Jenny Novak Publications

Emergency Manager | Speaker | Writer

Tag: COVID-19

Should Emergency Managers Work Remotely Long-Term?

May 18, 2021 /

As large organizations begin to repopulate following extended remote work due to COVID-19, many employees are questioning why it is necessary to return to the daily office environment. Telework has been a popular option for people, allowing them to spend more time with family and pets yet avoid time consuming commutes. Yet there is some resistance to a permanent telework environment, with managers questioning productivity and fearing the erosion of team bonding.

Some organizations are allowing for flexible, hybrid schedules that allow a sort of compromise. Where do emergency managers fall in the spectrum of employees that can perform their jobs effectively from home? If your organization allows a choice, should you take the opportunity to work from home or will it hurt your emergency management program?

As we see a shift toward continued remote work across progressive organizations, these are critical questions for current emergency managers who have enjoyed the work from home life as well as those considering emergency management careers.

Remote Response Coordination

As I wrote about during the height of the pandemic, emergency management coordination can be done remotely. With an array of technological tools at our fingertips, there is no reason that we can’t continue to practice remote coordination in a post-pandemic environment. Unlike our partners in police, fire or healthcare, our work does not involve physically interacting with the community. We would do well to keep our virtual EOC plans well exercised, because an emergency may very well happen while employees are at home. Virtual coordination can occur immediately, you don’t have to wait for people to drive into the EOC when roads may be compromised and precious minutes matter. Especially if a portion of your organization’s workforce will become permanently remote, this practice will be more crucial than ever.

Photo by Israel Andrade on Unsplash

Organizational Culture

It is ultimately very important for the emergency management program to mirror the organization’s culture. To reach our goal of embedding resilience in the DNA of our organizations, we must be willing to mold our programs to meet the existing needs of the people. If most employees in your organization will be in the office most days, it’s probably best for you to develop in person training, programming, and plans for in person EOC activations. If most of your organization will continue with remote work, then there is no reason that you should feel obligated to go into the office to ‘prove’ that you are essential. You should focus your time on developing online training and programming. While remote emergency response coordination can be done effectively, I have found a hybrid model to be challenging. If most of your EOC is in person but a handful of folks are remote, chances are those people are going to be left out of important conversations and will end up missing out on information they need.

Balance of Workload

One of the reasons I enjoy my career in Emergency Management is that it is not ‘just a desk job.’ After years of working in other office occupations, I dreaded the ‘butts in chairs’ model of being chained to a desk from 8-5 every week day for the rest of my life. I have always enjoyed the variety of our work—there is a good balance of independent desk work (i.e. writing and reviewing plans / procedures, designing training materials & presentations, using information management skills to track program analytics) and people work (delivering trainings / exercises, participating in community preparedness events, conducting planning meetings and/or site assessments). Both the introvert and extrovert skillsets are necessary, and they help to keep the job exciting. This is one of the reasons why I would argue that almost every emergency manager should work level of a hybrid schedule. I am personally very productive in my home environment where I can get to work quickly and without interruptions. But I very much miss the amplified value of delivering training in person and developing relationships with key partners. Zoom is a much better substitute for these relationship building activities than conference calls, but it will never provide quite the same level of familiarity as an in-person exchange.

One other consideration regarding workload is whether you have a team or if you are the only emergency manager for your jurisdiction. With a team, a hybrid work model can balance out concerns about having a constant emergency management physical presence just in case a disaster strikes. This can be done through alternating days of the week, or by having a ‘duty team’ alternating in person work weeks.

Photo by Erika Giraud on Unsplash

Relationships Are Key

This tried and true mantra of emergency management stands steadfast. Whether you are doing it in the flesh or through technology, you must prioritize effective working relationships with personnel in your organization and fellow emergency managers. The best way to build relationships and develop trust is in person. Going out to coffee, lunch or happy hour with colleagues can reinforce these relationships and is tough to do over zoom. As public health measures allow, it’s a good time to reconnect and build these interpersonal relationships. When it comes to meetings, I do think that the frequency in which we meet can be reduced from pre-pandemic times. Save your in-person meetings for longer events—workshops, conferences, or key training events that will include some element of socializing are the best use of your in-person time. Regular, business-oriented meetings can be more efficiently conducted over technology. If your work culture is shifting to mostly remote, schedule check in one-on-one zoom calls with colleagues and send personal emails periodically to replace some of the water cooler chat that you may have conducted in pre-pandemic times.

Geography of Your Jurisdiction

One factor to consider is the size and geography of your jurisdiction. As emergency managers, we have responsibility for being familiar with our areas and the various hazards associated with them. When I was working at a university, I made sure to get out of my office and visit other parts of campus so that I could learn the buildings and programs—even if it was just taking a walk on my lunch hour. It was important to get a feel for how many people were in each area at different times of day. While at the Southern Region of CalOES, I loved my many ‘field days’ which were devoted to building relationships by visiting counties / cities at their own EOC’s, conducting wildfire damage reconnaissance, and performing hazard assessments by physically acquainting myself with the situation. The need for periodic fieldwork won’t go away if you are working mostly remotely. Make sure to consider these needs when planning your schedule. If your jurisdiction covers a large geographical area, Zoom and other video conferencing technologies will continue to be good tools to maintain stakeholder relationships without forcing people to drive one hour each way regularly for a one-hour meeting.

Photo by Nabeel Syed on Unsplash

Benefits of Remote Work

There are many societal benefits that can come from a conversion to mainly remote work besides employee satisfaction. Organizations continuing permanent remote work can save on the costs associated with utilities and facility space if it is leased or rented. The environmental burden of thousands of fossil fueled vehicles idling on freeways can be reduced if employees do not need to make synchronous long commutes. People do not have to endure long hours of sitting in traffic, which is known to raise stress levels. Instead, they can use the extra time in the day to promote their health through exercise, meal preparation or relaxation. From an emergency management perspective it also reduces the ‘in between time’ when the workforce is not at their homes or their offices—this would be the worst time for a large earthquake to strike, since it would be incredibly difficult to account for everyone and to get your EOC team together.

In Conclusion

There are a several factors to consider when planning for the ideal post-pandemic emergency management work model. At the end of the day emergency managers must remain nimble and adaptable. Unless you are a consultant who performs very technical emergency management work without a need for sustaining relationships, you should plan for some degree of in person working days. For those with large geographic areas, remote relationship building, and coordination will continue to be paramount. It is important to tailor your program to meet the needs of your organization’s culture, which may be undergoing significant post-pandemic shifts. Now is a very important time to tune in to your organization’s plans, the desires of your colleagues, and talk with your peers about their long-term work models.

Scarlett's ready to survive this pandemic.

Navigating the Pandemic as a New Parent

March 27, 2020 /

Last summer I gave birth to a baby girl who will turn 8 months old during the pandemic. Living through this crisis as a parent is completely different than it would have been if I was still looking forward to motherhood. There are so many layers of responsibilities and emotions for parents as we cope with this new reality of the world. My child is definitely too young to understand what is going on and certainly won’t remember this, but it’s an even more complex situation for parents with older kids who don’t understand why they aren’t in school and why they can’t go to their friends birthday parties anymore. I’ve been reflecting on how the crisis impacts my new identity as a parent.

The Protector

The primary way that I am approaching this situation differently is that I am now a protector. I work in the field of emergency management and my job for the last 3 years has been focused on response, so in this situation I theoretically should be going out into the world to help manage this crisis in any way I can. But in my new role as a mom I am the protector of an infant who is just learning to wobble on her own two feet. It has spurred me to seek opportunities to support my agency’s mission remotely so that I can keep my daughter home from daycare and self isolate the both of us as much as possible.

There is nothing more important to me than her safety so I will have to make difficult choices while navigating the career path that I loved so much before. While I retain the ambition and drive for my career and remain passionate about crisis management and disaster relief, I am finding myself needing to rethink my approach. How can I best apply myself professionally while prioritizing my role as a protector for Scarlett, especially in the era of the pandemic? I am challenging myself to find new, creative ways to remain productive and to thrive professionally while working from home and entertaining my daughter. I think many parents may be grappling with similar choices and exploring new productivity strategies, especially those who have careers that could put them in harm’s way during the outbreak.

Playing with her flash cards during the pandemic.

The Curator of their Universe

Especially now that so many of us are home with kids who would normally be in school, we are more responsible for crafting our children’s worlds than we ever were before. Shaping each day is now solely within our control, we can’t rely on teachers and strict school schedules to guide their days. It is up to parents to design the pace of day and find a good balance of playtime and learning, breaks for snacks and exercise, and the ratio of time spent indoors vs outdoors. Scarlett and I have settled into a good schedule–I have set up a couple different play areas that I rotate her between while I fire off emails and enter resource requests in the system. For conference calls, there are a few safe places I can use to keep her entertained and contained while mama moves to the office for the call. Her morning and afternoon naps provide an opportunity for me to catch up on the bigger projects that require utilization of my double screen set up in the office. 

While the work that I’m engaged in deals directly with the impacts of the pandemic and how we move resources to assist local government with their response, I know that I need to also be mindful of the atmosphere in the household. The tone of my voice when I’m speaking, my body language as I react to new urgent tasks, will all have an effect on my daughter. While Scarlett is too young to remember this time, it’s especially important for parents of older children to be purposeful in the atmosphere that they create. The situation is grim in many regards but within your own household you are the curator of their universe. You can shape this memory into a deeply meaningful, positive era when the family got to spend more time together and take a break from the hurried American lifestyle. They can learn to cook dinners or experiment with baking, perhaps learn to garden, change the oil in the car, learn to scrapbook or engage in other crafts that they wouldn’t normally have time to do in school. This is a great time to learn extracurricular skills and if we create a world where the quarantine is actually a fun vacation rather than a prison sentence our children may look back on this time fondly.

Scarlett G around 3 months old.

The Student

While many of us are taking on the role of teacher whether or not we like it, I think we should also try to take on the role of the student. Our kids for the most part are blissfully unaware of the greater world and the threat of the pandemic. They aren’t worrying about transmission and mortality rates or the status of the economy. They are waking up each day ready to experience life, explore new things, grow, and learn. Their outlooks are inherently positive because they have so much life to live and so much to look forward to. My daughter has been babbling excitedly at us and is so thrilled to be able to stand now. She loves to practice curling her toes under and elevating herself. The house is a brand new place to explore for her as she can now see and touch things that she never could before when she was limited to army crawling. She starts each day with a smile. Teenagers may not have the blissful naivety of Scarlett, but are probably at least thankful for some extra time to sleep in and access to household snacks all day.

When I feel myself getting overwhelmed with the devastation and isolation of COVID-19, I try to focus on Scarlett’s face, her attitude and the smile she gives me when I make a silly face and just absorb the small moments of mother-daughter bonding. We may be newly minted teachers but our kids actually have a lot they can teach us about focusing on simple moments of bliss throughout the day and the uncomplicated joy of smiling and laughing in the sun. Give yourself this opportunity to recapture the innocence of childhood and allow them to share with you their hope for the future.

Photo by Sara Bakhshi on Unsplash

Surviving Cancer and the Pandemic of 2020

March 27, 2020 /

As the world grapples with the first truly devastating pandemic of the globalization age, I’d like to offer my reflections on this catastrophe through my perspective as a cancer survivor. There are attributes of the situation that I find are akin to coping with cancer, which may conjure many familiar emotions for cancer survivors. There are strengths and lessons that we as survivors have gleaned from our experiences that I hope the world can impart from this scary situation. 

Photo by Rúben Marques on Unsplash

The Invisibility of Disease

People who have never had a close friend or family member with a disease tend to have a perception that when someone is sick, they look sick. There’s an assumption out there that the person will be pale, thin, or exhibit other obvious physical symptoms that something is not right. As many of those who have been diagnosed with cancer are all too aware, you often feel just fine. Or perhaps you’ve got a bit of discomfort, a strange ache or recurring pain but it definitely does not seem insidious enough to be life threatening. What’s striking for me with the COVID-19 outbreak is the similarity in that many only ever exhibit mild symptoms and nearly all cases are asymptomatic during the incubation period which can be 2-5 days from what I’ve heard. 

This means that at least in the beginning COVID-19 is invisible. You can’t look at yourself in the mirror and see it. When I had cancer, I had no changes in my physical appearance except for some welcomed weight loss. I was a 26-year-old woman, in pretty good shape and definitely able bodied. No one would have ever guessed, myself included, that I had cancer. You can’t tell if someone has COVID-19 by looking at them, and you can’t tell if they just have a cough because so many common colds are going around too.

We keep hearing the virus can survive on surfaces for days, and we have to assume that it could literally be anywhere in our communities. It is invisible–microscopic just like the cancer cells that can lurk deep within. One of the most difficult things to come to grips with about this crisis is that we cannot see it as it spreads, our enemy’s presence is unknown and that raises the stakes and heightens our anxiety.

The Anxiety of Uncertainty

One of the words most associated with this crisis is ‘uncertainty.’ We don’t know how long it will last. We don’t know when cases will peak. We don’t know if our hospitals will be able to keep pace with the need for ventilators. We don’t know if someone in our inner circle will be infected, or if they will die. These are familiar emotions for cancer survivors. We never know how successful our treatments will be. We never know if a follow up scan will reveal good news or bad news because we feel ok and the disease is invisible. 

For me personally, I recently went through a period of intense anxiety and uncertainty for my future. A routine scan revealed something the doctors recommended for further investigation. The period between learning this and receiving the results of the follow up scan was nearly a month long and I went through a roller coaster of emotions. I oscillated between visions of my future self–one with a healthy, normal, ‘unremarkable’ life after receiving good news and another of myself once again gearing up for a big battle and calling upon my inner strength to survive another assault from within. Thankfully, the results of the second scan were normal and I was allowed to refocus on my vision for a healthy future, a longer life, and being able to watch my daughter grow up. I received the results the week before the Governor issued the Stay At Home order, so as I released one anxiety the other quickly took its place. 

The uncertainty has settled over us like a dark cloud and we don’t know when it will dissipate. We have been stripped of our ability to plan our futures, not knowing if weddings or big trips we looked forward to will happen. We don’t know the extent that this disease will impact us personally. Much like cancer survivors, the world must now learn to accept the uncertainty and wait.

Photo by Rebecca Prest on Unsplash

The Susceptibility of Being the Other

Many cancer survivors who are currently undergoing treatment or have recently finished are considered to be more susceptible to COVID-19 as their immune systems are still fighting and healing. This amplifies the anxiety that everyone feels. We must lean on others to make the right choices of staying in to flatten the curve, and we must deal emotionally with being classified yet again as ‘other.’ After my diagnosis, I longed for the luxury and freedom of being normal, of being average, of just being someone with no ‘underlying issues,’ or ‘pre-existing conditions.’ It can be very isolating to feel ostracized in this way.

Everyone has been hoping the teenager that passed away from COVID-19 earlier this week had an ‘underlying condition’ to make him/her more susceptible because no one wants to think that this disease can kill those who are normal, healthy and young. But how does that make people already in those classifications feel? For me, it exacerbates an already existent anxiety and almost shame for having been sickly. It reignites a deep traumatic fear I have because my immune system failed me once before by letting a tumor develop, that it could fail me again in a situation like this. Now this classification as one of those ‘at risk’ has been extended to those with heart disease, diabetes, compromised immune systems, and even to every person over the age of 65. Today, more people than ever have the unease of being othered and separated from the healthy herd of humans into the realm of uncertain vulnerability to an invisible enemy.

Endurance

Cancer survivors have a lot to offer the world right now when it comes to guiding our fellow humans through coping with a global pandemic. One of the key things that we can offer is inspiration for endurance. We are used to enduring long, uncertain waits between procedures or follow up scans. We are used to enduring the mental distress of entrapping medical statistics and difficult prognoses. We have been through weeks, months, some of us many years of grappling mentally with a barrage of testing and the possibility of shortened futures. Not knowing whether we will hit certain milestones we had planned for that year and our lives. I think right now we can offer our perspectives to our communities–we will get through this, we have to take whatever protective actions we can, maintain a positive attitude and know that if we preserve through these unpleasant times wrought with negativity and challenges that we will get to a better place. Patience is the key to endurance in a crisis like this when so much is out of our hands and we have to wait for answers. Think about the things that helped you endure your journey with disease and share your strategies with those who might not have ever had to deal with something as scary as this.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Celebrating the Small

One strategy for me when I was diagnosed with cancer was to stop focusing so much on the future. I had spent much of my life looking forward to life’s biggest milestones and trying to accelerate on the fast track for a successful professional career. When cancer blindsided me I had to totally regain my balance and find a way to re-frame my perception of my future, and–in a way–my perception of time in general. I feel like we are in a similar situation now, with so much being canceled we suddenly have these giant, blank calendars and it’s unknown if the things we have planned for the summer will come to pass. 

While most of this situation is out of our control, we can regain our sense of self by setting new metrics for success and celebrating the small, everyday moments in our life that we would have otherwise overlooked. For me, my daily walks are one of the metrics I use to measure my success toward my health goals. Writing is another action I can take that elevates my mood and sense of accomplishment toward professional goals. Engaging in family dinners at the table, rather than being scattered all around is another way you can glean a personal success and find joy. Even finding a quiet 30 minutes to be able to do yoga, just read or relax in the sun can really boost your spirits during this dark time. Eating healthy is a challenge for all of us right now, so I feel like I’m achieving in that arena when I can get at least a couple fresh fruits or veggies into my diet. We may feel powerless but there are all kinds of little things we can do to fight back and try to stay healthy both in mind and spirit.

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Sharing our Emotions

Right now, you can be sure that everyone you know is going through an array of emotions associated with the pandemic crisis. Anxiety, fear, relief at being able to stay home, and hope that we will come through this stronger than ever. Now is a really great opportunity to connect with friends, acquaintances, and previous professional connections you may not have heard from in a while. Check in on each other, be vocal about how you are feeling. We need to lean on each other now and try to nurture our connections to get through this. When I was going through cancer, I was overwhelmed with the love that I felt from all corners of my life–both past and present. People I hadn’t spoken to in years reached out to make sure that I was doing ok and offer supportive words and virtual hugs. It really helped me a lot to know that so many people were in my corner and praying for me during a dark time. We can all do this for each other now, particularly those who might be more at risk for this or who are struggling without much support either from being laid off or being overwhelmed at home with both work and childcare. Community is a powerful tool and we can all do our part to leverage it now. Speak up, share your story, share how you are feeling. You can create a wave of positivity that will break down barriers in this quarantined world. 

How are you reflecting on the current situation in comparison to past adversity you have survived? What strategies can you borrow from those times to get through this? 

Thermometers are being used for medical screenings in some EOC's. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

How COVID-19 will change Emergency Management Forever

March 23, 2020 /

This disaster is nowhere near over, in fact I think things will continue to escalate in the United States for weeks. Yet the global pandemic of 2020, COVID-19, has already changed the field of emergency management forever. 

Depicts how small a person is in comparison to the Grand Canyon.
Photo by David Mullins on Unsplash

Scale

The word I keep finding myself using is unprecedented. I know we’ve said that before, to the devastation of the Camp Fire in 2018, the colossal losses in the Carribean when two category five hurricanes hit within 10 days, the drain on resources in Ventura County when a mass shooting occurred within hours of two major wildfires breaking out, the destruction of the Tohoku earthquake and pan-Pacific tsunami…all of these were catastrophic, for the jurisdictions they impacted. But none of these were global disasters. They were all regional. In California, we are always planning for the Big One, we just recently put a ton of time and effort into developing a Catastrophic Earthquake Plan for Southern California. It was always seen as this extreme scenario that would truly test our limits. But even in that seemingly extreme scenario there would be outside resources available, we could activate mutual aid systems and rely on our neighboring states, or at least the East Coast to alleviate some of our burden. If people wanted to escape the devastated region, they could migrate to other parts of the country as we saw with the diaspora following Hurricane Katrina. 

The pandemic is different. You cannot escape it, because you don’t know exactly where it is. You have to assume that it is literally everywhere in the world. Every jurisdiction is impacted. Everyone is proclaiming an emergency and everyone is activating their EOC (as of this morning there were 106 EOC’s activated in Southern California). The scale is just enormous, and I don’t think that it’s something that the state or the federal government ever really thought through or anticipated to the degree that we are now impacted. As it turns out when everyone everywhere is impacted a lot of the assumptions we have always made about emergency management change. How can the federal government possibly reimburse every jurisdiction? How can we make and distribute tens of millions of masks, gloves and other supplies everywhere simultaneously? Can FEMA and the American Red Cross be everywhere at once? Neighbors can’t help neighbors if everyone is impacted and if getting too close to each other puts our lives at risk. As we move forward from COVID-19 I anticipate a new subset of this field focused solely on global disasters, and not in the distant mythical kind of approach that we always used when talking about ‘megadisasters’ before. 

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Response Experience

The pandemic will be a great equalizer in a way because now every emergency manager who was working in 2020 has response experience. Obviously everyone’s role is a little different right now, but in some way literally all of us are having to respond or adapt our planning because of COVID-19. There are many emergency managers for small jurisdictions who might have NEVER had to activate their EOC in the twenty years they were working there. There are cities I have never even heard of in Southern California that now have activated EOCs. Some of us that activate regularly are getting a whole new kind of experience–one where there are real resource requests that need to be filled ASAP and LOTS of them. There are true shortages of supplies in this incident and we are all using that system for real now, not just talking about it in an exercise scenario. No matter what type of jurisdiction or what your role is, if you are an emergency manager in 2020 you have now earned your pandemic response badge. This response will be the topic of discussion and dissection for many years to come, everyone will have a story to tell and every jurisdiction is learning how to better operate their EOC’s after this incident. 

Photo by L N on Unsplash

Safety in the EOC

In most responses that I’ve been a part of, the Safety Officer position in the EOC typically became an ‘other duty as assigned’ because there was just not enough to do. This position makes a lot of sense in the field, at the ICP for a shooting or a wildfire, but EOC’s are pretty inherently safe working environments. Most of them are secured facilities that are built to withstand earthquakes, hurricanes, car bombs, etc. When non-EM friends see my posts about responding to fires, they typically say ‘stay safe’ without realizing that when I respond to an EOC I’m responding to an office like environment. I’ve joked many times that the biggest hazard for me is the 10 pounds I’ll inevitably gain from sitting too much and snacking on EOC food all day. But in this incident, all of the sudden our jobs did become dangerous. The Safety Officer is now critical in protecting EOC staff from spreading the virus–implementing medical screenings, keeping a strict sanitation schedule and ensuring work spaces are 6 feet apart are enough to keep any one person busy all day. Things we normally don’t think about like sharing a common pen with the sign in sheet, or using a common key pad to access a facility…all of these practices have now become hazardous. 

It is also distressing in a way that many of us aren’t used to. If you came into this field having studied it and are passionate about operating at a coordination level separate from the field operations, this is probably the first time your job has truly been dangerous. We are not first responders, like firefighters and police officers. We aren’t used to putting our lives and our family’s safety on the line by going to work and now many of us are. I know several EOC’s that don’t have the space to practice social distancing–cramming 50-100 bodies into a small room and spending 12+ hours there. In the future, this is going to become a huge consideration for how we can better protect ourselves. I also think some of us may have a lot to chew on mentally–myself included–about whether we want to work in a job that can be so dangerous.

Photo by Harry Cunningham on Unsplash

Remote EOC’s

The discussion of safety in the EOC leads me to my next point. Most of us aren’t well equipped enough in our processes and procedures to take our operations virtual at this point. Some of our essential functions are still done with pen and paper, or with T-cards, or with hard copy 214’s, or with a desktop computer that has to be hooked up to a certain server. Many are scrambling right now to be able to execute the essential functions of their EOC’s remotely so as to preserve the safety of their critical staff. The tools are out there and some jurisdictions are extremely successful at this. Your planning meetings can be conducted over web conferencing, even press conferences can be as we are seeing in California. Email and phone allow you to ask questions of other sections. Virtual environments like slack that are conducive to group chats and discussion threads are extremely useful to engage several people working on the same problems. I think many of us have drastically underutilized WebEOC, VEOCI, and other EOC management software. It hasn’t been trained and integrated enough into our operation to be able to function at its full capability. I think this is a huge lesson learned from COVID-19. The ability to work remotely is crucial, and it is possible, we just need to practice and equip our responders to be able to do it comfortably. Pandemics aren’t the only disasters this can be good for, if roads are damaged in a major earthquake but communications are still up it might be a lot easier to get your EOC up and running virtually for the first operational period. This is the major way that I think this disaster will change the field.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom holds a conference on the COVID-19 conference on March 15, 2020. (Credit: KTXL)

Political Ubiquity

Now that every jurisdiction has been involved in such a major disaster response, all of our elected leaders are getting a crash course in disaster management. Whether they were engaged with EM before or not, they now undoubtedly have had to function in a crisis environment. More proclamations means that every city council and board of supervisors out there has had to draft and approve a resolution pertaining to an emergency. I bet it was the first time many of them had done it in decades. Mayors, governors, and even our President are giving press conferences on this disaster daily and having to learn good risk communication. They are learning a lot about continuity of government and just what services are essential. They are having to make some pretty big decisions that impact their constituents in huge ways–shelter in place orders? Closing down local businesses? These are not things that are easy to do and certainly won’t please all the voters. But as emergency managers I think that this is a win for us because I don’t think we’re going to have trouble convincing our bosses in the future why emergency management is important. For the next several years this disaster will be fresh in everyone’s memories on a scale we’ve never seen before. We are used to seeing news of distant disasters and being entranced for a couple weeks, sending donations and creating hashtags #anyplacestrong. But now that our lives are truly disrupted in a major way for an extended period, politicians and previously detached coworkers are going to care about our field. 

Photo by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash

More Funding? 

That brings me to my last point, more funding. I have it with a question mark because in the immediate future I think a pretty big recession is inevitable, so I don’t think there is going to be much money to go around. However, I can tell you one thing. Emergency management programs are certainly not going to be the first on the chopping block as they historically have been in some jurisdictions. Executives will remember the plan, the program, the person they had to turn to in this dark time for guidance and they will not cut that program. I think that the long term fiscal impact on EM funding is going to be positive after COVID-19. I think there will be more emergency management positions created and hopefully more young folks interested in filling them. For once, everyone is going to see our value because this will be an incident that is not soon forgotten. 

I am sure there will be many more lessons learned in the weeks to come of this prolonged disaster. But these are the initial ways in which I think our field will never be the same.

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