He noted that "Our preparation today will determine tomorrow's outcome."
He wants to spend more time on mitigation and recovery during his tenure at FEMA. Interestingly he uses the term "fragile" which is one that I have been using to describe our current state of affairs, especially in regards to critical infrastructure.
10% of the world's population lives near the ocean at about 30 feet above sea level.
There are not enough first responders when there is a disaster. We all need, as citizens to be prepared to become responders when disaster strikes.
One of his first disasters was a forest fire--when he was a State Emergency Management Director (OR). He found out quickly that public health is a significant issue with every disaster [This conference gets significant sponsorship funding from the State of Washington's Department of Health.]
The weather is changing. There are more frequent and more severe weather events. This includes tornadoes in OR and WA. Which has been almost unheard of. Don't discount the possibility of events that have not happened in your life time.
Think about a really bad earthquake. We might be in a situation where we don't have our road and rail infrastructure. We will be taking care of our neighbors, family and community. Think about the possibilities of everything that can happen.
We need to be looking at our mental health preparations. For ourselves and for our community. We need to provide people the necessary training. Having repetitive training helps it stick in our minds in our muscle memory.
We need smaller and more frequent exercises that drill just a few items, rather than larger choreographed exercises.
We don't do recovery very well. Recovery could be region wide or national.
Our population is getting older. The graying of our population will bring with it new circumstances that we will need to respond to in the future.
