- We collaborated with CDC'S Center for Preparedness and Response, which is now referred to as the Office of Readiness and Response on a strategic communications project last year, or maybe year before last. - No, it was last year. - Last year, okay. And we developed out some discussion guides for planners or anyone who's looking to do some preparedness for their organization, specifically around the social determinants of health, which is obviously very important for the public health field, and has a lot of different implications that go beyond preparedness. - [Announcer] You're listening to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. Join Michael Holtz and his guests for conversations about all things ORAU. They'll talk about ORAU's storied history, our impact on an ever-changing world, our innovative, scientific and technical solutions for our customers, and our commitment to the communities where we do business. Welcome to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. - Welcome to Further Together the ORAU podcast. As ever, I'm your host, Michael Holtz in the Communications and Marketing Department at ORAU, and my cohost Amber Davis is back with me. Amber, welcome back. - Thank you. - How's it going today? - Oh, you know, it's while we're recording, it's Friday, so I'm happy about that. - Always happy on a Friday. So, yeah, it is Friday, it is mid-August as we're having this conversation, but we're preparing for September, which is National Preparedness Month. And it's very important to ORAU because we do a lot of work in the preparedness space that we don't always talk about. So today we're gonna do that and to join us for that conversation we have Jennifer Burnette and Will Arltey. Jennifer and Will, welcome to Further Together. - Thank you. - Thanks for having us. - So Jennifer, if you would first introduce yourself and tell us what you do here at ORAU. - Sure. I'm Jennifer Burnett. I'm a project manager in our public health and healthcare program, specifically under the preparedness section. So I work on a lot of different preparedness and response contracts for the federal government, such as our radiation studies contract that we have and I also lead our community of practice around preparedness where we really deep dive into different preparedness issues and look at trends and things that are going on in the field and what we wanna keep up with. - Awesome. And Will- - Hi, have worked for ORAU for 31 years now. 25 or 26 of those have been outta my house, so I moved around the country quite a bit. I am primarily a technical writer, technical editor for PHH, but I'm also doing work for PTP on NRC work and also our NIOSH work. - Okay. - So kind of spread around. - Awesome. Well, welcome to both of you. And again, as I said at the outset, we're talking about preparedness month. Jennifer, I wanna start with you just from a global perspective, from the kind of 30,000 foot view. Why is preparedness month important? - So I would say preparedness is important all the time. - All the time. - That's one of my passions, right? But the reason we have preparedness month, just like all the other awareness months, is specifically to bring awareness to the not only general public, but also in our case business sector and other organizations that really need to be thinking about preparedness not only during September, but also throughout the entire year and all the different implications that may have for their business or their organization or the populations that they serve. So this is really an exciting time for us to talk about preparedness from a lot of different angles and get folks thinking beyond, Hey, go put some stuff in a backpack and have it in your car. You know, so there's so much more to it. So that's one of the reasons I love preparedness month is kind of being able to dig into a lot of different elements and make everyone more aware. - Absolutely. One of the aspects I know for this year's preparedness month observance is kind of focusing on older populations. And I know we wanna sort of get there, but part of the work that you all have done is the development of some discussion guides. And I know we'll kind of talk about those in and out of the conversation, but wanted to just talk about what are the discussion guides, what do they help people do, organizations, et cetera, do to be ready for instances where they may need to, bug out because of disaster or prepare for an exposure or whatever it may be that we're preparing for. - Will, do you wanna take that one? Will was pretty integral in that work. - I was gonna defer to you. You're more versed in it than I, I just wrote it. - Will just wrote most of it. - Just wrote. - Okay, I can jump us off. So, so yeah, we collaborated with CDC's Center for Preparedness and Response, which is now referred to as the Office of Readiness and Response on a strategic communications project last year or maybe year before last? - No, it was last year. - Last year, okay. And we developed out some discussion guides for planners or anyone who's looking to do some preparedness for their organization, specifically around the social determinants of health, which is obviously very important for the public health field and has a lot of different implications that go beyond preparedness. And if you're not familiar with social determinants of health, and I wanna make sure I say these correctly, so I'm gonna look at my screen. - Sure, sure. - They include five key areas: economic stability, education access and quality, healthcare access and quality, neighborhood and built environment and social and community context. So we did discussion guides and collaboration with CDC on all five of those key areas and really brought in a preparedness lens, which is actually something that we, through lit searches and different environmental scans, there wasn't a lot of info that linked those things, at least not directly and very succinctly in something like a discussion guide that you could get through with your partners in an hour or a couple of hours. So that was a pretty great project and CDC's featuring that on their National Preparedness Month stuff for September. So we were excited to be part of that collaboration. - Yeah. - Anything else you wanna add, Will? - Yeah, I'd just add to that we also, like I said, discussion guide is like a group of people getting together just like we are having a casual discussion, but we give them prompting questions to think about and work as a team to solve a problem. We also included what's called promising practices in each discussion guide. For example, one of 'em was after Katrina, New Orleans had a hard time with evacuation and they created what's called City Assisted Evacuation. So they have 17 what's called Evacu Spots in New Orleans that will take people to the Smoothie King Center, which is where the pro basketball team plays. There they'll be registered and then then they would be taken by train, bus or airplane to a federal facility or somewhere to shelter. So it's things that people have learned, lessons learned that can be applied to other communities. - Yeah and that actually gets at some of the theme for September for this preparedness month around older adults and that kind of equity piece, those evacuation spots were strategically placed to help folks who maybe don't own a car or would be dependent on public transportation that might've been wiped out during the emergency. So that kind of ties some of that in cuz we've seen that disproportionately older adults are using more public transportation, driving less, have less means of transportation. - Right, so that becomes a really important piece for, you know, how do you get out if you need to, if you need to do so, right? - I if I can jump in, I was gonna ask, we're talking about evacuations and we're seeing evacuations now in Hawaii and there's so much to consider. When you talk about preparedness, you have urban populations, you have rural populations, what does the planning look like when you're trying to consider all the different dynamics? Tough question. - That's a tough question. - It's a lot. - Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, let's back up a little bit because when you're doing preparedness in a community, you do what's called a Hazard Vulnerability Analysis, which is you look at, okay, what's gonna happen here? I live in Savannah, Georgia, so we have two things, severe thunderstorms and hurricanes. So I don't need to prepare for a snowstorm, I just need to prepare for other things. And so the Chatham County Emergency Management Agency is already, you know, they have zones that they set up, okay, this zone's gonna evacuate first and this one, this one, and it keeps moving further away from the coast. And, but for me I need to plan on my own. Okay, it's coming. Where am I gonna go and how long am I'm gonna stay there? If there's a category one hurricane, it's no big deal. Category five hurricane, I might not have a house. - Get out. - You know, I might be months away from my home. So it's kind of both community planning and personal planning work together. - Okay. - Jennifer? - Yeah, I'll add onto that. You mentioned urban versus rural, and we have worked with communities that are both urban and rural. For instance, we did some workshops in Fort Benton, Montana, which had about a thousand people in the county and worked with them on their unique challenges with having less resources very spread out across a large landmass. On the flip side, because of some of these factors, very resilient populations, because they have had to learn to deal with major snowstorms, for instance, is one of their hazards. So really some unique challenges, particularly with rural communities because of some of the just blanket less resources, less personnel, less people. On the flip side, maybe they have less people to move, but then you start getting into potentially agricultural preparedness or where you're looking to save the food supply on top of the people. And there are folks who for instance, in Oregon we had cattle ranches and family farms and things like that, people would not, there would be a wildfire a mile away if you didn't have a place for their animals, they were not leaving. So and a lot of that I think was learned well before Katrina, but in Katrina's, hurricane Katrina's one that gets brought up a lot because people wouldn't leave their pets. For instance, I have two dogs sitting right underneath me, I wouldn't leave my pets. But the concept of like the livestock animals and things like that maybe has been less talked about in a broader kind of preparedness sense. Although the people who deal with this every day are thinking about that. They have to figure out how to get those animals to a safe place because it's their livelihood. And that's one of the ones, bringing it back to the social determinants of health, the economic stability piece, people are gonna make preparedness or in response decisions in an emergency based on those factors. So you may say, well, money shouldn't matter in this case, but it does. You know? So keeping those kinds of things in mind and seeing it from like more of a whole community, which is whole community is a very, a term that FEMA uses a lot, but we see it across a lot of other federal agencies as well, but it's whole person also. So there's so much to take into account when you're talking about either community preparedness or personal preparedness. And so, yeah, I could like talk about this forever. - And then Jennifer, you know, as we're having this conversation, the Hawaii wildfires are kind of top of mind for everyone. That's a situation where it's not like Savannah where you can move far inland, right? You're limited by the landmass to where you can get to. So that sort of planning, I know we weren't involved in that, but involves other aspects of how do you get people out of there and moved appropriately and off the island if you can do that. So. - Yeah and I mean, that's one of those that, as you've seen a very tough situation that's unfolded there and how quickly the fire spread to the different areas of the island and like you said, there's only so many places to go. I know that those emergency management groups have done a lot of preparedness, very specific to island planning, similar with Alaska, Hawaii, and Alaska because of how unique their challenges are, have additional federal support a lot of times, and folks that are really dedicated to their situation and what they're trying to plan around. And so they're trying to give them additional resources where maybe they have limitations, but ultimately we can plan as much as we can. And there's always something you're not gonna think of or something that's gonna go wrong that you didn't expect to go wrong. So even with, if we're talking island preparedness or like Alaska is a really good example because of their remoteness, there's just certain challenges that no matter what, you're not gonna have the best outcome because of all the factors that are gonna come into that. So the folks who commit themselves to being local planners, especially in those circumstances, you gotta give them props for even the level that they get to be able to, for instance, I'm sure you all have heard of the Iditarod where they take the sled dogs from one part of Alaska into like the most remote part to deliver. They still do that and they use it as a preparedness tool, not only because it's a tradition, but also because it's a preparedness tool. And they know that they potentially, and they have, if I'm not mistaken, when I worked in Oregon we worked with Alaska a little bit and did some training up there, so it was really interesting to talk to them. They used it as a preparedness exercise to be able to get medication to these remote areas. To get, for instance, power goes out, there's no refrigeration. - Sure. - What are you supposed to do with vaccines? They've like built these ice block things to store the vaccines in, just a lot of creativity that goes into some of these things sometimes. County works with Montana, they used refrigeration trucks, had that kind of stuff in their plans. So, go ahead. - I was, I was gonna ask, is there a good collaboration, because I'm thinking closer to home, closer to ORAU, we had some wildfires here in the national park up in Gatlinburg, and I remember we learned so much through that situation because it's not, I wouldn't say rural, but we had different infrastructure. Like we had two lane roads that were tight and there were wildfires on both sides of the highway, and so people were having trouble getting out and I'm sure that these are lessons that everyone can be like Hmm, okay, we need to consider this and that. Is there good collaboration every time there's an emergency that teams on another side of the country are gleaning from it? How does that work? - I can answer that. Preparedness is part of the Continuous Improvement Cycle. So you develop a plan, you train people the plan, you exercise the plan, and then you look at what you did wrong and improve the plan. So after exercises, even after actual events, the planners are gonna write a after action report that details, okay, here's where we failed, here's how we can improve it. And so those reports are available to everybody. It'll be on the news too, you know, okay, here's the mistakes, here's what we need to do next time to do it right. So you're always gonna make mistakes, but you learn from 'em, then you improve. So that's just part of the process. - Sure. Well, and Will you bring up sort of a next, if you will, topic of discussion, which is the exercises. And I know your teams are expert at the exercise process. I mean we have, VHA PIMS and we have exercise builder nuclear and other virtual tools that we use to help planners basically have exercises that simulate that need response. Talk a little bit about that and the importance of that process. And I worked in a hospital, so we did tabletop exercises on the regular and once a year or so would actually do, have actors come in as patients from a staged accident sort of thing. And so we would go through that process as well of how do you triage and what do you do so that you learn what are we missing or who's not at the table, those sorts of things. So talk about the value and the importance of exercises and some of the tools that we've created. - Well, like I said before the purpose of an exercise is to make sure that you're prepared. In a nutshell, that's what it is. - Right. - So when somebody wants to do an exercise, obviously they get, okay, what are you exercising? I mean, what's the scenario? And a lot of people say, well, we don't have a plan. I said, well, how do you have an exercise if you don't have a plan. For example, back in the two thousands, we did like 35 tabletop exercises with CDCs quarantine stations. - Okay. - So they were very specific. We wanna know what we're supposed to do if an ill traveler comes in on an international conveyance. And so we designed tabletop exercises to address that issue. I can't address Exercise Builder or PIMS because I dunno that much about them, but I can say that we are working with Freddie Gray's group on developing a virtual exercise capability. We tested it once using six connects and teams. And we're doing one next week with six connects and Zoom, which we tested this morning. It works much better. So we are definitely looking at developing a virtual exercise capability. - That's exciting and it's important, you know. - Jennifer, anything to add? - Yeah, I'll just mention with PIMs, which is a program that's been built specifically for the VHA or the Veterans Health Administration, our colleague Mary Connolly heads up that group. You know, they've built that through kind of the process that Will's already talked about with the continuous improvement. So as new things come up, I should back up. So you mentioned the hospital exercises. A lot of these things are federally mandated, right? So these programs get funding and they have to meet certain requirements, they have to exercise certain things, so BHA is in a similar situation. They have joint commission requirements, they have requirements from other agencies as well. A lot of that stuff is difficult to track and capture in a way that's useful, right? That's not just kind of living on multiple spreadsheets or in different after action reports. - Right. - So that's one of the, to me, the strengths of PIMS is bringing all of those things together for the VHA to say, okay, here's the big picture across all of our hospitals and here's where we're seeing them struggle in certain exercises or not meet a certain capability. And then they can go and figure out, okay, what can we do as an agency to help all of the hospitals with this particular capability or something like that. So they've really utilized the Continuous Improvement Process to one, improve PIMS, but in the process, improve VHA's ability to respond in whatever sort of emergency or circumstance that comes up. So I did wanna mention that. And an exercise builder nuclear is similar in that it tracks some pretty strict regulations from the Nuclear Commission that it again, is difficult to roll up over an eight year, I think it's an eight year period, where they wanna make, they're not just checking a box. They're really serious when they go in and exercise these things, you know? So I thought I'd mention that cuz I at least know that much. - No, that's great. And I again, I think it's an important part of the work that we do in terms of helping other agencies facilitate their kind of the mandated exercises that have to be done, hospitals have to do it, public health has to do it, you know, to stay- - It can be one of the more fun aspects of preparedness. - Yeah. - I think a lot of people who aren't in this field maybe think, oh, this is pretty doom and gloom, all you just think about the next Anthrax attack or the next COVID or whatever it is and we are thinking about those things and we have to, but exercises can be a really nice way to really see something come to fruition that you worked hard on, like these plans and building partnerships with community members and things like that. And getting back to the community preparedness I did wanna mention that's one of the key things. You can exercise a plan, you can think that you're ready, but if you haven't maintained partnerships, if you haven't maintained that community connection, it's all gonna fall apart. - Right. - Right? It's not going to go the way you think it's going to go based on what happened in the exercise because those partners come to the exercise and if they don't stay engaged, they've forgotten, they're not thinking about their role anymore and preparing for their role. So making that connection and keeping those connections is a really big part of what emergency planners locally and at the state level, that's a huge part of their job and what they have to focus in on. So that's part of what we do is try to help because we do federal agency contracts most of the time, is make that connection for the Feds back down to the state and locals to maintain those partnerships also, right? So and being able to bring back what the locals are saying their experiences are and having that translate into federal guidance that makes sense that's going to be useful and actually makes sense when a local partner goes to the FEMA website and pulls something down. So we're kind of like a, I feel like a lot of times we're a connector point. Wouldn't you say Will, like we're trying to make that connection for everyone. - Definitely, definitely. I saw that particularly with the Champaign Urbana, Illinois community, and that's where the University of Illinois is. We worked with them a number of times and they've even told us that your work with us has made us very well prepared and everybody knows each other. - Right. - And so it's like a big family and really care for each too. - When you talk about the partners, I mean, you're talking certainly about hospitals and public health and police. - Yeah, hospitals, EMS, fire, police, mortuary services, the county mayor was involved. - Everybody nonprofit. - Like Jennifer said, the whole community. - Yeah, yeah. - The whole community. Yeah and there's a flip side to that too. You, as a planner, you're making these connections because you need to make them for your own preparedness and to meet the goals that your preparedness and response program has and you wanna prepare the community, but you also are in this unique situation where you've brought all these partners together who also might need to know each other for other reasons. So there's a really, and I think this is a missed opportunity a lot of times, and to me this would strengthen those connections of turning it around to your partners and saying like, thank you for supporting this preparedness effort and being part of this exercise. What can I do to help you build your partnerships? I've got all of these partners that we've already done all this work to bring together and you can just like strengthen those ties. You know, you just tighten up all of those ties within the community because now these two organizations are working together and these two are working together. So that's one that I think we miss a lot of times cuz that's extra work. That's more, you know, but it also keeps them engaged cuz now you're reciprocating that connection and that partnership. - And they're finding other ways to work together that aren't not only exercises, but aren't those emergent crisis situations necessarily. - And then when it is an emergent crisis situation, they also know each other. They don't just know you. - Right. - They know each other too, so- - They know who to call. - So everybody benefits at the end of the day. - Yeah. Something I wanted to point out too about community preparedness is maintaining your knowledge base. Because we ran into that in Montana where, I can't remember her name, but the emergency manager, she'd been emergency manager in Chatto County for like 40 years and she was retiring and there was nobody with her experience and knowledge to take her place. So a lot of these rural frontier communities, you need to think about that. I need to train somebody to take my job because when I leave, nobody's gonna be be able to fill my shoes. - Taking all that institutional knowledge with me. - Yeah and you're not prepared. - And that mass exodus you saw during COVID or right after COVID where the burnout was just to a level of people, folks who maybe would've stayed on another 10 years were like forget it, were retiring. Or you might have some new people who are like, this is not what I thought I was getting into to a different career. So we're seeing that all over the country. And you kind of see that in some of the federal agencies approaches in the last couple of years too. Like with our annual preparedness summit that NATO puts on and things like that, seeing kind of a refocus on newer people to the field and trying to get them up to speed as quickly as possible because we've seen so much of that turnover. So that's a big critical part of the field. - I know one of the issues we've sort of talked about on the side is the role of climate change, you know, we're seeing a lot of extreme weather, which means lots of different things are happening from wildfires to floods to just even extreme heat. You've got communities that are having to open cooling shelters. I guess my question is it feels like there's getting to be a lot more to prepare for. Are the basics- - Everyone's just more aware. - Maybe so I suppose, right? Because the preparedness folks are prepared, right? But are the basics generally the same depending on the circumstances or do they legitimately change depending on, I mean the specifics of the scenario seems obvious, but- - You know, I think it's just another hazard to consider. - Okay. - Just while you're talking, I'm sitting here thinking, okay, firefighters train to fight fires. I mean they wear all that heavy clothes, but all of a sudden if they're fighting fires and it's 110 degrees outside, well you've gotta change something there because the human body can't take that. - Right. - So it's just another thing to consider. And you know it's definitely an evolving process. You know, how do you- How does preparedness and climate change, how do they merge together? - Right. - It's interesting you bring up that point because I feel like there's actually a lot of struggle about how to approach preparedness a lot of times and it's specifically with that in mind. So for a while there'd be a lot of mandates about something very specific like pandemic influenza or anthrax or a very particular hazard that we know might take another level of preparedness that's very specific to that hazard. And then in other realms it's, we should have an all hazards approach no matter what the hazard is, we should have these certain capabilities that we need to meet, which we do. The federal agencies, both CDC, ASPER, FEMA, they've all defined very specific capabilities that you should be able to meet for whatever hazard is going on, but it's so hard to plan only for all hazards because you know you're gonna miss something that's very specific to a hazard, right? - Right. - So that's kind of a eternal debate a little bit what you brought up because it's both, it's you gotta train the capabilities and you can't just pretend there's not specific ones out there that maybe have some unique- - Sure. - Circumstances. Going back to Will's all hazards is all well and good until you have to pivot and not use that particular PPE. - Right, right. Or something you've not experienced before maybe. - Right. From what I've read is the statistics actually are looking good as far as we are more prepared. We are doing better with saving lives, and as far as like these extreme temperatures or whatever, it's like I think more people actually are dying from cold. And if that's another thing, I know we've talked about one of the focuses of this repair is the aging population. So is that something that may be, and it's probably on both ends, that extreme is the heat and cold for the elderly. We need to keep an eye out. But is there anything as far as that specifically? I know you mentioned figuring out how to get medication during emergencies. I think that's very important for that population that, and you mentioned pets and I think that's also probably really important for every population, but really people who have become very attached to some pets. But anyway, thinking about the elderly, is there something that we should hit on and make sure people know that good work's being done to prepare for those circumstances? - Well the elderly come with their own issues. Mobility issues, hearing issues, sight issues, just frailty. And so you gotta consider all those things when you're planning. And to give you an example, when Hurricane Floyd was approaching Savannah, I think it was back in 1999 or 2000, they ordered a mandatory evacuation. I lived in Memphis at the time and I saw the commercial appeals, a front page picture was interstate 16 in Savannah and all four lanes were bumper to bumper going out of town well my dad was elderly and he was suffering from Alzheimer's and so they had to evacuate him from a nursing home and he thought he was being kidnapped and really, it really affected his health and they had to go all the way to Athens, Georgia to find a hotel to stay in. And so he was fighting the whole way. So those are the kind of things you need to think about when you just grab somebody and say, let's go. Well, they might not be in the frame of mind to say, okay, I'm coming. So you gotta think of things like that. - Gosh. - Yeah and I mean planner, you know, folks who are in this field and doing this work every day, they are thinking about those types of populations and trying to plan for those circumstances. You're never going to catch everything and that's where, going back to the community partnerships, that's where a lot of that comes in is working with those groups that maybe have like long-term care facilities. For instance, when I was in Oregon, we were responding to the Chetco bar fire, which is one of the biggest ones in history, one of the biggest wildfires in history in Oregon at least. They did a lot of work before we got there cuz I worked at the state, at the local level to work with long-term care facilities to have them ready to be able to evacuate because they recognized how difficult that was going to be if there was a circumstance where all of their residents needed to be moved. You know, so even just the basics of making those partnerships ahead of time instead of calling in the middle of the wildfire and saying, well, you have to move all your residents and to the point that like they had gotten patient counts, what their diagnoses were, what the mobility issues might be for the different populations, what kind of transportation they would need. I mean it was very extensive what they had done to prepare to move those folks out of those facilities. So that's another example of just the type of work that that's being done to think about those populations and make sure that we're prepared. So everyone, there's always gonna be something that falls through the cracks and- - Right. - It's like especially with the news and how things are conveyed, they're always gonna be able to find something that wasn't quite right or or you made a decision you thought was the right one and in the moment, and then you see that it didn't go the way that you thought it was going to go. So the folks who work in this field, especially at the local level and they're making these decisions on the fly, like it takes a lot of heart to stay in this kind of field and continue to stay dedicated to your community. Especially when you know that your decisions actually really affect people's lives so- - And it's easy to- - Another thing about preparedness much we wanna recognize those people. - One hundred percent. And it's easy to armchair quarterback after a decision's been made to be critical of a decision that someone made when- - That's why they say, - I'm not the person. - I'm not the person why they say what to make the call. - Hindsight is 2020. - Yeah, one hundred percent. You know, I'm not the person who had to make the call and evacuating people during a flood or a fire or whatever, Someone else had to do that and, you know- Yeah, not everything goes to plan always, but I didn't have to make the call, but it's easy to criticize. - Right. Well and getting back to your mention of the medication during an emergency. So there's a couple of campaigns out there specifically focused on older adults or folks who maybe have a lot of medications, not only to encourage them where they can to get additional medication kind of stockpiled if they need it, but also legislation and like specific authorities around that that they're trying to change to allow people to get the medication for an emergency supply. So it's kind of both sides there. A lot of times it's like, this is a great idea and it'd be great to ask people to do this, but the law prevents it, right? You can't go to the pharmacy and get six months worth of your medication. - Right. - They're not gonna give it to you. You know? - To think about opioid abuse and other things. You know, people rating medicine cabinets of their grandparents. So it's like, I don't know if that is a good idea. Yeah, that's tough, right? And you can't make those decisions in a vacuum, right? It's like, well I'm only thinking about preparedness, so it should be this way. Well, no. - Right. - Getting back to the whole community, whole preparedness. You have to think about everything, like all the different aspects that are gonna come into play there and is there gonna be more harm by putting this in place, like raiding medicine cabinets or having too many medication, you know, opioid medications and things like that. So we see a lot of that kind of balance too from the federal level of like, okay, we want people to do X, Y, Z, but the law's gonna prevent it or the way the system's set up is going to prevent it. So one, what's the workaround right now? Because you know how long it takes to change a law, you know? - Right. - What's the workaround now? And then also what can we do kind of to advocate for a certain setup or maybe emergency power or something like that that will allow those things when it's needed, you know? So it's complex. - Good example to prove it. - We've talked globally about how communities prepare. From an individual perspective, what can we do to to be prepared for the eventuality of any type of disaster? - Well, like I say, do your own personal hazard vulnerability analysis and figure out, okay, what are the things I'm gonna encounter where I live and then plan for that and go to ready.gov. FEMA has a whole section devoted to developing your personal plan and things to consider what you should take with you if it's depending on how many days you think you'll be gone. So, I mean, everything is, you know, right there for you to look at. One thing I did want to point out with personal preparedness also comes personal responsibility. And what I mean by that is every June the Chatham County Emergency Management Agency, I live in Chatham County in Georgia, they do a host an event here where I live to talk about hurricane preparedness. And one thing they do stress is that if a mandatory evacuation is ordered and you fail to evacuate, if you were killed directly by the storm, your life insurance might not pay. Take that personal responsibility into account when you're deciding if you're gonna leave or stay because there are consequences. Jennifer- - That makes sense. - Yeah I mean, ready.gov's got a lot of good resources. There's some on CDC's website as well. Some other things to consider too is just if you've got family members having a particular spot picked out that you would all meet if something happened and having a few, right? Like if it's a weekday and you're at school and I'm at the house and you're out doing whatever for your job, this is the place. If it's a weekend, this is the place because we're all more likely closer here or I've heard some people maybe like if their town, if they know they kind of stay within a certain area, and they have very common areas of town that they're gonna be in that they kind of break it out. Like if you're in this area of town, we're gonna go here. Or if we're in this area of town, we're gonna go to grandma's. You know what I mean? So having something like that in place, cuz a lot of times that's one of those things that like kids don't know where to go, right? Or- - Sure. - Or maybe they think they should be, well I need to leave school and try to find my parents and in reality what would maybe would've been better is stay at school and I'll find you. Or you know, that kind of thing. I tell my husband, I'll like randomly give my husband preparedness things that I've thought of. I'm like, if this happens and this happens, this is what we're gonna do. Remember this, you know- - And we laugh, but that's probably so good. Well, and like maintaining go bags, that's hard to do if you're not really focused on it. I mean, I'm even guilty of not, I had them really well in Oregon because of the potential for Cascadia. The split, if the earthquake split where like California is like out in the sea and there's tsunamis and it's like the big one of they call it the Big One cuz it's like every hazard possible in one scenario, you know, I've maintained them really well there and have slacked off. So like even someone in our position where we think about preparedness, so at the same time, give yourself a little grace and what you can manage do that and then just build up from there cuz I think when you start looking at some of those resources like ready.gov, it can feel very overwhelming and maybe financially difficult because it'll, you know, suggest that you buy a lot of things to prepare. So trying to balance that to what you can realistically do and maybe what's gonna make the most impact. Like making a plan with your family on where to go doesn't cost anything. So do those things that you can. Maybe make copies of certain documents and have them in a few places, that shouldn't be super costly. So I think a lot of times with the personal preparedness especially it gets maybe too far in the other direction where it's like, okay, if I'm really gonna be prepared, I have to have a bomb shelter in my backyard that's not financial realistic, you know. - Six months worth of food and yeah, yeah. - Right. Six months worth of canned food and how am I gonna maintain this water that's gonna expire? And it can get really overwhelming where you're like, forget it. Like I'm not gonna do anything. So just picking those things that are really simple and gonna have a big impact and starting there, you know. And then if you build up slowly, because I understand a disaster could happen right this second while we're on the call, but you can only do so much. - Brings up a good point cuz during a disaster you don't think clearly. So if you're planned ahead of time, you really don't have to think. You just know what you're gonna do. - Yeah, that's good. - Absolutely. - Jennifer and Will, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you wanna make sure that we cover before we wrap things up? - I guess the only thing I would say is if you are an emergency planner at the local or state level and happen to be listening to this or know someone who does this type of planning or you work for a community organization that needs to be doing this type of preparedness planning, like not to toot our own horn or anything, but those discussion guides on CDC's website and Michael, I don't know if you can link to those like through the podcast or not, but they really, I think came out well and were very approachable and brought up a lot of things that I don't think even we had thought of as we were going through and working with CDC to create them around preparedness and response. So I would just mention that as a really good resource to check out. - Absolutely. I can add the link to the episode description. So look for that with this episode. So, well since we've been talking about kind of a bit of a downer issue on this episode, as important as it is, I wanna ask everybody before we go, what brings you joy? Jennifer Burnett, what brings you joy? - Oh my gosh. These two puppy dogs. All the things you see on this board here. Traveling, outdoors, mountains and then my family. I have a three year old daughter named Emerson and she is a joy and a terror all rolled up into one. But she brings a level of joy that I never thought was possible. So yeah- - Awesome. - Will? - Obviously family, but believe it or not, cooking. I'm a home chef so I love to cook. - That's so funny. - I'll keep that in mind next time I'm in Savannah. Amber Davis, what brings you joy? - Oh Jesus. I need my Jesus. And talking about this stuff just reminds me of that and how good he is, but yeah, my faith and you know, it's gotten me through a whole lot of stuff and knowing that bad stuff's gonna happen, I've got the Lord. So that's my answer. But Michael you need to answer too. - Yeah, no, I think for sure, yeah, faith is important and family and friends. Lots of joy in being surrounded by people that I love and who love me. So there you go. - And cheesecake. - I like that. Naturally. I love it. Alright, well Jennifer Burnett and Will Artley, thank you so much for- - Thank you. - Spending this time with us and Amber, thanks for coming back as co-host. - Thank you so much. - Do it again for sure. - Thanks for having us. - Thanks everyone and have a great day. - [Announcer] Thank you for listening to Further Together the ORAU podcast. To learn more about any of the topics discussed by our experts, visit www.orau.org. 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