Todd DeVoe: [00:00:00] How do we break that concept of Then I don't trust the government. It's not again. It's not by sitting in your office, typing on the keyboard. It's by you going out there, building that trust prior to a disaster occurring prior to an event hitting your community. And that they know when you show up and stop, who's that guy wearing that civil defense shirt.
They know. Money issues. I've talked to them a hundred times. They're not going to try to screw me over that. They're here actually to help me get through the process that they're not just coming to give me 750. If they're here for the longterm, it builds that trust. And trust is the bedrock of creating that anti fragile community.
Kyle King: Welcome back to the Christ Lent. Podcast in today's episode, we are going to stop by and talk with Todd DeVoe. Now Todd's been around the merchant management [00:01:00] community for a while, and he might know him from the United States, but he's been with the merchant management community for a number of years, including being on the international association of merchant managers to having his own nonprofit organization and foundation.
As well as having his own podcast in the past. And so every once in a while, I just want to sit down and talk to Todd and see how things are going in the United States, since we typically focus our work internationally and see how the merchant management community is doing. So join us today as we go into a long conversation around the merchant management community, the recent challenges and trends, and what we can do better as we try and unpack some of the more contentious aspects of what's happening in the community.
And also think about the future and what we can do better as we try and contribute to our own professional field. Todd, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us. Just to have a catch up and see how things are going.
Todd DeVoe: Yeah. It's always great talking to you, Kyle. It's a wonderful time to be able to talk across the vast United States and into the oceans and whatnot.
And it's amazing what [00:02:00] technology can do.
Kyle King: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's interesting though, in terms of all the different dynamics of working internationally versus the United States, and there's just, there's a lot going on. A lot of things are changing and. Maybe just as a quick catch up, since the last time we talked, it's been a while, what's been going on with you and what's been happening, I see that you're now with IEM, that's been a big change, so congratulations, and give us a quick update before we jump in.
Todd DeVoe: Yeah, this year, I'll talk about some stuff personally here, and then we can get into some professional stuff, I guess this is personal, professional. I ran for IEM, my second vice president, and I won. I appreciate everybody's support for me and we're going to move this organization forward to positive ways.
So I'm excited about the work that we're going to be doing at IEM. We have a great leadership team there with Kerry and Josh and Eric Gull as the secretary. I think that we have a really, a diversity of thought in that room and that's exciting for me. So that's one of the things I'm looking forward to.
I'm at the end of my [00:03:00] professional career. I'll get on the older side of things and retirement is looming in the near future. So I'm looking at what I'm going to do with that. And then I wanted to actually just say, I'm thinking about it. I know what I'm doing. I'm going to spend a lot more time writing and researching.
And even though I might not be actively in the UFC anymore, I will definitely be. Active in trying to push the profession forward
Kyle King: through. Oh, that sounds great. But that's not the only thing you're doing, right? So I just checked out your LinkedIn profile for a quick update. And I see the editor in chief of merchant management network.
And also you're working at the vice president of the foundation for the research and advancement of merchant management. So let's explore those a little bit. What's going on with the foundation there? What are you working on?
Todd DeVoe: Yeah, the foundation. So this is something that has been, we've been mulling over for a bit and it started like every great thing does.
It started with drinking some whiskeys in Grand Rapids, Michigan, [00:04:00] over in that great whiskey bar they have over there. And it was a few of us sitting around talking about what can we do to really advance emergency management and what is missing. And Kyle, before we started, we were having this conversation about the concept of the body of work.
And what does that mean? And how could we? Accumulate that body of work in one location and to be able to share this information with new and upcoming emergency managers and people who have been in the field for a long time. And as a profession, or as an organization that wants to be a profession, so there's that debate of whether a profession or not and we can argue that all day long.
But one of the areas is having a body of work that we can refer to. And, and so that's that thing that we're looking constantly at. That's what frame is all about. Matter of fact, we have a paper competition that we have rolled out and over the thousand dollar first price of 500 second prize [00:05:00] and 250 third price.
So if you are interested in writing and you want to, it's worldwide, as long as your nation allows it to occur, there's some rules like that, but so worldwide that you can participate in this or in this competition and we're looking To see where does emergency management belong in the organization. And that's one of these questions that needs to be tackled.
And we've talked about this for many years and that's where we're going with the paper competition through frame. So I think it's an exciting opportunity for people to really get involved in writing or those who haven't, those that are in academics that want to write. It's a great scholarship opportunity for students that are.
Looking for money to pay for school and a thousand dollars is a pretty good, the chunk of change. If you guys want to participate, I'll send you all the contact information that you can find at a frame. org. But we'll send you all the information, Kyle, so you can post it in the link if you'd like
Kyle King: to. Oh, that's great.
Yeah, we can certainly add that to the show notes so everybody can take a look. And I would highly encourage anybody who wants to publish a paper or [00:06:00] submit it to your competition to do. It's a great way to contribute to the advancement of the career field and just the, that space overall. And we were talking about this a little bit in terms of a body of work.
And because it, prior to us sort of hitting record and having a discussion, we, you and just, you and just use the term body of work. And for some reason that just caught me. Uh, it's not like I haven't heard the term before, but it just made me wonder about where the origin of that is coming from. Now you do have an academic background teaching at universities and things like that.
So it's largely coming from that. I haven't researched it, but I'm just thinking there, then that's really interesting in terms of if we look at the profession itself, emergency management, crisis management, and things like that. And then we think about what does a body of work mean? How are we contributing to the field and what is it that we're actually doing to be able to move the field forward, just like what you're talking about with your foundation and, and trying to move the work forward and, and to really, I wouldn't say it's almost, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's almost, it's not only internally for us, but it's also [00:07:00] externally.
It's so people can understand what the work is that is, seems to be lacking these days.
Todd DeVoe: No, it's absolutely, I think it's actually more important externally than it is internally. One of the struggles that we have across the world, and we've seen this by the conversations that are occurring on LinkedIn for practitioners from all over the place.
And I know that I have a few connections that are in Australia and New Zealand that, and https: otter. ai There's even conversation about rebranding, the idea of should we change it from emergency management because in the United States emergency management means one thing, in Europe it means something else, and crisis management seems to be the name du jour in Europe.
But basically the concept of what we do is the same. And even here in the United States, emergency management sometimes has some, is, is equivocated by, [00:08:00] for instance, they use Florida and Michigan as an example. In Michigan, when they put an emergency manager into a city, it's not what we do for a living as emergency managers, right?
It is a, basically somebody who comes in to fix the town more times than none. It's on a financial basis, right? Now, Flint's a very special case with a bunch of issues that were going on, but it wasn't an emergency manager leading the city. It was a city manager who becomes the emergency manager, quote unquote.
It's no wonder why the public is confused on what that means. And so when you start talking to the public, they go, Oh, what do you do? I'm an emergency manager. Okay. What is that? And everybody, anybody who's listened to me has heard the spiel before, but I'll say it again. Everybody knows what a firefighter does, everybody knows what a doctor does, everybody knows what a cop does, everybody knows what a nurse does, at least in general concepts of things, right?
But if you say emergency manager, they have no clue, and then they go, oh, like FEMA? [00:09:00] Yes, like FEMA, but locally, right? And they don't ever really know what FEMA does, they just know that's what's on TV when there's a big disaster, right? Our federal sisters and brothers, they get out there and they're on TV because that's the big dog in the fight.
As a local guy, it's hard to get TV time, right? Especially if you're in a large, like, municipality or market like I am here in Los Angeles. You get it every once in a while. And it's really special when you see an emergency manager talking about preparedness on, on local news, you're like, yes, we're getting the message out there, but normally it's around a disaster preparedness, but there's something you get one little spot there and it's a 60 second spot or something maybe, and then they go away from it.
It doesn't really help educate people what we do. And that's why I think we need to have that forward facing emergency papers, articles, and really reflecting on what we do. And in our profession from the day one, before you graduate for school and you get a job as an intern, or maybe even a full time job, if you're lucky, out the [00:10:00] gate and from that day until the day that you retire, What is that body of work that you do?
And we reward that, right? I am says, Hey, you're a CEM certified emergency manager. Take a look at the body of work that you've done over these period of time, at least five years. And we're going to reward you for that body of work that you've done. And to say that you are certified as a practitioner, an emergency man, or at least certified as an emergency manager, California had now has a, they call it a PEM.
The Professional Emergency Management Certificate, which is very, reflects a lot of what CEM is doing. Florida has one. I know there's other states out there that have it. I'm not going to go through all 50 states, but there are other states that have it. Other international bodies that look at your body of work you've done to reward you for that.
And, and so I think that outward reflection of having that CEM moniker at the end of your name. It's really important, not just for you, right? It's a good accomplishment and [00:11:00] congratulations for those that get it, but it's also so people that are outside of the emergency management can go, Oh, what is that?
And how does that apply to your position that you're working at? And I think all of those together really create a profession. And we, like I said, we can have this debate. I'll never do, I'll never say that emergency managers aren't a professional. I believe we're a profession. I've argued this multiple times.
I've had people push back on me. Only reason why I'm bringing the other side out is that, do we really mark that line of being a profession? And Carol Siwak, Dr. Siwak from, from North Dakota State has done a ton of work. And Jessica Jensen, Dr. Jensen from North Dakota State now with Rank Corporation has done a ton of work on this.
What does it mean? And I could take a twist on this conversation here in a second, but I want to put it back to you because, you know, I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
Kyle King: No, it's all really interesting and I know we're on video call now and the podcast is coming out in audio, but you're [00:12:00] wearing a civil defense shirt.
And so this is where taking into consideration the history and the origins of where this is and where it's going, it is really intriguing. And to be honest, I have, I struggle with this issue for a couple of reasons. One, let me sort of caveat what I'm about to say with one. I believe it is a profession. I believe it is a required sort of function of government.
I think it is something that has to happen. And it's part of having a stable and resilient society is to have emergency management and emergency managers in a prepared society. Now with that in mind, when you start working internationally and you start looking at all the different models out there, you start to, as you see the correlation between the two, but you also see how the different structures operate.
When you're having gendarmerie in, in France, or if you're having the, the caterpillary in Italy, and you're having the gendarme in the Netherlands as well. You just start to see the different structures and, and ways that people manage what they might call civil contingencies or, or crisis management or national crisis, whatever the case is.
So the, the, the terminology becomes, it just becomes a [00:13:00] sort of multi case useful across, and it all blends together. Even there's still civil protection and fire safety and all sorts of things that So working internationally has given me the benefit of losing some of the rigid nuance behind emergency management, where you have to have this, you have to have that, because there are different societies that accomplish very much the same thing, but they just do it in a different way.
It's a different organizational function. So you lose some of the rigid macability framework from the United States. It's not a negative that it's that way in the United States. Because every state and county, as you mentioned, is different anyway, but that you lose that framework and you pick up on the, what you already mentioned, the functions, what are we doing?
How are we coordinating? How are we providing relief and operations, EOCs and all that sort of largely the same with some nuance. Now, the, the other thing there is that the, many of the discussions that we're getting into now are, are much broader. And this is where I come into the point of, I not only support emergency management, but I think it should be [00:14:00] more.
And this is where I try to push the envelope on these discussions on LinkedIn, on various forums about, it has to be more, it has to be a function of governance, it has to be, because, and I say that because all the, when we look at the war situations and we look at the civil defense situations, we look at all that.
Even if we move into sort of long term recovery after Milton, where is the emergency manager in as a decision maker, as an input giver, in terms of maybe mitigation, moving communities away from other areas, like wholly, like picking up communities and moving them and relocating them because of climate.
And so it's like, they have to be integrated into conversations, I think more. And then also into the, the decision making process of government. So in many ways, I know it's occurring in some places, but I think not consistently. And I think that we also, in a certain way, if I were to give a critique during this conversation is that we're really hyper focused on the preparedness and response piece, [00:15:00] and I can tell you all the conversations we have now that's there.
But it's really when we broaden that into sort of societal resilience, we're looking at. Civil planning to support either military or civil sort of disaster issues. Where does that start? So we're trying to push this envelope like way to the left and also further to the right, pre boom, post boom, disaster, and just trying to figure out how far can we push this envelope of preparedness.
And that really gets into, and this, therein lies the problem. Let me wrap up with that. Therein lies the problem because the farther left and right you get, the less authority the emergency manager has. Because then it is into public administration, investments, budget, environment, infrastructure, right? And those are sort of authorities and budgets and things like that and laws and legislation that we have less influence over.
And I think we should have more. Let me wrap it up with that.
Todd DeVoe: No, a hundred percent, Kyle, on that. So when I went for my first master's degree, I was [00:16:00] looking at, okay, what do I want to study? And public administration was something that I thought was very important. I thought it was a very well rounded degree.
And it gives you a more understanding of what is occurring inside of government when you go to work there. But in my public administration, I took urban planning as my concentration. So I was like, okay, urban planning is critical to what we do. When we look at our function as emergency managers, it is realistically in that, like you said, they're mitigation.
Do we move this particular issue? Um, away from the hazard and I'll give you an example that's going on right now and in Palos Verdes Estates in Los Angeles County. It's a community that was built on a cliffside. Basically, the cliffside is sliding and there's been articles about it in the LA Times. You can probably catch some stuff if you're really interested in looking at it into the LA Times or the local [00:17:00] news over here.
There are other areas in Southern California where there's communities that back in the thirties and forties fell into the ocean, it's called the sunken city, you can find that. And I get the emotional side of saying, Hey, my house is falling into the ocean. It's not quite there yet. You need to fix this.
I don't know what to do. And my financial stuff is associated with it. My, my identity is associated with this location. So I get that internal. Locus of control, so I understand that internal locus of control, right? They're going, Oh, the, what, what is, this is my problem. And, but then they go, Oh, the external portion of it.
They're saying, Hey, you government have to do something to fix this problem. Well, it's not because I can't do it, right? Everything here is, this is me who I am. And now because of your lack of whatever, I'm going to lose all this. And so I get that emotional side of it. On the practical side of it, as I've told a friend of mine, I said, the only way out of this [00:18:00] situation to make them whole would be as if a community, the city in the domain, the entire area, and went through and just sort of buy those houses out.
The insurance isn't going to cover them. The, the state government can't cover them. These homes are about 10 million homes, right? So there, and there's 200 homes up there that impacted. Right. The government can't afford to absorb that, that cost, necessarily. So I, I get the stickiness that's going on there.
But, that being said,
that probably should red tag those homes.
I'm sure somebody who's going to hear this is going to be mad at me and throw things at me, but red tag the homes and go through that process. Of moving people out and that sucks for everybody involved.
Todd DeVoe: and you have to be empathetic to the people who lose things, but at the same time, you can't have, there's no power there right now, there's no electricity, no gas or electricity, and the water's been cut off. So how do they live there? Right? So it's a terrible [00:19:00] situation. It's going to be the expensive situation and they're angry.
I had a bunch of different things. How do we walk through that problem is how do we get the community to be involved? And that goes back to the resilience. And this is something I think that as emergency management professionals, crisis management professionals, disaster management professionals, whatever tag you want to add to our job, that we really need to be looking at the concepts of resiliency.
I've written extensively on this after I've read Nicholas Taleb's book, Anti Fragile, I think that's what we need to strive for is true disaster resilience. And he used the term anti fragility. To replace resiliency because you felt resiliency was a squishy word. I agree with a hundred percent. Talked about this about a thousand times too, of how resiliency has been overused and, and used in locations that are, are inappropriate necessarily to the concept of resiliency and honestly, the appropriate use of the word, a makeup company called resilience.
There's a beer company out there that has a resilience brand. [00:20:00] That's what I'm talking about. Inappropriate. I'm not saying that it's offensive or anything like that. But it's not really the place of what we're discussing and it really waters down the impact of the word resilient. So the concept of resiliency or anti fragility I think is critical for us to really take a look at and to hold on to and to explore how do we make communities disaster resilient, or disaster anti fragile if you will, disaster resilient communities.
And it starts, it really does start at the local ground level with the emergency manager going out, getting out of their office. Stop writing plans, right? I don't, I would, I will never write another plan as far as I'm concerned. I would contract that out. It's just easier, easier in the sense of, laziness easier.
That's a lot of time focusing on writing a document. That's pretty much, we can, you're going to work with them as they do it, but have somebody else come in and write the plan for you. If you're a shop of one, go out to the community, [00:21:00] sit down at the coffee shop with the coffee shop owners, talk with the chamber of commerce directors, go and meet with the Rotary clubs that have the Qantas clubs and the, the Critter clubs that are out there, go and have conversations with them.
Go have coffee with them. Go have lunches with them. Go to the farmer's market and walk the farmer's market and let them become visible. Don't just sit in your office and write plans. That's easy. That's busy work, if you will. Right? Yes, plans are important and we practice the plans, but that's what you have consultants for.
And then your time, if you do a cost benefit analysis and the one last thing on this, on the contractor, do a cost benefit analysis on what your time could be used for towards going out there and making your community disaster resilient. And then as to what it is to sit in an office and type on a keyboard, um, as you're using a template to, to write a plan for your city that, and then you're going to test it.
Right? So what's the cost benefit of doing that, whether bringing in a contractor at 10, 000, 20, [00:22:00] 000 to do that and to, or to you go out into the community. And I would think that you would find that I can guarantee that you'd find that you're going to have more benefit of going out there, being visible in your community than you do sitting in an office, typing on the keyboard.
I'll leave it there. What do you think, Kyle?
Kyle King: Hey there. Just a quick pause in our show for a second. Did you know that most of our guests on the Crisis Lab podcast have courses inside of Crisis Lab? So if you're finding value in these conversations or they pique your interest and you want to dive deeper into this topic, just head over to crisislab.
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With international perspectives, ultimately [00:23:00] making you better every day. Now let's get back to the show. I completely agree on the aspect of outsourcing the mundane tasks, right? There is a time value of money proposition there that that can only make sense. Unless you can get out and lower your community, you're not going to know how people respond.
You're not going to know the needs of the community. And a piece of paper won't tell you that unless you get out and talk to people. So I think that's something that is, is absolutely true. And. If we sort of circle back to the sort of anti fragility and discussion and versus resilience, I think it's an interesting discussion because coming from different sectors of the world, and if you're working in sort of emergency management, or if you're working at the international space or national security space, and then we're looking at resilience through a very, almost a very specific lens in terms of sort of national, international security aspects.
Thanks. I think one of the ways that we look at resilience is that systems of systems approach and, and the way that it's really focused on stability, right? [00:24:00] Now, anti fragility can go beyond that because it says, okay, there's a shock, there's a stressor on the community, on the society, and then anti fragility is, okay, how can we grow from this experience and become better and better?
And then, but resilience for us is more in the nuance of trying to maintain that stability. It's not just about absorption and growing from it, but it's, can we maintain a fragile state? And I'll give sort of one example of which sort of maybe can outline this a bit. I actually, I'm going to help support a course next week on, it's called Resilience Through Preparedness with NATO.
And one of the sort of examples I'm using is because when I was in Ukraine before the war started and I was responsible for a region in Ukraine and I was working with the local ombudsperson trying to understand more about the communities, just like what you're talking about. Go out and get to know people, go get to understand the issues.
And I wanted to find out in a very simple sort of exercise, you gather all, as an ombudsperson, you gather all the complaints from civil society and they look at them every quarter, every six months and they categorize them, they rank them and they see what the top numbers are. I [00:25:00] said, tell me what the top sort of five or 10 complaints are that you have from your municipalities and from this area.
And they were saying that it was lack of sort of trust in the police. I'll just say it that way. Right. So is, is trust in the police. And so we talked about that a bit, and that was a way for me to get a pulse of what was happening in the community. And then I wanted to go out and discover a little bit more.
So I left the office, right? And I didn't write anything down. I just wanted to go talk to people. And I started to really find out what was actually happening. And it was really interesting to me, which I think indicates a squishier side of resilience. As opposed to having to absorb a shock and then having to grow from that experience.
But basically, what I found out was that the courts and the administrations were underfunded to be able to send out simple things like process notices and things like that in order to be able to have court administration happening. So when things are not getting mailed, people are not getting called to court, you're not calling in witnesses, you're not calling in all these people, and because that's happening, the caseload would build up and nothing would [00:26:00] ever happen.
And eventually over time, people started to feel like, you know, uh, somebody robbed my house and nothing is happening and the police aren't doing anything, and it wasn't the police's fault, it was somebody in the municipality decided that the court budget, we didn't need three people on the court staff, on the administration side, we needed one.
Or there wasn't enough budget to buy stamps. And so because of that, the net effects of all that, the third, fourth, fifth order effects was that people didn't trust the institutions and the police because they never saw justice served. And so if I compare that to the idea of what is resilience, and I know that's a deep detail that sort of, when we look at it from an emergency management perspective, but there's these sort of effects that are happening.
And then you have a concept of, so let's say anti fragility. Which is okay, where are they now in terms of the war in Ukraine? How are they growing and learning from this experience? Are they rebuilding their cities in a different way? Are they coming back better and faster and things like that? And so that's where I sort of look at these two terms.
I, I completely agree though, coming back to your [00:27:00] point about how are we capturing this and trying to really try to understand the environment that we're operating in.
Todd DeVoe: Your experience is amazing and that's one of the reasons why, you know, when we first started talking and I was really One to get to know you better was the idea of using emergency management concepts to help rebuild more torn areas.
And that goes back. I think it goes back to the resiliency side of things. And the reason why I use the term anti fragility and for a lot of times to replace the resiliency or robustness and build it upon Taleb's concept of it is that, like you said, resilience is a squishy terminology because It really is, right?
Because the other day they were talking about the resilience of the Dodgers won the World Series. They beat my Yankees. Congratulations, Dodgers. But I'm a little bummed out today. But they're talking about, oh, the resilience. Dodgers. So the resiliency is that they're coming back from the stresses of being down a run or whatever, and it says, okay, I understand what they're [00:28:00] saying, and maybe it's true in that context.
But if we start using it for things like this, when we're looking at bigger picture issues, such as recovering from war, or recovering from a disaster, or on the opposite side of it, being This is, again, I'm going to use resilience, being resilient for the war, or being the ability to not have that or the disaster really impact your community in such a negative way.
But Taleb's concept here is you are going to have those stressors put onto you. And then you come back stronger and better. And what's that mean in municipal government? Does that mean that we use building codes, right, to get rid of unreinforced base debris in areas that are prone to earthquake?
Absolutely. Does it mean that we say, hey, in areas that burnt, that you need to have a larger defensible space around your home so it won't burn down? Absolutely. We've seen how small things like this, can I say [00:29:00] relatively small, things like this help during hurricanes and fires. The movie, the, I think it's called like the last house standing or whatever on, it's about the Mexico beach hurricane that came through and they have this one house standing on the beach.
That is an awesome story, but it's only a quarter of the story. Because there are actually a bunch of homes that were built by HUD down the street from there that survived as well. That didn't, that had very little damage. And the difference between the survivability of a home and a home that completely just blew off the face of the earth was simple of nails and roofing.
And so, that means if you put one extra nail, and this is true, I didn't make this up, I interviewed one of the guys who was part of this project. So if you put one extra nail into the roof in the right location, instead of two you put three, that's the difference between a roof being ripped off your house and staying on.
And it's a tiny fraction of a cost [00:30:00] of building. And so, there's certain things you can do. That keep your home from blowing off the face of the earth during a hurricane. There's certain things you do that keeps your home from burning down in a wildland fire. Right? There's certain things you do that keeps your home from falling off the foundation, and things are very relatively inexpensive during an earthquake.
So we had the technology of understanding of how to make these homes anti fragile, right? And buildings anti fragile. Does there's some cost to it? Absolutely. Is it going to be, is it burdensome? There's enough programs out there that make it affordable, and if not free, depending on your income level. So we have programs that are there.
Now, the other side of it is going back to education. How do we educate the community to say, oh yeah, this is a program I need to do? Or an understanding, and I'm going to pick on my wife here for a second, an understanding of how important it is. I'm building a shed right now, and I have it elevated, and it's not tied down right yet.
And [00:31:00] I'm going to tie it down into the foundation. And my wife was like, Oh, why it's a shed. Why are you going to spend the extra time to do that? And because tell her, because when the earthquake does occur, it's not going to fall off and we're going to have this, it's a wooden. It's a tough shed, basically, and it's there, but it's raised up a little bit, and I'm going to do some stuff to make sure that it doesn't fall off the foundation that we built.
And, and, it's taking that time to do little things like this for something that's really inexpensive, and you think it's a shed, it's not a big deal, but it's going to be the difference between that shed staying on that foundation and falling off the foundation during an earthquake. And why not take the time?
I'm going to do one last thing on this, and I'm going to turn it back over to you Kyle. Steve Jobs, I think overall, is not a very nice person. If everything all accounts I've heard, he's not a nice guy. But what I find interesting about him is his work ethic and the idea of making everything beautiful, even on the inside, things that we'll never see.
The way the circuit board is laid out, the way the signature is inside of it. Something that you probably can't even pop an iPhone open without doing some stuff to it. But at [00:32:00] the inside of it, I've seen the pictures and what they've done. And it's really intricate and a nice looking device. Why would you spend that time of making the inside of that look nice when no one's going to see it?
It's because that means that the craftsmanship on the outside of it is perfect. And that's the kind of stuff that we have to do as emergency managers. We have to be working on all that little stuff on the inside, right? Because not just the big days of the disasters when you get to be on TV and talk about this or that.
We need to build that trust again with the community. I know I said that was one last thing, I'm going to add one more last thing. You got it because I just popped it in my head. You're talking about the lack of trust with law enforcement in parts of Europe. Because obviously we have some of that here too.
We have, I think it's a greater issue that we have, we have a lack of trust with government here now, and we've seen this play out in Tennessee and North Carolina, where people do not trust FEMA coming in, they don't think that they have their best interest at heart. How do we break [00:33:00] that concept of, I don't trust the government?
It's not again, it's not by sitting in your office typing on a keyboard. It's by you going out there and building that trust prior to a disaster occurring. Prior to an event hitting your community and that they know when you show up and stop, who's that guy wearing that civil defense shirt? Right?
They're like, Oh, here comes Todd and Kyle. They know my issues. I've talked to them a hundred times. I've seen him speak at the Qantas club. I know that there's a business owner that they're not going to try to screw me over that they're here actually to help me get through the process, that they're not just coming to give me 750 if they're here for the longterm and that they're not just trying to give me a little bit of money and leave, which was a rumor.
Right that, that happened in North Carolina. And it builds that trust, and trust is the bedrock of creating that anti fragile community. And it truly is in becoming better, stronger, or in an event that hurts. Everybody comes in with [00:34:00] ribbons afterwards that says, Whenever city strong after disaster, right?
Boko Strong was a group that was out there for a long time that was famous. So, whenever strong. After disaster, what if we do that before the disaster, right? What if we created LA, LA strong right now, Los Angeles strong right now, Santa Ana strong right now, wherever you're at your New York city strong today, uh, before the event occurs, because that we know that when the event does occur, that as a community, we're going to come together.
We're going to help each other. And the government's going to come in and be able to augment some of the issues that we can't deal with. As it has a community. I think that's where we should be headed as a profession.
Kyle King: No, I completely agree. And that was, I think you just gave a great example of what I was trying to refer to earlier is where in this spectrum of crisis or disaster, are we putting most of our attention and what you're saying about investing more to the left of the emergency than to the right.
Is where we need to put it and start investing a lot [00:35:00] of our time, which changes the nature of the emergency management discussion, because then again, we start having these issues of authorities and governance and things like that, and who's actually technically responsible. So I think we need to, as a profession, broaden our view of what our responsibilities should be, at least as a contributor to decision making and to look at these kind of.
Topics that you're talking about. I wanted to add into that because you've mentioned eminent domain and houses and things like that. And there's two aspects I wanted to raise on that, which are different in Europe. One is. The speed, the flexibility at which you can rebuild in the United States and also, to a certain extent, just dismiss infrastructure is astonishing when compared to Europe.
If you have continued flooding in Venice, Italy, like it is now and the waters keep rising and rising, you're going to lose that entire heritage and culture of Venice, Italy, if it goes up another three feet. That's, you can't replace [00:36:00] that. And, and that's really where we start to have real fundamental societal problems about, in the United States, okay, there's massive houses, but you can throw up a house almost anywhere, and, and it, cause it's wood, and it's, and, and framed construction, and, and type four, and all that stuff like that, but, if you're getting into, like, the buildings that have been there for a couple hundred years, the, the, the castles, you're looking at all that sort of real cultural heritage stuff, the Coliseum and all these things, those will never be replaced.
And you lose the entire heritage behind all of that as well. That just makes it significantly more difficult to make decisions about what's best for those communities. Because at some point the water is going to be too high and they can't live there anymore. Same with Amsterdam, right? Even though they're masters at building dams and things like that and controlling water flows.
But it's going to get to that point of where you lose a piece of society. And I think that's where it's slightly different. I don't know of a correlation to that in the United States. [00:37:00] Maybe you do, but in terms of that, there's this significantly, it has a significant impact on society. And the other thing I'll say is you had mentioned professor Daniel Aldrich who has been putting out a lot of good work in terms of societal resilience and what it means and some of the stuff that he's been talking about.
Just for example, the role of libraries, these are things that we don't necessarily think about for. In terms of our societies and with the role that they play in our communities. And just, we're reemphasizing the point and I'll, I'll just draw that out. If it's exactly what you're talking about, get out to know the people and get out to know the community and then get out to understand what's in your community and where the value is inside the community and what is really important to those communities, because at some point, everybody's going to have to start making decisions earlier about how we're supposed to be responding.
And then I'll turn it over into a different direction. I just remember my point. So I want to bring it up. If you want a great example of anti fragile, look at Finland, because in Finland, after the war with Russia, [00:38:00] they changed their entire building code, not to come back to what it was before, but to have shelters built underneath every single building that must, by law, house the same number of people in that building.
So every single building in Finland, house, apartment block, office space, whatever, is built and constructed with underground shelters, with, um, Air flows, CBRN Peru, all sorts of stuff with the supplies. Their entire society can just go underground. And it's absolutely astonishing. And so that's, I think, exemplifies is a great example of, okay, they learned from that war and they actually went well beyond, now it took them 30, 40, 50 years to do it, but it's now part of their culture to where everything is now into that civil defense mindset.
So that's a really good example. Instead of just rebuilding back because you're resilient, but actually going beyond that to be anti fragile. Yeah.
Todd DeVoe: Yeah. The societies in Europe have learned a lot from the devastation of war, right? Because [00:39:00] war has plagued Europe for, for many centuries, right? Going back to the time when the Roman conquest comes in, right?
So yeah. And that's my point about it is like learning from those things and saying, okay, how do we become better? How do we become better? How do we become better? I'm sure there's still lessons to be learned even in Finland and after the Russian invasion or the Soviet invasion during World War II. What I find very interesting too.
I've used Daniel Ulrich's books when I've written my course for the social impacts of disasters, one of the courses I teach, and I use a lot of Ulrich for my students to read, specifically the Black Wave and what that, how that triple disaster impacted Japan. There's this marker that said, don't build below this, put up there in the 1700s or whatever, don't build below this.
And they People over the years said, Oh, whatever, those guys, what do they know? And they built below this. And when the tsunami occurred, everything that was below that marker was destroyed. [00:40:00] Everything above that marker survived. So we have to look at the lessons learned from the people who came before us.
And Craig Fugate says this, and I think it's fantastic. It goes, he says, it's not lessons learned that we do. We do lessons observed because we don't learn, we hear that and we see that and we go, ah, okay, don't build below this marker. Ah, what do they know? I'm going to build below this marker. So we have to learn from those lessons.
And that's where the anti fragility really plays into is when we take those lessons learned. When we say to Louisiana, right, the Lower Ninth Ward has flooded how many times over the centuries? Why are we building the same homes? Now we can build the Lower Knotts Ward. I'm not saying not to build down there, right?
I'm not, that's not my argument by any means. Because it's a, there's cultural significance to that area. There's [00:41:00] historic significance to that area. Uh, I'm not saying don't build homes in there. But let's build them so when it floods again, which it will, you're not plucking people off of the rooftops and thousands of people are dying.
Let's build these homes to where they can withstand that flood. Whether we put them on stilts, whether we do whatever, There has to be a way to be able to build in that Lower Ninth Ward where people could live in the community that they've lived in for decades or hundreds of years with their families and still have that cultural stuff, but the homes are ready to be prepared for, for that disaster.
And we don't do that. I want to talk about intimate domain one more time because you brought it back up. When I talk about the use of intimate domain, I'm not talking about coming through and ripping out a community and building luxury condos or anything like this, like we've the arguments that happened in the past, it's a tool that you can use to be able to, in the case of Palos Verdes estates, or maybe even in the lower ninth ward [00:42:00] in those areas.
It's a tool that you could use to financially make people in there whole. So you can go, okay. We're going to inevitably domain this area so we can actually pay out legally to you. Now we can have arguments about the use of it in other ways that are negative. That's not, well, that's not what I'm advocating by any means.
I'm just saying, it's a tool that you have in your toolbox that you can potentially use to be able to. Help people financially. I get out of a situation where they may not be able to do this. We've heard of these buyback programs along the mangroves in Louisiana. FEMA has been doing a lot of work. We're there to be able to rebuild the mangroves because that's our natural barrier to, to hurricanes, to be able to build those back up, things like this that we can utilize.
Now there's, you can get people going into the conspiracies of agenda 21 and all those other things that occur with it. The conversation that we're having here is how do we make people financially whole and still be able to be resilient to disasters, right? And that's, [00:43:00] it's a tool. I'm not saying you have to use it.
I'm not saying that community, I think the communities have the conversation. I think if it's a dictate coming from up high, it's a different result than it is of a community coming together and saying, yeah, we have a problem here. Insurance isn't going to cover this any longer, uh, now you're on your own, you're, this next time the storm comes through and rips out your house, we're not going to allow you to rebuild.
So now you're, you're not going to be able to rebuild that house there, right? Because it's just, it's a societal cost to this, not just a personal cost. So your insurance is no longer covering it. We're not going to, as a government, build your home back up here at the same location, but we can help you financially by buying this from you and moving you to a location that would be safer.
Well, we talk about this again. I lost my mind on the name of the city. There's this town in Illinois that was on the Mississippi river that moved its entire town up a hundred yards up into a hillside, the entire, they use the land down there for what it was, what it is, right? [00:44:00] It floods every year or mostly every year.
I mean, it's great fertile farmland. So the people that are farming down there, there's some areas in the park land, it's not unusable land. It's just on obtainable land for housing. Right? Because you're going to get flooded out. So I think that's why urban planning, I think, is critical for me, is just to take a look at these areas where we can be, have a better impact as emergency managers.
That's what I meant by the use of, of that. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the historic context. Absolutely right. I'm from, originally from New York, upstate New York. My sister's neighbor's house was built pre Revolutionary War. It's this beautiful home. It's a brick house. It's just amazing.
Actually, it's an amazing house. I grew up in a house that was built in the 1880s before the civil war. So we have these homes that are old out here in California. If you have a house that's 50 something years old, they're like, ah, it's a historic house. It makes [00:45:00] me laugh. I'm like, not even close to being a historic house.
I'm 54. I'm not a historic man, but they have architecture, stuff like that, that they want to protect. So the interesting thing is the federal government recognize that the United States federal government recognized this. And they actually have an environmental and historic preservation on now when you look at your recovery.
Is this something that happened that was a historic or environmentally sensitive area on undoing the recovery? So I think that's, I think that's interesting that we've, we here in the United States, relatively new compared to Europe, have taken the concept of, hey, we need to take a look at those historic buildings.
And cultural significant buildings, right? Libraries, for instance, some of the libraries, I've talked about libraries before, in the South that were points of contention during the Civil Rights era, those would be buildings that are now culturally significant. I'm thinking of the courthouses and things like this, to where, what was her name, the little girl who was going, was being [00:46:00] integrated into school, or they had to escort her.
Those buildings right there are buildings of historic significance. And we do need to protect those. So I think that's one of those things that we take a look at, it's a, an aspect of it. I'm not saying that we go and just tear down everything when things are bad, but that's just a tool that we have that we can utilize.
Chris from Crisis Lab: Coming up in part two, we explore the challenges of building trust between government and the public in crisis situations. Todd DeVoe shares ideas on responding to the rapid spread of information and misinformation, emphasizing the importance of clear communication and community involvement. We'll also discuss engaging younger generations in public service.
and ways to strengthen community preparedness. Stay tuned for insights on these critical aspects of emergency management. Until next time, stay informed, stay [00:47:00] resilient.
