The following was shared by Hilary Styron
"So this is my laugh of the day...my client just asked me how to become an emergency manager, he wanted to know if there was a one day course he could take so he would then, after one day, be qualified to call himself an EM.....I'm trying very hard not to spit my soda through my nose while laughing.....I can't make this stuff up."
In reality what the above means is that we have a perception problem--in the extreme, for this one case. However, if you are a firefighter, law enforcement officer, former military person you, in your heart of hearts as you look at emergency managers you are saying, "I can do that!" As I've said before, emergency management is not rocket science, but one of the problems we have in our profession is that there isn't enough academic background on the subject of emergency management in our profession.
We need to use what social and physical science has learned about how people react to hazards and process risks to them and their families. To a large degree we keep going about our merry way without knowing and applying what science already knows.
I figure that if someone would just put their back into it -- it should not take more than a week to assimilate all that knowledge.
