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Transcript: Disaster Planning[Mark Peterson] I'm Mark Peterson and this is the FEMA podcast. [Mark Peterson] Planning makes it possible to manage the entire life cycle of a potential crisis. Strategic and operational planning establishes priorities like what should we do first, identify as expected levels of performance and capability requirements like who and what do we need to bring in to help, but also how much of those things do we need. The plan provides the standard for assessing each responder’s capabilities and helps stakeholders learn the roles and what is expected of them in a specific emergency. There's an old adage that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Well in disasters, failure is not an option, so of the many disasters or crises that might occur in the world. You have to think through what that given disaster might look like, decide what success would look like and then plan for what resources, including expertise you might need to get the job done. But once you do that, all those participants need to develop their own procedures for how they are going to be successful in their piece of the response. On this episode, Josh Dozer, Director of the Planning and Exercise Division at FEMA headquarters, joins the FEMA podcast for a look at how FEMA and its partners plan for a variety of disaster and emergency scenarios. Some you would expect, but others you might be surprised by. From hurricanes to space, weather or tornadoes to Ebola, this episode of the FEMA podcast is all about disaster planning. Josh Dozer. Thanks so much for joining the FEMA podcast. [Josh Dozor] Thanks for having me. [Mark Peterson] So Josh, you are the Director of Planning and Exercises at FEMA, but also during response time, you’re the Chief of the National Response Coordination Center. So I would guess in your dual role of a sort of peace time or non-disaster time and then disaster time, you get to take the plans that your team gets to develop and actually start to implement them at the National Coordination Center. [Josh Dozor] Yeah. It's actually, it's kind of stressful because you become your own worst critic of what you just developed and you're reviewing and trying to use the plan and you're like, oh, I wish I did this differently, or I wish the plans said this. The helpful part about that is that going through the operations, it returns and how we improve the way we build and develop our plans for the future so we use our incidents to refine and improve the plans for the future. [Mark Peterson] Well then that makes sense why you would have that sort of dual role there and there's so many plans that FEMA develops and I think there are also a lot of plans that the public would be really interested to know that we're thinking about. I think people think that FEMA is looking at hurricanes and earthquakes and tornadoes and that type of response planning, but there are a variety of plans out there that we're looking at. [Josh Dozor] It's fun. It keeps you on your toes. One day, one hour I'm working on improvised nuclear device detonation. Next day I'm working on earthquake annex issue. Next day I'm working on a migration matter or space weather or food ag, it's constantly a learning experience. [Mark Peterson] So I thought what we could do here with this conversation is kind of run through some of the more unique planning endeavors that FEMA goes through, um, such as solar weather. Let's start there. Let's start with solar weather and what FEMA does to plan for the impacts of that. [Josh Dozor] Well, this is a good example of where our plan is not just to inform operations. Obviously you went to a formal operation to be useful for that, but it's also an opportunity to educate a community on a risk that they may not know anything about. A unique hazards, a rare hazard to understand different types of information is situational awareness reports and the complexities that are not commonly known. Uh, the trick here with space weather is that there's, there can be very little warning, you know, we were just starting to measure the sun and understand the sun and we might have 10 to 15 hours of warning that a coronal mass ejection might erupt, but then we may only have 30 or 45 minutes to understand that it might have direct impacts on us and in the same time our understanding or modeling of what physical impacts we might experience as a result of a coronal mass ejection from the sun is really not well known. We're still in this study and research and understanding phase. [Mark Peterson] Talk about what we do know about the impacts on earth from those types of ejections. [Josh Dozor] Well, we've, we history has, if you look back at history and the impacts the infrastructure in the past, there have been solar weather incidents in the past, a big ones. Uh, the Carrington example scenario is the one that we used over and over again, but our infrastructure was in the telegraph stage at the time. So what would be its impact with modern technology and modern infrastructure? Our reliance on GPS satellites, our reliance on, uh, the upload and download information or just in time expectations to have information or fingertips. Uh, we're not really sure what the physical impacts will actually be. The, the, the, the grid, how secure are resilient is our grid? In one way, we're more reliant on the power infrastructure, so we're, we're vulnerable. But on the other hand, our grid infrastructure is being developed and maintained to be more robust every day. And are the utilities understanding of what to do to protect their sector, uh, improves every day so the impacts could range from not at all. In fact, they, for instance, happen all the time, but you don't even realize it. A geomagnetic storm of one or two or three happens pretty regularly. Uh, we had a geomagnetic storm before, during Hurricane Maria, and we were worried that there would be impacts and ultimately were not substantial impacts. Uh, the most significant impacts we've received lately have been disruptions to our communications. [Mark Peterson] So that's the type of thing that you'd be looking at in the plan for a solar weather event. [Josh Dozor] Yeah. So we'll be looking, let's imagine it though, the biggest one happened, the geomagnetic five, storm solar of five. Um, the trick here in the space weather planning, is how do we coordinate with the private sector who owns the infrastructure to have them ramp up and begin their protective actions to secure the infrastructure, because we don't own the infrastructure, uh, we rely on the utility, so the plan late weighs heavily on our coordination with the owners and operators to make precautions themselves and then to quickly get ready and transitioned to response mode. And the way we respond after the incident is much the same we would respond to an earthquake or a hurricane. [Mark Peterson] Oh. So you're looking at not just the power outage aspect, but you also mentioned the communications aspect. So is it the same there? You're working with the private sector to get, identify what those impacts could be and then try to work with them to figure out how to get them back up on online. [Josh Dozor] Exactly. So if we had noticed we would have to work closely with department energy to transportation, the FCC for them to sync up with their sector partners so they would respond in a similar fashion that they would take protective action. So, so for example, the FAA may obstruct the airlines to adjust their courses of travel or too change elevations of travel. Uh, the FCC or in Department of Energy might instruct their partners to either turn off certain systems or to elevate the power system so they could withstand a higher load of energy going through the systems. These are the types of protective measures in partnerships we need to have in place with the private sector more and more. [Mark Peterson] That's an example of a situation where we might experience a major outage of those, uh, entities like power and communications. But you also are planning for certain, um, uh, nuclear and radiological events, sort of like an improvised nuclear device, which is a very scary possibility, but it leads to some very interesting planning. Can you talk a little bit about that? [Mark Peterson] Yeah. So the nuclear radiological planning was one of the first incident annexes we built. This is all available on our internet site. You can google it and find it on the FEMA website, but this is the one that forced us to really grapple with an untenable situation that forces to set priorities to do the most good for the greatest number of effective survivors. Um, we would, we would force us to respond in a manner that we don't traditionally respond. I'll give you example. When a hurricane earthquake, we rushed to send search and rescue. We rushed to send medical personnel to save lives. For a nuclear device kind of situation, our priority is to get situational awareness, to understand where the radiation plume will go, and to instruct citizens to shelter in place, to go inside, stay inside and stay tuned for instructions. And that's where we're going to save the most lives. And then we have to understand the situation so that we could move from the outside in and stage our resources in areas where we could do the most good for the most amount of people. It's really going to stretch our capabilities. That's really going to stress our abilities to work in concert with the Department of Defense. Uh, it's, it also presents a lot of new capabilities are unique capabilities that we don't traditionally respond with to be brought into the fight. [Mark Peterson] I would assume it also brings in a lot of partners that maybe aren't necessarily responding in a typical tornado or maybe hurricane event. [Josh Dozor] Exactly. So it changes the priorities of what we move, what assets we move, what we stage and in what order. It's also going to require us to stage a unique suite of resources that we don't really apply, like a personal protective equipment and dosimeters to track radiation exposure of our responders and our citizens. And plus you have to remember that you know, if some of these scenarios occur, it's as a result usually have a, it's likely to be the result of an act of terrorism. So there's a law enforcement angle to it. So we have to work in concert with the FBI, with Department Defense, other lead federal agencies. It's not just an earthquake where FEMA is the lead role, lead coordinator, there’s multiple lead coordinators in that type of incident. [Mark Peterson] Earlier on you mentioned one planning, uh, that I, I just really didn't think about and that’s food and agriculture. So what kind of events are we talking about there? [Josh Dozor] So, food/agriculture is an interesting one. We're in. We're in the, uh, final development phase of this, of this incident annex. We worked closely with a U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FDA, uh, as a lead federal agencies on this. What's unique about food ag is that there's actually different sub plans within food ag. You need, you need a branch to focus just on the food subsector, you need a branch to focus just on the plant sub sector, just on the animal sub sector. And of course, again, if there's intentional actions, it changes the whole concept of operations, and the lead agencies as well. The other thing that's unique about food ag is a, the phases are very different from our traditional response. A Tornado, the period of response is days maybe a week. A hurricane, it could be days or weeks. An earthquake, it could be maybe months. For a food ag incident, it can be years. Uh, the other, the other element, uh, of unique that's unique to food ag is that, uh, it's almost completely private sector run. There are food, agricultural incidents all the time. You get notices on a salmonella scare and in all different types of produce and you get those notifications and their, the sector is responding all the time. The infrastructure set up to respond all the time. Uh, so we're not technically the lead in most of those scenarios, uh, so we have to learn how we compliment and support and supplement with the private sector is already doing. With the areas where it would be a biggest concern in a food or agriculture instances is where it's large scale and its affecting survivors. So it's affecting businesses where there is, there could be a, a significant unemployment which requires individual assistance and mass care assistance. But this is a unique one. We have not really been hit hard with a, with a really bad food agricultural incident that requires FEMA to coordinate a federal response. [Mark Peterson] So if FEMA we're involved in a response like that, are we talking not just about the coordination role of FEMA, but maybe commodities that would have to be brought in to sort of replace the food loss that is maybe not there in a community?[Josh Dozor] It all depends on how badly impacted the community is, but traditionally the sector, the food supply sector will do its job to route the supply chain to, to restock the supplies and provide its commercial services to Americans. You know, the private sector, it's in their best interest to adjust and accommodate the supply chain to do the most good. So it's likely that they won't expect us to stand up kitchens and mass feeding operations that see an earthquake or hurricane. We instead, we're going to have to find a way to enable the private sector partners to be successful. Do they need regulatory relief? Do they need security measures? Do they have lodging issues? Uh, these are the type of areas where we, we have to adjust our thinking to how we enable the sectors to be successful. [Mark Peterson] So each of those different planning activities that we just mentioned, they all sort of revolve around some type of scenario, right? So how do you build or try to understand that base scenario that you're planning towards? How has that developed? [Josh Dozor] Um, it's actually, it's an interesting process because it requires a great deal of negotiation with our partners. Uh, each lead federal agency has their own agenda and objectives and goals for their planning initiative. Uh, a couple things to keep in mind is we want the scenario to sufficiently test our capabilities and stress our capabilities to force us to consider the full suite of operations, the full suite of capabilities and might need to be brought to bear. But on the other hand, if it's too bad, it actually interferes with our ability to execute our operations and to, and to do our job and an execution of a normal authorities. So it's a balancing. So it's a constant balancing and negotiation we play with our partners. Um, and more and more we're using national labs modeling tools and capabilities to display different types of scenarios. Sometimes we'll look at multiple scenarios we could have sequels, we can have branches. Um, our rule of thumb is we try to create the plausible worst case scenario where it's plausible, it's a likelihood of occurring, but it's a worst case scenario where we test our assumptions and challenge our assumptions. A pitfall that we’ll fall into if we're not careful, is to plan to an assumption that's too safe. [Mark Peterson] Or vice versa, plan to an assumption that is to sort of Sci-Fi I would guess. [Josh Dozor] Right. And as the result you'll have a plan that will never be used or won’t be useful. [Mark Peterson] Yeah, that makes sense. Let's talk about a couple of other non-traditional or kind of unique disaster situations. A couple of years ago we saw an Ebola outbreak in Africa. And so was FEMA thinking through the impacts that might happen if that disease were able to travel across continents? [Josh Dozor] Yeah. So this was really interesting. This is a really interesting incident. First of all, even before the Ebola, if you take us back before the Ebola incident occurred, we just started doing a biological instinct planning based upon the Anthrax scenarios. And we were working with the public health community and we were using the planning function as a vehicle to merge and integrate the public health with discipline with the emergency manager discipline. And we were developing medical countermeasures, dispensing plans in cities. Uh, one of those cities was Dallas, Fort Worth area, uh, not knowing Ebola would occur. Ebola pops up and next thing you know, FEMA is forced into crisis action planning mode. In other words, we don't have a plan for every scenario, nor do we want to have a plan for every situation. We need to be able to adapt our plans to the requirements and characteristics of the situation. Ebola forced us to do that, but because of the medical countermeasure planning and biological attacks, general planning we were doing with the state's beforehand, a lot of the coordination constructs in unity of effort between those two communities, public health emergency management, were made. And I, I believe that the planning that was done before Ebola, on anthrax, actually helped us gain speed and achieve unity of effort quicker than we would have with Ebola. Some of the things that were unique to Ebola that we had to perform crisis action planning for was our support to multiple different lead federal agencies. So HHS obviously for the public health crisis, but also the department of State on the repatriation of US citizens and the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, on the receipt and processing of travelers coming through U.S. ports. So as travelers were coming into our ports, they had to be coordinated with the states and locals to screen them, make sure they don't have symptoms of Ebola and if they did, where they would go and how they would be cared for. [Mark Peterson] or they weren't in a risk area at some point.[Josh Dozor] And not to expose other people. So all of that required credit section planning and we actually employed some drills and some training and just in time exercises within those major ports of entry for that are receiving the travelers from Africa to make sure we're on the same page is set up for that. [Mark Peterson] There's probably a lot of events that just sort of pop up or evolve very, very rapidly Ebola doesn’t strike me as necessarily one of those sort of strikes me as one that we, yes, it, it sort of comes along very quickly, but it's further away from our shores so we have some time to anticipate it. But there's probably a lot of events here on, on the U.S. soil that maybe evolve very rapidly. I'm thinking of the explosion in West Texas, which was a, I think a chemical plant, that it was a major operation that was mostly facilitated by locals. But then FEMA also did have a role in that one. Uh, there has been space shuttle disasters where FEMA had a role. Um, and even some water crises in certain select cities that um, FEMA had to play a, some sort of a support role to the state. So it is that critical action planning process. Is that what you use for those types of events that evolved very quickly that maybe we didn't foresee or couldn't think through ahead of time? [Josh Dozor] Yeah, absolutely. Your goal is for the plan to outline your concept of operations is to help you get you unity of effort with your, with your different agencies and with the states, at the outset, but you always have to adapt it. For the West Texas explosion, you know, that was not a, it was not a large scale incident that we would not have a plan for that, but we were able to adapt our all hazards plan our all hazards, emergency operations plan, and chemical incident annexes that we have for that effort. Um, space shuttle disaster. That's a unique one because it forces us to apply these concepts for a single disaster and apply to over multiple state area. Uh, also involving very hazardous materials. Even radiological materials and nuclear materials, so we have to take bits and pieces of sometimes multiple plans and form that together into an action plan during an incident to be applied. For example, you might take the unique radiological and nuclear capabilities in defense capabilities that are in a RAD/NUC plan for the space shuttle disaster, but then apply a biological concept for coordination because it expands multiple different areas of responsibility, multiple jurisdictions and multiple regions. [Mark Peterson] So you have this document that's put together this planning document that's based on these scenarios you've thought through it with experts you've thought through some of the preparedness activities and what you anticipate the response activities to be. How do you translate the plan or deliver the plan or help the leader of the event, execute that plan in a meaningful way going forward to help citizens?[Josh Dozor] The first way to do it, the first way you should be doing that is socialized in the plans even before an incident. And this is an area where we honestly, we have room for improvement. We could always do better on. We need to better train to the plans that we have. We need to better socialize and plans we have, and make sure our senior leadership is, is up to speed with the concepts and requirements that are in there so it requires less lead up time once an incident occurs, uh, to be able to execute during. [Mark Peterson] It sounds like it, it's like the adage, the plan doesn't really do any good if it's just gathering dust on a shelf. Yeah, you gotta take it down. [Josh Dozor] You got to talk about it. And there's so many competing requirements are so many the scenarios. One way to do that is to link the plan schedule, the exercise schedule, and we've done that too. Uh, so we'll use an exercise as a force you function to do planning together and socialize with our leadership in our field membership on these planning concepts. That's a good examples are a, we are updated the New Madrid Seismic Zone earthquake plan in regions four, five, six, and seven right now. For that reason, we are timing a major exercise in 2019 to test that plan. The exercise is scheduled for next year, but it's forcing us and our partners to participate in the planning efforts in a meaningful way. We did the same exact staggered planning the exercise, a scheduling concept for the Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Northwest for the Alaska earthquake concept for the national level exercise in 2018, which we just conducted for a hurricane scenario, in region three. Region three is using that exercise as a means to update and maintain their plan and to socialize their efforts. During an incident, it’s our job is to convert to not just the Crisis Section Planning Mode, but to take, pull, translate and adapt those tasks that are in the plan and put them into our means for tasking departments and agencies and our own selves during execution during an incident. Then track our progress to it. We traditionally, during an incident, will track to what, how well we are executing the plan. Do we execute all the, all the tasks? Do we have any complications over it? Do we need new ones in there? Uh, the plan is a good third party objective, overseer, uh, to make sure that we were executed appropriately. [Mark Peterson] So, Josh, when you're developing these plans, which can be really complicated, uh, what are some of the pitfalls or challenges that the planners are facing as they're developing the ultimate document? [Josh Dozor] Well, I think the most common critique I have, for our own planning, uh, as it arises, is playing it easy. Uh, we, we can't just merely restate what the roles and responsibilities that are already understood and not challenging assumptions. We need to think outside the box and if we fall into that trap of playing it easy, than the plan loses its fidelity. Also, unifying concepts in print, in the preferences of multiple agencies and jurisdictions. Let's say you want to engage in a plan jointly with a state or with the territory, with other lead federal agencies. Will other federal agencies have their own authorities and preferences and agenda that they want to pursue. Our job is to get a good plan together, but not everyone agrees on what their concepts should be and that there no one agrees with the goals and objectives should be, not everyone agrees with the scenario should be you and you want to have a plan that, that tests and applies all the supporting concepts that are going to come across from a variety of different situations. If you build a scenario in too difficult of a way, not everyone's going to be able to play and participate and you hurt your ability to get participation from across the board. Uh, another one, another pitfall is if we don't do enough information analysis, you need to do a great deal of research and analysis at the beginning. Uh, if you, if you go short on that, then that will result in less actionable courses of action. If you have less actionable courses of action, then you have a less than desirable, not usable plan at the end. And then at the end you'll have to go back to the beginning and do the information analysis all over again. So you really have to invest the time into coordinate with all the agencies, with the labs, with the subject matter experts, and do a lot of a lot of shoe leather diplomacy to make sure everyone's on the same page. And the last one is participation from all different types of functions. You know the reason why the biological incident annex that we did is so important in my mind is because it integrated the emergency management with the public health community. The most important element to the oil can annex is its integration with the law, enforce community in the hazardous materials community with emergency management. Same thing with our counter terrorism plans integrated with the law enforcement community. We need to branch out, we need to network with other communities, other disciplines and functions integrate our concepts so that when this situation actually happens, we've already thought through, we already know each other, we already trusted each other.[Mark Peterson] And it's not just heart that horizontal integration with other federal agencies. It's also the vertical working with the locals. [Josh Dozer] Absolutely, great point. We can't build a national plan and expect it to be executed in the field, unless we nest it with the regions and with the locals and we have to use the regional offices, uh, in a real way at our head, at the headquarters level. We can’t just do our own planning and have the regions do their own planning. We need to do it together. We need the plans to nest and some, some efforts are going to be top down, driven by policy and a lot of it gonna be bottom up driven by realities of the situation. New scenarios that arise and the low and the planning and complications that arise at the local level are the best forcing functions for us to drive which national planning efforts we engage in. [Mark Peterson] I'm going to ask you a question about something that pops up from time to time in different scenarios. And that's the issue of funding. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has a disaster relief fund that comes, we're able to utilize when disasters are declared or and even sometimes right before their declared. So we have the funds kind of always available to us to for our response, but other agencies when we're doing these sort of integrated planning with other agencies, they don't. They don't have that funding. So does the funding aspect of the response ever come into play in the planning? [Josh Dozer] It's probably the most important and stressful conversation that happens during every planning effort in the beginning of every incident. if it's an earthquake or hurricane, we have the Stafford Act and we have the Disaster Relief Fund and we mission assign all the departments and agencies to execute tasks that are necessary for this and it's pretty seamless. We're very good at. But let's say it's a different lead federal agency for scenario that is not a Stafford Act, like a biological scenario, like an unaccompanied children migration situation. Like an oil chemical incident. Then you not just have differently lead federal agencies, we have different sources of funding authorized and required by Congress, so in some cases the funding is completely dependent upon Congress to appropriate supplemental appropriations. If there's no supplemental appropriations, then departments and agencies have to execute their tasks and to support those agencies with their own resources and they usually start doing that, but there's funds could dry up pretty quickly. So it's a very careful consideration that we apply on what resources are available, what is practical, and how we managed different tasks being executed based from different sources of funding. [Mark Peterson] So what, what ultimately makes a good plan? How do you know that it was a, an effective plan or not? [Josh Dozer] Yeah, really good question. First and foremost, you need buy in. You need good strong collaboration amongst your stakeholders and your senior leaders. If they don't buy into it, if they don't believe in it, they don't, uh, agree with the concepts, then it's not worth the paper it's written on. So that first, what's critical to that is to make sure you have a strong collaborative planning team, uh, amongst all the lead agencies, amongst, with your leadership at the very beginning. They need to own that plan, uh, and agree with it. Um, so that, and that's probably one of the most important parts about making a plan. Uh, it also has to be feasible. You can't write a plan using capabilities that don't exist. You can't write a plan that has a lot of notional activities that you hope would occur if it's not feasible to be executed, if the resources don't exist, the capacity to execute does not exist. And again, it's not really executable. [Mark Peterson] That'd be like a, you know, just practically speaking. That's a situation where you have this event that causes massive power outage and you're depending your planning as if all of the radio stations are up and running or all the television stations are up and running. [Josh Dozer] You also can't write a plan that says you have a generator for every nine one, one center, because we don't have enough generators and it takes time to install them. So you can't plan that you would install a generator every night at a nine one, one center immediately. You have to take into account reality logistics, and physics into the equation. It has to be feasible to drive your operations. Uh, it also has to be actionable. We can't play it safe, uh, and just write what everyone should be doing. It needs to have optionality in it. It needs to have details to form operational decision making. It needs to have a detail to help us address complex situations, dynamic situations. The more detail we have on logistics, throughput, and how we transport a lot of resources through a limited throughput of ports and ports of entry, the better we'll be able to make a food decisions during the incident. Uh, and lastly, it has to be user friendly. If it's too big, if it's too cumbersome to read immediately during the incident, it's not going to be used. So we always have to challenge ourselves to find ways to make the plans easier to read and easy, easier to extrapolate, find and extrapolate and use the actual information in various sections quickly in a, in a high pressure situation. [Mark Peterson] And the way we test that is through exercises. [Josh Dozer] It’s through exercises. I like to think that every exercise results in incremental improvements in all of our plans. And one region might build a plan and will exercise it and come up with key lessons learned and not only with their own region update its plan, but other regions are watching and they'll refine their plans to be improved based upon the situations. So over time they're all constantly improving. We're all finding new ways of, of doing planning better in and to write down the actions and more actual way. [Mark Peterson] A number of these plans are very scary scenarios. Some of the scenarios might result in some very prolonged inconveniences to citizens. Um, but ultimately how do you help leaders in government from the White House down understand what those impacts could be, help them have empathy for the people that are going through this scenario all ahead of time? How do you, you know, sort of socialize these plans and all of that goes with them with those senior leaders?[Josh Dozer] Great question. You know, I've worked every disaster since 2007 and one that comes to mind on your question, which is Hurricane Sandy. You know, our senior leaders didn't really understand how the electrical sector worked with the role of the utilities were versus the roles of the federal government. Uh, what where areas we could support the restoration or where areas we could not support the restoration. Uh, and because our senior leaders didn't understand how the sector worked and how power generation worked, there were some wheel spinning. We went down some rabbit holes we should not have done. From that Hurricane Sandy experience we've done power outage annexes to help do that. Again, the point of a plan is not just the Annex or operations, but as to educate and inform our leadership and our operators what and how this sector works or how this area of responsibility works or how this discipline works. And armed with that, there's plans like The Power Outage Incident Annex and others, we're doing one more exercise at the most senior leader levels. So even our senior official exercise at the White House, they're linked to the planned schedule. Uh, we had some White House exercises on a, not just power outage, but hurricanes and preparation for the hurricane season in advance of radiological nuclear threats, the biological threats, cyber threats, and each of those that were using those exercise an opportunity to not just educate them on the situation and the scenario of the threats, but also the operating plans and concepts that they're going to be charged to execute and monitor and oversee. [Mark Peterson] So that example of hurricane sandy sounds like a perfect example of a, a lessons learned that translates into new action and new informed planning. So as we look back on the 2017 hurricane season, is there anything that stands out in your mind that will be a sort of translated into new planning? [Josh Dozer] Oh yeah. Yeah. So 2017 hurricane. The hurricanes were really, uh, really stressed our system, um, you know, we had plans for hurricane in Texas, we had plans for hurricanes in Florida and we had plans for a hurricane response in Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. We didn't sufficiently test or challenge our assumptions in some of those areas. So a good example is in Puerto Rico, our assumption was that we would stage in the U.S. Virgin Island and for the U.S. Virgin Islands plan, our assumption was that we would stage and Puerto Rico. We didn't challenge the idea that maybe both islands, both territories would be hit with category five hurricanes within weeks of each other. So it really pushed us to do just in time Crisis Action Planning on how to move a limited, a great mal of resources through a limited throughput through air, sea transportation modes. Uh, so, but we did it during the incident. And so right now we're updating the Caribbean Hurricane Plan through our region two office, uh, to take the lessons from those actual incidents. To take the resource phasing plan that we did during the incident and to refine it and improve it and mortalize it in the steady state, a hurricane response plan. We're going to be using US Transcom and the Department of Defense and enhance modeling and analytical tools and Department of Defense to do an analysis of our throughput capabilities or limitations and how we optimize what moves when, where, to get the most to these islands, and do the greatest good. Region six is updating their Texas Hurricane Plan. They do that on an annual basis. And then region four is constantly updating their plans and exercising them with their states this season. [Mark Peterson] As we look to the 2018 hurricane season, I know that you have a very big job and, uh, both, both jobs yet in planning as well as in the National Response Coordination Center that sort of coordinates the overall national response with the FEMA region. So I want to thank you very much for spending time with us and, uh, going over some of these really important planning efforts. [Josh Dozer] Thanks for having me. [Mark Peterson] We've linked to this episode on our FEMA Facebook page and we invite you to join the conversation in the comments. If you have ideas for a future topic, send us an email@FEMA-. If you would like to learn more about this episode or other topics, visit podcast. ................
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