you know, what I sense was, but they wanted to learn and adapt. And I think that was one of the biggest things we saw was how do we look at what response looks like in a major event? So we're going to see another major shift in the next.

00;18;39;13 - 00;18;45;07
Jon Stewart
It's starting now. I think we'll we'll see what the results of that shift are in over 2 to 3 years.

00;18;45;23 - 00;19;10;03
Hal Needham
John, it sounds like you're saying the whole industry can pivot when there's a mega event, a 911, a Hurricane Katrina, a COVID pandemic. And it sounds like, though it takes a little while after that event was triggered and now we're almost in a pivot stage where things are changing and settling in post-COVID. And we kind of have a vision of what this looks like, probably more virtual type stuff and things like that, but it's still kind of settling in.

00;19;10;03 - 00;19;12;10
Hal Needham
It sounds like it is.

00;19;12;11 - 00;19;37;19
Jon Stewart
And I do think we do pivot and I think that's a good aspect of our industry of learning to adapt and overcome. I mean, that is emergency management taking a problem, working it and overcoming it. And we've seen that with some of the major events. And, you know, those are the three that jump out. And it's not going to be that's not going to be the end of it.

00;19;38;11 - 00;20;06;26
Jon Stewart
I also think to a lesser degree, when you look at hurricane in and some of the storms we've had, especially when it comes to hurricanes, we're going to see some more pivot, especially in communities that are impacted by that. We're also seeing the wildland fire, which I think a lot of folks view that as to some degree almost like a California problem where it's popping up in more and more communities.

00;20;06;26 - 00;20;36;01
Jon Stewart
And it's not just a summertime thing, it's a year round thing. I mean, it was last December that Boulder, Colorado, in that community faced devastating wildland fires. So it is something that can be year round and more widespread. So it is one of those where I unfortunately do think it's hazard based and sometimes drives it. But it's we also are an industry in a community that can take lessons learned from each hazard and apply them across the spectrum of different hazards as well.

00;20;37;03 - 00;20;59;14
Hal Needham
Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe we can take lessons that we're learning from Fire Country and apply that to a hurricane country or things like that. And you know, you're right. I was surprised to see the extent of these wildland fires. I mean, last year there were there were, I think, almost hundreds of them. If you map them out in the state of Texas all the way up through the front range of Colorado, Boulder Superior Fire was very devastating.

00;20;59;22 - 00;21;04;18
Hal Needham
But this is a this is not like like you said, it's not just a California problem anymore.

00;21;04;18 - 00;21;29;28
Jon Stewart
It's it's not as well as I think a lot of folks used to look at maybe through degrees from the Midwest and obviously the communities impacted by hurricanes are flooding. But you look at flooding and you're seeing, you know, widespread impacts from that in in communities as well. So it is learning, you know, kind of and adjusting from all of those.

00;21;29;28 - 00;21;50;19
Jon Stewart
And there are aspects of our plans that can apply to a variety of threats and hazards. And that's what we need. We can't just focus on some threats or hazards. We still need to be all hazards. Sure. But realizing some of those hazards are shifting with us, you know, each and every year.

00;21;51;20 - 00;22;10;00
Hal Needham
Yeah, that's true. And that has to do, I think, with with maybe some some changes with climate and environment, but also changes in population pattern. And that brings us back to where you live. I mean, you're up there in the D.C. area, as far as I know, very explosive growth over the past 15 to 20 years. I mean, tremendous growth in places like Northern Virginia, parts of Maryland.

00;22;10;14 - 00;22;28;10
Hal Needham
I grew up in Pennsylvania where most years we would get at least one or two decent snowstorms. But a lot of my friends moved to near or south of D.C. and something I noticed from talking to them, sometimes they go for five or six years, no major snowstorms, but then all of a sudden they could get a blizzard as bad as anywhere, you know.

00;22;28;10 - 00;22;56;10
Hal Needham
And so I was recently looking over the Northern Virginia climate history from a utility provider, and they were showing, you know, three major winter storms between 1993 and 1996. Then really nothing that made their list for 13 years. And then from 2009 to 2016, you had these mega events like Snowmageddon and all these other, you know, big time blizzards in D.C., Baltimore, all the way up the I-95 corridor in this area where you have a huge, hugely dense population.

00;22;56;18 - 00;23;04;08
Hal Needham
I mean, what is it like to live in a place where you may get clocked by a 35 inch blizzard this year or you may barely get any snow at all?

00;23;05;08 - 00;23;35;24
Jon Stewart
I having grown up here, it's normal, but it is. You just never know. And it is. So I've had grown up here. I've certainly lived through them as a civilian. And from that perspective, we're like every other community. The forecast comes in, people run to the grocery store and buy. At least up here it's milk and toilet paper and bread.

00;23;35;24 - 00;23;58;11
Jon Stewart
Those are there's a first ago, you know, and sometimes you just have a huge surplus of them and nothing happens and sometimes you get walloped by them. I think most folks here know that if we get one of those blizzards, hey, you're going to be home for a couple of days. It's not like the Northeast or other places and the plows just don't come around.

00;23;58;11 - 00;24;26;28
Jon Stewart
You're going to be at home, sit by the fire or sledding with your kids. I think in post-COVID we can all keep working because we're all teleworking for, you know, a year or more. So there's that perspective in my time with the District of Columbia and I got to work with some smaller storms and I was there when Silsila happened, and I don't know where it is elsewhere in the country.

00;24;27;06 - 00;24;46;20
Jon Stewart
We love to name our storms, really the names. I was actually talking about it with my son this morning when I was taking him to school and mentioning coming on the podcast and he's like, is that do other places name their storms? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. But we, we love it. We love our like media headlines.

00;24;46;20 - 00;24;50;26
Hal Needham
Storm name you have like snow zilla. There were snowmageddon. What are some of the other names?

00;24;50;26 - 00;25;29;15
Jon Stewart
Right. We've had Carmageddon. Carmageddon two. There was another one and I'm drawing a blank on it. But yeah, no, the media the media loves a good storm name. So in Snow Zilla, you know, that was one where huge, huge amounts of snow had been probably about six years since our last major blizzard. So a lot of folks did forget, but it was one where schools were shut down for about a week and people complained about the length of time it took to plow roads.

00;25;29;15 - 00;25;37;14
Jon Stewart
But one of the biggest problems was there was so much snow, at least in the district. Not all of our snow piles were rated to move that amount of snow.

00;25;38;00 - 00;25;42;04
Hal Needham
It was so deep that some of the snow plows couldn't even really move that much snow now.

00;25;42;05 - 00;26;05;26
Jon Stewart
So, I mean, that was some of the delays is because it doesn't make sense for us to have on the regular plows to commute that much snow. It's not something that we regularly get impacted by it. But how large spread the storm was it took us a while to get those resources in. So those are ones where I think for the most part, folks get that.

00;26;05;26 - 00;26;47;13
Jon Stewart
It's some of the smaller ones that I want to say trip up more. And I mentioned Carmageddon and they made Carmageddon two. And those are really storms that happen at rush hour and that's where it's a storm in the evening rush hour that's going to start 3:00, maybe 4:00. That's that's what's going to trip at least us up as a region more because everyone's on the road, everyone wants to go home and you get the mixture of traffic, whether or not the roads were treated, lots of snow.

00;26;47;13 - 00;27;09;00
Jon Stewart
People not used to driving in snow necessarily. I don't know how it is in other parts of the country, at least up here, folks who love to abandon their vehicle, they just give up. And when they've been in their vehicle, they don't necessarily pull it off their shoulder or side street or anything else. They'll just leave their car in the middle of the road and walk away.

00;27;09;02 - 00;27;13;00
Hal Needham
They'll just call it a day, say, I'm done with this, I'm getting out, I'm leaving my car.

00;27;13;13 - 00;27;49;02
Jon Stewart
Yeah, they're just leaving in the middle of the road, which then causes even more delays. And so those are the ones and I mean, I remember those since I was a kid of and most of those are stories growing up of my dad getting stuck in traffic and things like that. So I mean, those are the ones and you have folks stuck sometimes in their cars because of how congested the area is, eight, 12 hours in the cold in their cars where they're trying to conserve gas.

00;27;49;17 - 00;28;13;19
Jon Stewart
So whether or not they're using their heater, they definitely don't have food. They probably don't have water. And those are some serious, life threatening incidents. And we saw it not necessarily in the national capital region, but just south of us last year on I-95, where a similar quick moving storm that shut down I-95, a major thoroughfare on the East Coast for several hours.

00;28;13;27 - 00;28;20;14
Jon Stewart
And you had folks that had to sleep in their car overnight and that you get those plummeting temperatures. But that's like 50.

00;28;21;01 - 00;28;27;04
Hal Needham
And John, my understanding you don't need a foot of snow for this to happen. It could be a couple of inches of snow or a little bit of ice. Right.

00;28;27;06 - 00;28;47;20
Jon Stewart
A couple. A couple inches. And it's big. And because of our congestion, it's a couple of inches that get the roads slick because a couple of accidents and you get a couple of multi-car accidents on some of our two lane highways and that shut it down and shut it down because responders can actually get their.

00;28;48;01 - 00;28;51;14
Hal Needham
Rights and other police fire the rescue, they can't even get to the site.

00;28;51;27 - 00;29;22;11
Jon Stewart
Yeah. And I mean that those are some of the problems and it is again, this is one where I'm curious, I, I will freely admit it's a slightly morbid curiosity of what one of their stories would look like post-COVID, where we don't have as many people commuting and does that necessarily lessen the impact? I would say hopefully. But I know in this area, again, I've lived here almost 40 years now.

00;29;23;09 - 00;29;51;06
Jon Stewart
We when it comes to those, the rush hour type storms, folks necessarily don't learn. I mean, I'm sure when I first started my career knowing that actually just hearing about it from my dad and even just first kind of getting into this industry, I had in my office Kansas Soup a couple and this again is dating myself some VHS tapes to watch some movies and a sleeping bag.

00;29;51;06 - 00;30;12;19
Jon Stewart
Because there were times I mean, I worked on a good day commute an hour and a half from my house in a snowstorm. I realized there's no point in trying to get home. I was just going to get stuck or end up stranded in my car. So, you know, if it snowed in the afternoon when I was at work, I just stayed there and, you know, had enough heat.

00;30;13;02 - 00;30;25;05
Jon Stewart
I had Internet for what it was worth. Back in that day, I had my VHS movies and I had a sleeping bag and that was going to be that. But I mean better that than being stranded in my car for hours.

00;30;25;16 - 00;30;44;16
Hal Needham
That's an interesting lesson, though, for people, whether they're at work or at a at a family member or friend's house, sometimes maybe you are better just to stay put for the night and be prepared. But it sounds like you have to think ahead with that. Maybe have a change of clothes, a toothbrush, some canned food, you know. But again, it's it beats the alternative of being stuck on I-95 for 12 hours.

00;30;45;04 - 00;31;01;10
Jon Stewart
And that's actually a great point. And it goes back to what we were saying, where you can share lessons learned. So you go out to California and they recommend everyone having that go kit in the back of their car, food, water, some staples and they have it because of an earthquake, because an earthquake can happen at any time.

00;31;01;10 - 00;31;35;01
Jon Stewart
And if you're commuting at any time in an earthquake happens, you may be stuck on a highway because a bridge is destroyed, part of a roads destroyed. So they teach folks, hey, have that in your car so that you can help sustain yourself until grief thing to take for communities that have winter weather of hey, have in your car some bottles of water, some protein bars, some some blankets or a sleeping bag, some things to help you make sure that you can get through if something happens and you get stranded.

00;31;36;06 - 00;31;50;26
Jon Stewart
And you know what? At the end of winter season, if you don't need them while you drink the bottles of water and you got some protein bars to eat, another point in time. But having these kids in a vehicle can even help alleviate the need for if you do get through it into more.

00;31;51;04 - 00;32;01;04
Hal Needham
Well, it's amazing, right? How much would a gallon of water and for protein bars cost? We're talking a couple of dollars probably. Right. But that can make a huge difference if you're stranded somewhere for 11 hours.

00;32;01;17 - 00;32;14;21
Jon Stewart
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it can be especially if you've got some for yourself and if you're lucky enough to share with some people, it can literally be lifesaving.

00;32;15;15 - 00;32;27;23
Hal Needham
Yeah, that's such a good perspective and I like how you're moving examples from, say, California earthquake country to places that have winter storms. Right. This is how we can share these lessons learned from one geographic place to another.

00;32;28;04 - 00;32;40;09
Jon Stewart
Absolutely. I mean, you're down in Texas. I mean, you also with the winter storms you had a couple of years ago where not frequent for all of you. So you may not be thinking about it, but is something that can certainly happen.

00;32;41;04 - 00;32;59;00
Hal Needham
Yeah, for sure. I remember we I lost power where I was for three or four days and a lot of our homes are elevated without heat. So all of a sudden you had people's homes getting in the thirties or even even subfreezing. I lived in Alaska for three years, so I had all this Arctic gear. I was just I just laid in bed in my Arctic sleeping bag reading books.

00;32;59;08 - 00;33;14;24
Hal Needham
But I was thinking, what's my neighbor doing who probably did not live in Alaska and probably doesn't have a a sleeping bag rated to 20 below zero? Right. So it does get us thinking about maybe even being prepared for the hazards that's less common, like a freeze in Texas or a snowstorm in Texas.

00;33;14;24 - 00;33;51;09
Jon Stewart
It it is. And I mean, FEMA does a great job with promoting their make a plan, have a have a kit. And it is when you are able to do so. You know, that's great. I know not every person, every community, every family has the resources to to be able to do that. In in D.C., we had a lot of food insecure communities where they couldn't have three days of food because, you know, stockpiled in case of a disaster because they didn't have 24 hours worth of food on a good day.

00;33;51;24 - 00;34;22;06
Jon Stewart
Yeah, sure. But I mean, it it is going back to your example of what is a neighbor doing of communities taking care of communities. And you do see that in a lot of places and you definitely see that post-disaster where folks checking on one another, sharing resources where they can and having worked at a city level, that is something that's where you can move a lot of the need where, you know, if communities are taking care of one another, yes.

00;34;22;06 - 00;34;32;28
Jon Stewart
Supplement them when you can help them, when you can. But if you also know they have resources to help one another, it helps you sometimes refocus where your priorities are as well.

00;34;33;09 - 00;34;37;25
Hal Needham
John, I'm guessing a lot of is relationship building before the disaster even strikes, right?

00;34;38;23 - 00;35;18;25
Jon Stewart
It is. And it goes kind of back to the example of knowing those bodegas and those churches. It's knowing knowing your community and knowing where you have food deserts and where you have sometimes, you know, our most vulnerable and underserved communities and having plans in place to to try and help them during COVID one of the missions I was on was, you know, we're telling people during COVID and, you know, similar to, you know, any disaster, we're telling people, hey, if you've got COVID or you were exposed to something else, quarantine for two weeks, don't leave for two weeks.

00;35;20;05 - 00;35;40;22
Jon Stewart
Well, I don't know how it was in other parts of the country. You couldn't get groceries delivered at the start of COVID because everyone was having that done. You couldn't often get, you know, if you had money for Uber Eats or DoorDash or things like that, maybe. But some folks telling them, hey, quarantine for two weeks, how are they going to get food?

00;35;41;03 - 00;36;12;07
Jon Stewart
How are they going to so we set up a program where folks could fill out a survey or call for us. It was 411 and say, I'm quarantined, I need food assistance. And we would deliver them a box of shelf stable food for two weeks now. It would be great food. You had rice, beans, you had some other canned goods.

00;36;12;07 - 00;36;37;13
Jon Stewart
You were not making some gourmet meals out of it, but you had food for two weeks and we did that. And for those that couldn't cook, we made, you know, other options available for them. But again, it's knowing the community and forecasting what those needs are. So that because we knew if we told people, hey, quarantine for two weeks, but you're not going to have food, you're not going to groceries, not going to anything else.

00;36;37;20 - 00;36;39;03
Jon Stewart
They're not going to do it. They're going to leave.

00;36;39;26 - 00;36;48;07
Hal Needham
I see. So you have to be aware of their what their life looks like. Like, wait, that's easy for us to say. Quarantine for two weeks, but they're going to be going hungry after four days.

00;36;48;20 - 00;37;18;29
Jon Stewart
Exactly. And so, I mean, that's in any type of disaster, it's balancing what that and again, it goes back to the you know, you have 72 hours worth of food. Okay. Well, that's great if folks can do that. So we also knew in some of our communities we needed a set of pods. We needed to bring food to the people and say in those communities, we know we said this, we know you can we're going to help provide you food because we know the grocery stores are closed or in COVID you can't get out and things like that.

00;37;19;08 - 00;37;38;26
Jon Stewart
But it's knowing he sent it to that community, maybe we don't need to send it to some of the more affluent communities because they can probably be a little bit more self-sufficient and have the resources. So it is, as you said, it's the relationships and knowing your communities and knowing the needs of those on the blue sky and the gray sky days.

00;37;39;04 - 00;37;53;14
Hal Needham
Yeah, I really like that. And shows some things that we can do before a disaster even has to kind of prepare. And then you're giving a lot of great examples here that I think can apply to whether it's a pandemic, a public health crisis, or it's a natural disaster as well.

00;37;54;04 - 00;38;22;15
Jon Stewart
Yeah, the and we've seen that in in all of the disasters where COVID was a little bit different. But you have whether it be a storm, whether it be a hurricane, you generally 812 ish hours, sometimes more of like when the disasters hitting, when the snow is falling, when the hurricane winds are falling, when the rain is falling and then it's done.

00;38;23;00 - 00;38;48;22
Jon Stewart
And while response doesn't end there, that's also kind of where the recovery starts to begin. And it's knowing that that's where the amount of time it's not that 8 to 12 hours necessarily. It's the time before that. And it's the time after that where both as helping our communities, where we can move the biggest needles is getting them ready and then being right there to support them once the sun comes back out again.

00;38;49;00 - 00;38;54;29
Hal Needham
You're saying pre-storm imposed storm are really I guess they're a lot longer than the duration of the storm itself. Yeah.

00;38;55;15 - 00;39;23;10
Jon Stewart
But we tend to I mean. But do you even look at that when. Yeah. And I'm not trying to slam them but it's what drives a lot of public opinion on things. Watch any news station. It's the of hours leading up to a storm or sometimes the days. Yeah you guys always like the National Weather Service. People that are standing out there with the wind gusting during a hurricane or standing in knee deep snow during a snowstorm.

00;39;23;24 - 00;39;35;27
Jon Stewart
And that's what a lot of folks get to put on. But most folks can hunker down for that short term. It's getting them ready before the storm hits for those days, weeks, months afterwards.

00;39;36;12 - 00;39;57;21
Hal Needham
So you get the the storm chaser with his or her hair blowing around in the eye, you know, near the eye of the storm and all this stuff that I did a lot of the viral and then this spread online. But then it's the maybe two weeks after that where people are living without power and utilities. That may be a lot more of a hardship for people than those those 6 hours and strong winds.

00;39;57;21 - 00;39;58;17
Hal Needham
Right?

00;39;58;17 - 00;40;31;05
Jon Stewart
It absolutely is. And you're and will be just because of the season we're in, I have no doubt we'll start to see some the media will come back and have stories, whether it's Kentucky, Louisiana, Colorado, Florida, probably even still some in Texas of folks that because of a disaster, they still might not be in a home or their homes destroyed or some the hardships because we're coming into Thanksgiving and Christmas and those drive stories.

00;40;32;13 - 00;41;10;28
Jon Stewart
But yet there are still folks that are weeks, month after a disaster that their lives turned upside down and they are getting the support, whether that be private sector, the state the city, FEMA, they're providing as much support and assistance as they can. But individuals that have faced a disaster, it it can be years for them to to recover and get back into sometimes a permanent housing solution and not be living in in a trailer or in a shelter or something else.

00;41;11;11 - 00;41;21;11
Jon Stewart
But that's, you know, unfortunately, storms pass in our attention span span shifts, but it doesn't change for those who are on the ground.

00;41;21;25 - 00;41;43;03
Hal Needham
Yeah, John, you're spot on about that. It really is the long duration. And for some people, they can't even imagine a life where they can't come back to their home for a week or two or where it takes them months, two years to kind of get their community to recover. And that's where the great work that you and others in emergency management that you've seen the timeline, you've seen this from one community to another.

00;41;43;03 - 00;42;01;16
Hal Needham
I think you can come alongside these communities and help. Help. I think part it's aligning people with reality and sometimes it's a harsh reality. Oh, I thought my life was going to be turned upside down for a week. And you're telling me this might be months to even longer? You It sounds like there is that unfortunate alignment with reality.

00;42;01;16 - 00;42;04;22
Hal Needham
And the new reality is sometimes hard a hard pill to swallow, I think for folks.

00;42;05;06 - 00;42;40;07
Jon Stewart
Okay, it is. And it's it's always going to be an ongoing effort. And it kind of goes back to, you know, what we're talking about at the start with hurricanes and storm surge and things like that. Yeah, we need in a lot of ways to help people understand that reality. And it's part education. It's part giving them the resources to understand we're never going to completely change people's minds.

00;42;40;07 - 00;43;05;08
Jon Stewart
I forget which hurricane it was, but my grandma, it was impacting Myrtle Beach and my grandmother didn't want to evacuate. And I'm activated in an EOC. My parents are calling me because my dad's mom, we sure Myrtle Beach and I'm not telling them. I'm like, God, I'm in an active response myself. Like I okay. I can't I can't help grandma here.

00;43;05;13 - 00;43;29;27
Jon Stewart
Yeah, but I mean, even like me calling her and like trying to convince her and she's like, no, we're going to be fine. And you can sometimes give people all the information, even from a loved one, from a trusted source, and they're going to turn a blind eye. That doesn't say we should try. You're sure? But it's also the reality of, you know, we're not going to get everyone.

00;43;29;27 - 00;43;40;01
Jon Stewart
But the more people we can get prepared and realize this new reality, the better off not just in emergency management, but communities are going to be strong.

00;43;40;01 - 00;43;59;11
Hal Needham
And some of the complacency just that the most severe storms, the most catastrophic storms, they can almost be completely outside of people's frame of reference. Right. Like what is about to happen. They've never seen or imagined this. Right. It's not just a little worse than the worst thing they've seen. It's it's it's light years worse than the worse thing.

00;43;59;11 - 00;44;05;20
Hal Needham
Is that part of it just that what's about to happen in some of these worst cases it's completely outside the frame of reference.

00;44;05;20 - 00;44;30;02
Jon Stewart
Perhaps it is. And Hurricane Ian is a great example. Florida is no stranger to hurricanes. It's been a while since they've gotten hit by a hurricane, but a lot of folks there know what it's like to live through through a hurricane. They heard some of the forecast that heard some of the information and they said, oh, I've lived through this, I've lived through that.

00;44;31;05 - 00;45;06;25
Jon Stewart
Natural disasters, whether it be a hurricane, snowstorms. We talked about, you know, wildland fire, flooding. It's all changing. I mean, Ian's a great example. And we saw last year two of these storms that go from barely a named storm to a tropical storm to on the cusp of a hurricane, Category five in days. And then there's storms. They just they produce more water, more flood inundation, more storm surge then storms of the past.

00;45;06;26 - 00;45;37;06
Jon Stewart
So part of it is helping communities recognize it's not just, yeah, you've lived through one, but all of these things are changing, all of these things are shifting. And what you may have know may not necessarily be true anymore. And that's not climate change. It tends to be this, you know, hot potato and political issue. We've regardless of people's takes on it, the facts are the fact that these things are changing.

00;45;37;06 - 00;46;02;10
Jon Stewart
And the sooner we can get our communities to prepare for these shifts and recognizing that in the past a storm like in May may not have been a big deal to the community. But moving forward, these storms are going to be huge for them and getting them to recognize, yeah, you may not be able to sit this one through and stay in your home.

00;46;02;10 - 00;46;07;19
Jon Stewart
And yeah, it sucks to evacuate. Nobody likes to do that, but it can save your life.

00;46;08;04 - 00;46;32;20
Hal Needham
John, really fantastic in-depth perspective there. Just we've covered a lot of ground on this podcast. We've talked about hurricanes, snowstorms, earthquakes, fires. We've we've covered a lot of ground. And what I love about our conversation, I think it does not just apply to people in Hurricane country. We're talking all hazards here. All geography is here. So this this conversation, I think, will apply to millions of people regardless of where they live really.

00;46;32;20 - 00;46;50;06
Jon Stewart
And it is I mean, it's taking, as we said, depending it's not threats and hazards change this industry. But there are things you can take from it. You know, there are things that people in South Dakota that may be facing a blizzard can learn from folks that went through being in Florida.

00;46;50;29 - 00;47;09;19
Hal Needham
John, last question. Let's say you're at a barbecue. You meet someone, you shake their hand, you have 2 minutes to explain what you do. And maybe, maybe, you know, people talking about your elevator thing, if you had a minute to tell people one concept that would stick with them, what would you tell people in that? You know, a big picture, a last take home point about emergency management.

00;47;09;19 - 00;47;11;26
Hal Needham
What would you want people to know?

00;47;11;26 - 00;47;55;19
Jon Stewart
Listen to your emergency manager. And that's good. And because folks will either say, what's an emergency manager or who's my emergency manager? Or even like, what are you talking about? But it is whether it's signing up for an alert system, checking out most emergency management departments have a Web page, if not Twitter or Instagram. I mean, I think even some of them at Snapchat nowadays, I don't know if they've gone on to Tik Tok, but regardless of what it is, get to know your emergency management agency and your emergency manager because they're going to be the ones that are going to push out the relevant information for you and your community.

00;47;55;22 - 00;48;24;02
Jon Stewart
So, I mean, that's really what I tell folks because it inevitably sparks additional questions. I get more than 2 minutes with them. Yeah, but it is again any for anyone who's listening. You have an emergency manager in May and maybe someone it's part time. It may be someone that has a full staff, but somewhere you have one and they've got some really good information to share with you about how to keep you safe during a disaster.

00;48;24;17 - 00;48;43;00
Hal Needham
Then you might be the third guest we've had in the past several months. That works in some entity with local government emergency management. I think all three of you have had that same take home point of getting to know your emergency manager, you know, signing up for the newsletters, going to community meetings. A lot of people have no idea that this stuff even exists, right?

00;48;44;10 - 00;49;16;13
Jon Stewart
They don't. And again, it's we're not as everyone knows, a firefighter, everyone knows the police officers because they see them and they're out there. Emergency management's a little bit different. We're often behind the scenes and it's but we're ones that have a lot of good information to kind of bring folks together. So it is you know, again, we go back to when I started, people do you know what I do?

00;49;16;13 - 00;49;38;18
Jon Stewart
There's still some folks who don't understand what I do, but it is, you know, a very passionate community and a very passionate profession who are really people who sign up to do it. And none of us are ever going to get rich doing it. Our benefit is making sure that we're helping the people in our communities.

00;49;38;18 - 00;49;55;17
Hal Needham
It seems like a very tight network. And like you said, the emergency managers I know are very passionate about it. They they they're doing this, like you said, not for the money, but they want to help and serve their community. Very last thing, Don. If I come traveling with you some time, could you guarantee we get some good tables and restaurants because of your name?

00;49;55;17 - 00;49;57;10
Hal Needham
Can we just put your name on the reservation?

00;49;58;06 - 00;50;09;28
Jon Stewart
We can. I don't like I said, it's worked about once, but I'm very passionate about food. Even if we can't get in, I can guarantee you we're going to get some good restaurants.

00;50;10;04 - 00;50;30;26
Hal Needham
I like eating, too. If it happened once, it could maybe happen again. You know, it's worth a try. John, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Man, our listeners are going to love this episode. I think we covered a ton of relevant info that best wishes to you. I'm hoping you get a winter up there in the D.C. area without any snow or ice, but if it does come, I think you'll be as prepared as any one of them.

00;50;31;15 - 00;50;34;05
Jon Stewart
Well, I appreciate and I appreciate you having me on. It's a great time.

00;50;35;11 - 00;50;58;13
Hal Needham
Wow. What a great conversation with John. A few major points really stood out to me from our interview. Number one, disaster preparedness and response really does involve some level of imagination that can almost border on fantasy or visualization in the most catastrophic events. We're trying to prepare for something that may have not even happened and recording a recorded history at a specific location.

00;50;58;25 - 00;51;23;07
Hal Needham
The most effective disaster communication acknowledges this and basically comes alongside locals to say, You're right, this almost does seem unimaginable, but we need to believe the science in the models to say like something really catastrophic that we haven't seen in our lifetime, lifetimes can happen. John touched on this with his story about tsunami preparedness in the Virgin Islands, but this story relates to any place that's prone to disasters.

00;51;23;22 - 00;51;48;05
Hal Needham
Number two, I really love John's focused on building relationships before a storm even hits to help response before, during and after a disaster. He shared profound insights about the importance of knowing a community and deferring to locals who understand the fabric of their community and know the local landscape. It takes a lot of humility and maturity to take this approach, but it's so much more effective than coming in as a know it all from the outside.

00;51;48;06 - 00;52;10;09
Hal Needham
Really cool stuff there. Number three, the impact of extreme weather depends a lot on the timing and location of the event. A few inches of snow at rush hour in Washington, DC may actually have a bigger impact on people than a few feet of snow in the Rocky Mountains. It doesn't take much for a weather hazard to have a huge impact if it hits a populated area at a crucial time.

00;52;10;09 - 00;52;27;27
Hal Needham
And again, I mean, think of heat waves, right? 95 degrees in Houston, Texas, not a big deal. It happens a ton in the summertime. Everyone has AC. You take that 95 degrees up to Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine where most of the people don't have air conditioning up in the mountains and all of a sudden that could be a big public health event.

00;52;27;27 - 00;52;48;21
Hal Needham
So really a lot of it relates to where something's hitting and the timing of it as well. Number four, I love the perspective of having a survival kit in your car or overnight supplies in your office. Every year, motorists get stranded in some city in severe winter weather, having water, snacks and a blanket in your car could actually save your life.

00;52;49;08 - 00;53;06;00
Hal Needham
And if it's possible, staying in your office or in the home of a friend or family member could help you avoid getting in disaster all together. But some of this response takes planning, like having a toothbrush, blanket, change of clothes at a strategic place. So we really have to think ahead. But I like what John was saying there.

00;53;06;00 - 00;53;29;01
Hal Needham
Sometimes he'll just have a blanket, cans of soup, a VHS tape and, you know, and a sleeping bag at his workplace so he can avoid just getting out. Now or not getting out on those icy roads if there's going to be a traffic hazard up there in Washington, DC. Number five, finally, I thought John's perspective was interesting that pre and post storm response can have the biggest impact on people in disasters.

00;53;29;11 - 00;53;54;20
Hal Needham
The media often focuses on those 6 to 12 hours when heavy snow is falling or hurricane winds are blowing. But it's the days before and the days after the event that can have the biggest difference in helping people prepare and recover. So a lot of great insights there, John. You know, there's a lot to think about in this episode, and I think it's really timely for us because we're actually transitioning now from hurricane season to the start of winter.

00;53;54;20 - 00;54;16;29
Hal Needham
And so we've covered all of these things, really a large range of talking about hazards, disasters and preparedness that will relate to anyone. So thank you so much for taking time to come on this podcast and share your wisdom with us. A huge thanks to Brandy, my podcast guest number 50, and her friend Tim Riker, who corresponded with me from his travels in Bavaria, Germany, to set up this interview with John Stuart.

00;54;17;07 - 00;54;41;25
Hal Needham
I'm hoping to get John and Tim together on a future episode of the Geo Trek podcast. As always, special thanks to audio, track production and marketing team for making all the magic happen behind the scenes. So thank you to Seth Baker, Ashley Anderson, Jeremiah Long, Christopher Cook and Amy Wilkins. I'm Dr. Howe. Stay safe, stay prepared and I'll catch you on the next episode of the Geographic podcast.

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