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Transcript: Surge Capacity Force[John Rabin]:Everybody serves in their own way. This is a way that you could actually serve your fellow citizens in a face to face way, and that's incredibly valuable when you see the resilience of the people of this nation and you get to help build that resilience by supporting folks in their time of need. It's an incredibly valuable and incredibly worthwhile experience. [Mark Peterson]: I'm Mark Peterson, and this is the FEMA podcast. [Mark Peterson]: In 2006, Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to create a surge capacity force consisting of non FEMA employees from various federal agencies. The surge capacity force was intended to augment FEMA staff during presidentially declared disasters when disaster response and recovery activities begin to stress FEMA’s own staffing. The surge capacity force has been deployed only twice during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and the 2000 and 17 Atlantic hurricane season. In fact, from August 2017 through February 2018, DHS, the Department of Homeland Security activated the surge capacity force to support disaster response efforts for hurricanes, Harvey, Irma, and Maria, as well as the California wildfires. During this activation, FEMA deployed both DHS employees and expanded participation in the Department of Homeland Security surge capacity force to other federal agencies. Over 4,000 surge capacity force volunteers were successfully deployed and integrated into FEMA disaster operations. During this historic activation, many surge capacity force members fulfilled key leadership roles and extended their deployments beyond the initial 45 days to continue serving survivors and communities in need. On this episode, we talked to John Rubin from FEMA about the unique aspects of the surge capacity force and how FEMA can rely on its federal partners to rise to the challenge of helping Americans and our greatest times of need. [Mark Peterson]: John, the region to Overseas Puerto Rico and us, Virgin Islands last year was an incredibly active hurricane year and it really stressed the capabilities of FEMA and our partners, but also famous. [John Rabin]: Oh yeah. Without a doubt. We had in FEMA region two. One of the interesting parts about being in FEMA region two, since its New York, New Jersey and the regional offices at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. The FEMA region two staff is oftentimes, not only are they responding to disasters and exercising a programs in recovery for disaster, but oftentimes they are survivors themselves, uh, when, when sandy hit in 2012, that affected a significant portion of the, of the regional staff who all lived in a who lived in region two and was by sandy. So whether it was themselves with their families or their friends or the communities, they all were affected by it. And a Puerto Rico, uh, that was the same thing when Irma hit first and then Maria, it is not just us affecting our job, but these are the storms are hitting our colleagues and our friends and our families. And that's a, that adds a level of stress to the, to the response as well, [Mark Peterson]: you know, I think the public would be surprised to know how small FEMA is as an agency. So the size of our workforce, we have a couple of different types of employees. Can you walk me through those? [John Rabin]:Sure. So we have, um, we have, uh, we have, uh, multiple types of employees. At FEMA, we have our PFTs are fulltime, a permanent full time employees that are mostly in headquarters and then the regional offices and then we have our core employees that are our are our response folks that um, the cadre of on-all response employees, uh, and that makes up a lot of our folks that actually respond to the disasters. We also have reservists and our reserves are another version of our on call employees who we call when there are disasters that we need to supplement it if the [inaudible] and the regional staff and the corps a need more support. We bring in our reservists as well. And then, uh, once a disaster occurs, we also hire a local hires. Those are folks that are hired as local from the local community to support our FEMA programs as well. [Mark Peterson]: So generally speaking, a disaster occurs. The first people that are looking at the disaster from a FEMA perspective are those full time employees. People are there all the time. [John Rabin]: It's really our corps and our PFT is. And especially our folks in the regional office and the regional office is made up of some cores as well as some PFTs and that's really that first area of, of where we go. And then after that we go into more of our core employees as well. And then you get to our tier three, which is the surge capacity force, which is our tier three and our tier four a responders. [Mark Peterson]: So you mentioned this a second ago, but what, what is the surge capacity force then if we have these FEMA employees that are these full time employees, cores, which are also full time employees. And then the reservists. When does the surge capacity? Well, first of all, define what surge capacity force. [John Rabin]: Sure. So the surge capacity force is really kind of what his name is when we get to the point where there are multiple disasters like we saw in 2017 or a large disasters like we saw in 2012 with Sandy, where when you start looking at all of the resources that FEMA has, the, the Pft is our cores are reservists, uh, and we still have more requirements for staffing. We can reach out to what's called the surge capacity force. And the surge capacity force is exactly what the name is. It's a force of folks that we can surge to help build our capacity. The surge capacity force came out of the camera, the Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act in 2006 requires the department to have this on call group of folks to a supplement FEMA staff. Um, it's includes not just our DHS folks, but also our, our folks from other executive branches as well. So that's what the surge capacity force is. And we have used them only twice a. So since the, since the camera, we've used them once and sandy and we use them again this fall in 2017. [Mark Peterson]: was it always that the surge capacity force was open to other federal agencies? Or was it initially DHS? [John Rabin]: Um, it's always been open to both to other federal agencies and DHS, we normally use the DHS folks first. That's the tier three aspect of this because, um, it's, it's a little easier to reach them. We all have the same boss, so that helps to be able to reach those search capacity over the DHS components a little bit easier. [Mark Peterson]: What kind of, what kind of jobs do they fill? [John Rabin]: So we take the surge capacity force and we embed them and use them in really all of our cadres. So we have 23 cadres. That's everything from our, our disaster. Our Dad's asked her assistance folks to safety and security to logistics operations, all of our cadres of how we structure and organize our, our disaster workforce and the surge capacity force folks can fit into all of those. So the way it works is when the surge capacity force gets alerted in and everybody signs up for the surge capacity force through their components. So every component has a point of contact and that point of contact registers folks and keeps folks signed up for the surge capacity force when we need them. Uh, the secretary or the administrator makes a request to the secretary. The secretary then sends out a note activating the surge capacity force and folks that are in the search brass force receive emails that alert notifications through FEMA to report to wherever the staging area is going to be. [John Rabin]: And for 2017 we sent them all to CDP the center for domestic preparedness in Anniston, Alabama, where we had a personnel mobilization center, a PMC that brought all of the search capacity folks in there. And when they got in there, what they did is they came in there and we asked them a bunch of questions, filled out a bunch of forms so that we gathered all of their skills that they had. And then we provided them some just in time training to build off of those skills. And then we sent them to wherever their skills were best suited into what cadre to what part of the disaster. It's important to note though here that sometimes the needs of the disaster, a override, the skills that the surge capacity force are really for that matter. Anybody in FEMA does so early on in a, in a, in this disaster, we needed more people to handle at to work in our NPSC, as our national processing service centers, which require, which is where a survivors use the one 800 number to call FEMA and register for assistance. We were between the millions of people in Houston, in Texas and in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and in Florida and the rest of the east coast. For Irma. We had a need to, to get the NPSC's needed more of that surge capacity force. So we sent folks there to go answer phones and do the registrations that were needed [Mark Peterson]: and they got like on the, on the job training, [John Rabin]: all about on the job training. We hear in field operations, we have a whole group of about 100 folks that do just in time training at the DMC in Alabama or at the NPSCs will wherever the forces needed, we'll go out there and do the training to make sure that they have the training necessary to do the jobs. [Mark Peterson]: It sounds really easy, uh, and sort of a question that I have. How do you get to a point where you can tap into resources beyond what your agency has as quickly as that in government? [John Rabin]: There's a couple of answers to that. Number one is folks that joined the surge capacity force. Actually I'll even back up a little further. When you join the government, whether it's the local government, the state government, the federal government, you joined the military services. You are an, you're, you're an optimist and you want to help people. So when we send the call out that says we need help. We have people that are breaking the doors down to come help us because that's why we all joined the federal government is to help people. So we get a lot of folks that are already there to help when you read about, when you read about disasters that are happening and you see the suffering of our fellow citizens, folks want to help and that's everybody from communities and individuals all the way up to our partners and our colleagues in the federal government. So these folks are motivated to help people. And then all we need to do at that point is how do we channel that, get them all in here and get them through our process to get them to help survivors as quickly as we can. So what makes it, what makes it challenging is it to deal with the, the processing and the bureaucracy of it. What is incredibly rewarding is seeing the amount of people that want to help and helping these guys, helping them to help us. [Mark Peterson]: There has to be a, for lack of a better word, bureaucratic hurdles to making this happen. Um, so you know, for the people who are interested in government and how government works, each agency is appropriated funds to do their mission. And when you are bringing in employees who are appropriated for that agency and that agency's mission onto, into our fold in our agency and our agency's mission, how does that, how does that work? [John Rabin]: Sure. So, uh, yes, there's always a, there's always process challenges and bureaucracy, bureaucratic challenges, um, in, in any government for that matter, not just the federal government. So the way we handle those is we, the surge capacity for us is a priority of the secretary. It's a. and when it's a priority of the secretary, it becomes a priority for the components and what sobriety for the components. It becomes a priority for the agency, the, the entire department. So when we go out there and request people to volunteer and join the service, we are working with those employees to get them trained and get them ready to go so they can deploy to help. And that's what our surge capacity force managers do a here and field operations that work with the component surge capacity force points of contact. We also have a management structure there of. We've got a division director and some other managers and deputy assistant administrator. And the Admin of the system integrator who are working on those bureaucratic challenges to make sure that we are smoothing over all of the challenges that we have of taking people from out of a job that they might need to do to make sure that we are providing the resources that they need. We're providing the notification that communication of how long they're going to be, what jobs are going to do, things like that. [Mark Peterson]: How long are they generally deployed for? [John Rabin]: So we normally deploy them for, we tell them to expect to be deployed for about 45 days. Um, that's, that's a pretty good planning tool for them to know that they'll be gone for 45 days. Um, it's also important for them to know that I'm depending on the disaster, uh, it's likely going to be some pretty austere conditions down there. So the concept of having, um, you know, uh, air conditioning and power on a consistent basis is this may not actually happen. So folks need to be prepared that it's going to be austere. It's gonna be difficult. Um, and they need to understand that those 45 days are going to be very stressful both emotionally, potentially physically as well. So we want to make sure that the, that they understand all the expectations of that. [Mark Peterson]: Um, I, you know, I can echo that when I was working in Florida for Irma, I think as you watch the news and you see the coverage of the impacts of the storm in Puerto Rico, you can understand those austere conditions, but you often don't realize that as we're moving large amounts of staff to support people all throughout the state of Florida, you think, well, I'm going to Florida. There's probably plenty of hotels. It's not going to be that, um, that rustic. And I'm not saying it was rustic and in Florida, but we did require people to sleep on cots because we're moving large amounts of people. And you don't want to take up hotel space for survivors. [John Rabin]: That's exactly right. That's a, that's a really important point to make is that our, our mission is to help survivors. And if that means that we're going to take a hotel room that could be used by a survivor or a family or we're not gonna do that. So we often times, especially in these larger disasters, have a brilliant structure with our logistics partners to set up base camps to allow for folks to rest more in the field and those, some of those austere conditions to ensure that the survivors who are our priority have the hotel rooms so that we never want to compete with them. So we will always err on the side of allowing more of that space. [Mark Peterson]: And I think we did that in Texas for Hurricane Harvey, right? [John Rabin]: Yep. We do. We do it in a, in a lot of them, in almost all of the major disaster. We're prepared to do all of that to make sure that the survivors of the priority. [Mark Peterson]: It's totally voluntary though. Um, so an employee say of customs and border protection, if they wanted to join the search passive force, it's totally, totally, [John Rabin]: totally up to the individuals to be able to do that. We liked, we've got, we work with the components to sort of set some targets, for lack of a better term of how many people would like to join the surge capacity force. Um, so we, we look at the surge capacity force from the individual and then as we talked to them at the leadership level to the component leadership, there's two points that, um, we do to sort of solve some of that bureaucracy. Number one is we actually mission assign the search capacity folks to, uh, from the components to famous. So what that means is, is that that allows for, that allows for us to provide some compensation for them to pay them so that their work that they're doing for us actually gets paid for by our disaster funding mechanisms. So that's a, it's an important part of solving some of that, some of that, um, uh, some of that bureaucratic challenge. Additionally, when they work overtime, we cover the overtime as well because in a disaster, as you can imagine, there's no such thing as an eight and a half hour workday. Workday starts when it starts and ends when it ends because that's, we are doing our best to relieve suffering and helps ambition. It's a 24 hour day job, especially in the early parts of the disaster. It's an all hands on deck for all day. [Mark Peterson]: I wonder if you've heard any feedback from any surge capacity members? Sure. Talking about their experiences. [John Rabin]: We've had a bunch of feedback from some surge capacity folks. Um, for the most part, they absolutely love it. Um, they get to do things differently. They get to help people. They get to do jobs that they would never have thought that they were going to do, whether it is working in logistics, running, um, you know, working in warehouses and moving equipment and moving pallets of food to actually handling and delivering food and water to survivors. It's the interaction with survivors at the end. It's the interaction with their citizens that these folks are most get the most out of, enjoy the most and find the most rewarding. So there are a couple of different stories that we've heard. One of which was we had a person from NASA who is actually out in the virgin islands who was running a, a disaster recovery center, works in NASA and probably sends people to space and, uh, is helping do the DRC and could not, was talking to our deputy administrator about how much he was really enjoying it and getting a tremendous amount of, of joy and satisfaction from that job. [John Rabin]: And that was a great story that I think stuck with a lot of other folks. We had other folks that were in Irma in Florida who was not only a, she was a DHS employee, but not only was she a going out there and helping folks and doing what's called the our DSA or are our disaster survivor assistance teams are going out there and getting people to register and finding out what their needs were and, and doing some understanding of what the conditions in the field were. But she was also understood the, the, the general role that FEMA plays in this. Where when you, when you sit there and see that FEMA is job is to coordinate that federal response. So when you see DOD assets that are out there, when you see ice assets that are out there and HHS assets that are out there in the corps of Engineers, all of that is a, all of that is a representative of how FEMA coordinates the entire federal response to disasters. [Mark Peterson]: If I were an employee of another agency and I were on the fence about, um, you know, talking to my supervisor about joining the surge capacity force, what would you tell them? [John Rabin]: I would tell them that they have the opportunity to help people when their fellow citizens need them the most. And there's nothing more rewarding than that. When you are out there in the field and you're dealing with a people that have lost their homes or have lost, lost their jobs and the foster homes, they have been totally damaged. Their communities, their friends, their families. All those things had been dramatically and affected by a disaster. When you can go out there and help them, there is nothing more rewarding than that. And everybody serves in their own way. Whether you serve your community, you serve your family, you serve your, your, uh, your church or synagogue or mosque, everybody serves in her own way. This is a way that you could actually serve your fellow citizens in a face to face way and that's incredibly valuable. It also gets to the point where you get the showcase. What is great about this nation? When you see the resilience of the people of this nation and you get to help build that resilience by supporting folks in their time of need. It's an incredibly valuable and incredibly worthwhile experience. [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 future topic, send us an email@FEMA-podcast@FEMA.. If you would like to learn more about this episode or other topics, visit podcast. ................
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