Building Robustness and Resilience
Todd De Voe, an emergency management educator and the host of EM Weekly, Business Continuity Today, Natural Disaster & Emergency Management Expo’s Prepare, Respond, Recover Show and is also the Produce the EM Student's Show. Today, Todd continues to teach for Coastline College and The University of California Irvine. Todd is a lifelong learner, and he is a graduate of the National Emergency Management Executive Academy's Cohort VII. He continues to research and write about important emergency management issues, crisis leadership, business continuity, and community re-license. Todd is an active member of the International Association of Emergency Managers and is on the Region 9 board.
Todd is a prolific producer, educator, and networker, and has created an incredible volume of digital media on emergency management and is a voracious student and teacher in the EM/BC industry. We spoke about managing stakeholder expectations, how the role of the EM is changing, making the case to invest in mitigation projects, and his opinion on dealing with impacts of climate change.
This interview is an excerpt of a longer podcast that you can find at Riding the Wave: Project Management for Emergency Managers
Andrew Boyarsky
I have as my guest today, Todd DeVoe, who is an emergency management educator, and the host of E.M Weekly Business Continuity Today: natural disaster and emergency management, expose, prepare, respond, recover show, and is also the producer of the E.M. Students show. Todd, I want to thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
Todd DeVoe
Thank you so much for having me.
Andrew Boyarsky
We’re gonna talk about aspects of project management and emergency management. Much of project management is centered around managing expectations; expectations of stakeholders, constituents, and the like. It’s very similar to emergency management. Now we have to manage the expectations of people that were serving or stakeholders that we’re working with. What examples have you experienced in your work in these domains ? And how have you managed them?
Todd DeVoe
Well, first, I think emergency management education would do well to have project management as one of its core fundamental pieces of education. So, instead of having it as an elective class for instance, I would say it should be recommended or a required course to have because realistically, at the end of the day, emergency managers are very similar to project managers. The difference is it’s normally not just one project and then you leave. It’s just an ongoing project. So, if you’re gonna use a Gant chart, for instance, that’d be like the largest Gant chart you’d ever see in your entire life. Some of the projects that we’re managing, say, for instance, into disaster recovery. I mean, it’s last year’s, and yesterday was the anniversary of the Northridge earthquake, in California and also the anniversary of the Kobe Earthquake in Japan. They were a year apart, 94 for one and 95 for the one in Japan.
The reason I bring this up is there are still parts of Northridge that are still not recovered completely in the sense of being back to normal; back to the whole, if you will. So, utilizing the idea of project management, in emergency management, I think would speed up that recovery process, to be honest with you.
Let’s take a look at the Whittier Narrows Earthquake of 1987. If you go to uptown Whittier, there are still holes there where buildings used to be that haven’t been rebuilt. Now, whether or not the city decided they want to rebuild there and utilizing different zoning processes for what would have gone there or, building codes and whatnot; maybe you’d want to keep those holes there for other reasons for pocket parks or things like that. That’s different than not having them being able to be rebuild again. But I think a lot of it was insurance money and things like this and the owner of the land couldn’t rebuild because of their financial straits. Those holes makes the uptown area of Whittier a little blighted if you will. So using project management as an emergency management tool, I think is very important today.
Andrew Boyarsky
You bring up an important point, in the timeline for recovery, because this is one of the broad areas of emergency management. We could talk about prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, but when it comes to recovery, that is one of the areas that it’s easy to get mired in.
One of the tensions that exist is between building back quickly and building back effectively, and in a resilient manner, long term, and doing it in an efficient way, and a way that’s agreed to. You’re based in Orange County, in Southern California, and I am in the New York area. These are two different areas that are impacted by two predominant types of hazards. Southern California, of course, California as a whole, is vulnerable to wildfires and earthquakes. Northeast to hurricane storms, winter storms, things like that. This tension that exists, the role of emergency management is changing in light of that. From what we would call the lights and sirens type of response, from what we typically see your first responders: police, firemen, and EMS, to one of mitigation, preparation, and coordination. What do you see the role of project management playing in that change?
Todd DeVoe
Well, as you mentioned, we do response really well in this nation across the board. You see fire trucks and police cars and ambulances and public works vehicles. I want to add Sanitation into our response, I think we forget about them. Sanitation is key in debris removal.
Let’s talk about sanitation for a second. Today it happens to be trash day here in my house. And, I just stick some stuff into a can I put the can on the side of the road and it disappears, right, and it goes away and there’s a bunch of people working that back end to make sure that sanitation goes to the right dump or to the recycle bins to whatever has to be done.
“So, Todd, why are you talking about sanitation on this podcast?” Because that’s a project management issue too. If you really want to see something that has to be done every single day across the country are three things: utilities, including electrical stuff and gas, your sewage, which I guess you could call a utility as well, but you never want to see it. I’ve actually gone to the Fountain Valley sewage treatment plant for a tour. And you’d think, “Why is this important for emergency management?” Well, wait until you see sewage backup.
Now we can also think about the New York City sanitation strike that happened about 20 years ago now. The trash was piling up everywhere, and then you have rats and other infestations of animals. And so your public health issue gets associated with all that kind of stuff. So we do that well, and we do that every day!
But when it comes to a large-scale disaster, we see the helicopters come out, and we see people being plucked off their roofs. I mean, like a Superstorm Sandy, and you have the waves splashing up, and you have people going out and doing some really great rescues and stuff. But recovery management should be playing a huge role and tends to be something that the media doesn’t cover. A week or two after the storms, you don’t hear about them anymore, but let’s take a look where we have not done our best work. And I think some of its constraints, whether it’s economic constraints, whether it’s the local government constraints, things like that, for example Hurricane Katrina and the Lower Ninth Ward.
Now, I’m gonna put this out there: this is not a federal problem: it’s a local government problem; it’s a state problem. Whether it’s a funding problem for the federal government, that’s a different story because that’s where the federal government comes in to be able to give money to the state and to the local government to fix these issues. Zoning is a local problem. Zoning is going to be either your county or your cities and fixing those problems that are in there. Whether it’s rebuilding schools, which is a school district issue, whether it’s rebuilding the homes that are in there that are funding that issue, allowing the red tape to be cut so you can go through and rebuild. And when I say cutting the red tape, I don’t mean lowering the standards of building. In fact, I would say you might want to increase your building codes. But what you want to do is you want to cut things like fees. You want to cut the time that it takes (for building approvals). Have you ever tried building anything, Andrew? Like a house or anything like that? Or an addition?
Andrew Boyarsky
Not a house per se, but yeah, renovations. Your typical household renovations and things of that nature, sure.
Todd DeVoe
Right, so I mean, to get an inspector to come out, they take a look at it, they find something wrong with it and they go “Okay, we’re gonna be back in two more weeks”. But now your contractor can’t do anything for those two weeks. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the type of red tape I’m talking about. Make it so you can have more inspectors on, or increase their contract amount, or however, that works during this time of recovery. And you put a timeline on it. You say “Day one of recovery starts today, and in a year and a half, we wanna have this done”. So if you’re building in that time period, then you want to go ahead and have those issues fixed and have additional staff on with your contracting out building inspectors and stuff like this. These are things that we don’t do. That’s why I say we fail at recovery because we try to do it, well I say “we” I mean the government, we try to do it with the budget that we have today. We don’t put emergency funds into, we don’t do emergency hires to bring in experienced building inspectors and things like that. And so then these buildings start to sit there, people don’t have the money to do it or the time to do it or whatever, and then you start seeing these pockets, you need to take the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, for instance. And you see stuff that just has not moved (in progress). And then you start seeing, again, blight.
You see a mass exodus of those neighborhoods, and then it becomes just a mess. And so I see project management playing the role in being able to keep people to those timelines, because without having somebody on top of it, days move on. The politicians move on to something else. The emergency manager has 10,000 different meetings they have to go to still and redoing plans and drills and exercises. The fire department goes back to normal, the police department goes back to normal, EMS goes back to normal. Your social services have their normal book of business they’re doing. And so, all of that recovery kind of gets forgotten. And I think if you have somebody with a strong public project management background and put them on that recovery, so those things don’t slip through the cracks, and you have a more timely, robust recovery process.
Andrew Boyarsky
I want to touch upon investment in mitigation, and how do we tackle those problems beforehand. So, we know from decades ago in Project Impact that was instituted by James Lee Witt head of FEMA during the Clinton administration that there was a major return on investment for mitigation projects. More recent research on investment in mitigation projects shows a 6:1 return; every $1 that’s invested will return $6 in prevention and costs that we would have down the road. But how do you make the case on a local basis, when these are huge costs and the multiples of millions, if not billions of dollars in certain communities, when there are more immediate needs that municipalities and jurisdictions need to pay for?
Todd DeVoe
Well, this is a multi-pronged answer, but I want to start with some of the legislation that went through, that Brock Long (previous head of FEMA 2017-2019) fought for. One of them that I think the biggest one is the Damage Assessment Remediation and Restoration program known as DARP. Basically, there’s $8.5 billion sitting there in DARP funding that are available right now, for cities and jurisdictions, to do natural hazard disaster planning. Once you have that plan approved by FEMA, then you’re eligible for other funding, including the DARP money, which will pay for your restorations. It’s in the name of the legislation. And it amazes me that it sits unused.
When I had Brock Long on E.M. Weekly, we discussed that; getting into those funding, and, the requirements aren’t super high. You have to get a plan written, and the funding is available to make that plan to get written, and you get in there, and from that, then your city is eligible for additional funding for mitigation.
Now, mind you, what we’re talking about here isn’t building your individual homes; you’re talking about governmental infrastructure, roadways, flood mitigation issues, seawalls, if you live along the coast for tsunami or erosion issues. Those things are part of that. Now, obviously, you say, “Well, that’s great. That doesn’t help Mom and Pop have their house rebuilt.” Absolutely. But it does help them reduce their insurance footprint.
So if you have a good mitigation plan, say, the seawall, for instance, that means a person who is living in a flood zone that the flood zones now reduced. So that means the insurance goes down for them, and it makes it more affordable for them to repair if there is damage. It makes it more affordable for the insurance company to be able to ensure them if something happens.
Nationwide our financial literacy is terrible. And that financial literacy includes having insurance, home owner’s insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, fire insurance, all of these things. And so you’ll hear people that say, “Oh, I just paid off my last home payment.” And they have, like, that whole mortgage burning party, they put it on YouTube, and everybody is like yay! And they’re like, “Oh, now I could get rid of my insurance that I don’t have to keep anymore because my mortgage is covered” and you’re like, Whoa, let’s stop let’s roll that back a minute here, kids. You shouldn’t get rid of your insurance just because you’re not required to right now.
Now, we don’t have mandates. We don’t have insurance mandates from the federal government or from local government on homeowners insurance. That normally comes along with your loan, those mandates. So, unlike car insurance, in most states, you have to have car insurance, at least liability insurance. So if you hit somebody else here, you’re OK. We don’t have those issues necessarily here with homeowners insurance. Whether we should or not, that’s a different story, but the problem is that people will weigh that and say, “Hey, I don’t wanna pay this insurance because I wanna be able to use that money (elsewhere).”
So that’s what talking about, our financial literacy needs to go higher as well so people have the proper insurance and understand why that insurance is important. The other thing is while we’re talking about insurance, especially here in California with the fire insurance, is we do need to have a little bit of insurance regulation in the sense of you can’t allow insurance companies to take super risky insurance and then go insolvent when they have to pay out, and then it puts the burden back on the state again. So that’s a whole other show there, Andrew.
Andrew Boyarsky
So I think we’re getting to the next question, which is, what is your opinion on dealing with the impacts of climate change? More particularly, do you think we need to retreat and relocate, as some might say, or do we need to build greater resilience in areas that are vulnerable to key risk factors?
Todd DeVoe
I’ve said this before, but I’ll go on the record here as well. Whether or not you believe climate change is human-caused or not, is irrelevant to what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about fixing climate change. What we’re talking about here is what the response to it and how do we mitigate it and how do we deal with the human factors that are associated with climate change?
Well, I think we have to do a little bit of both as far as like, to retreat. We have to do a little bit more about building robustness and resilience, and what I mean by that is that there are certain areas that no matter what, like there was in Illinois, for instance, there was a city or town that was flooded three times in one season. And they made the decision saying, hey, we need to physically move the city 100 ft. higher and a little bit further in from the river. And then, there are people that had family farms on that land for many, many years, and it doesn’t mean you can’t farm it. You’re gonna have crop loss and stuff like that. But do you really want to have homes that are gonna be that impacted? Is your downtown going to be impacted every time there’s a flood because it comes to a point where you go, “Hey, there’s too many.”
Your flood insurance (faces) insolvency. You can’t hold that company responsible for leaving after they’ve had to pay out three times in a row. It’s like in car insurance; if you have too many accidents, they’re going to tell you “We’re gonna increase your premiums or we’re not gonna insure you” So, the same thing has to happen here, but the thing is, is that maybe in some cases you move.
Now, you also take a look at building codes. You take Japan, for instance, during the triple disaster (Tohoku Earthquake in 2011, often called the 311 disaster), the majority of the damage wasn’t done by the earthquake, but in fact, very little damage. I don’t think there were any deaths attributed to the earthquake itself, to the actual shaking, but the tsunami comes and really does the damage. If you take a look at Daniel Aldrich’s book The Black Wave (note-you can listen to my podcast with Dr. Daniel Aldrich here), he talks about in there that there were markers that were put in by the Japanese residents hundreds of years ago from the last big tsunami. And it says, “Do not build lower than this thing, this rock on the hillside. We just had a really bad disaster come through, and I want to put this monument here for the next generation, so they will know not to build below it”. Then they did; they built below it. And oddly enough, the damage that occurred to the cities during the tsunami all occurred below that marker of the tsunami that happened hundreds of years ago.
So there has to be a little bit of, I don’t know if retreating is the word, because I think what we’ve done is we have expanded. So like, for instance, in Florida and then along the Gulf Coast and along the Southeast, we’re building in where mangroves were. We’re building on barrier islands, like, things like this. We’re building huge communities on barrier islands that naturally occurred to break those storms. They’re basically storm breaks, and we’re building in there. In fact, in Houston for instance, where a lot of the flooding occurred on the map, it says reservoir on it. And they were all confused why so much water went into those areas where it’s a reservoir that was created and somebody gave them approval. I’m going to blame the government on this to approve to build into these reservoirs, and we’re doing it here in California. We’re building in these urban wildlife interfaces, the UWI. And these are places that have burned historically, will burn again, and then, we’re building these huge homes in there. We’re on a crunch here for a housing crisis, if you will, but the homes that they’re building over there are ones that would really fix the housing crisis, these are multimillion-dollar homes. Yet we’re surprised when these fires come through and we see these large numbers again.
There’s a movement right now, and I understand what they’re saying, and I don’t know if I agree with 100%, but they’re basically saying there is no such thing as a natural disaster; all disasters are human, caused disasters. That being said, lightning strikes do happen, and fires happen, in the middle of the woods, natural occurrences, if you will. The disaster comes when it’s impacted by humans. So, like we had the earthquake on July 4th a couple years ago, it happened in the desert and China Lake was the epicenter. And, very little damage. There was damage at the Navy base and there was damage under some homes around the area, but it was like a 7.5 earthquake. I felt that all the way down here in Orange county. If that was in L.A., we’d still be talking about that disaster today, you know? So I don’t know if I want to call it retreating, but what I want to say is, I think we need to be smart about where we build.
I think what we’re talking about is the built environment. We need to be smarter about where we decide to build. Because, everybody wants to have that beautiful condominium on the beach, or your or the single-family home, for that matter. Who doesn’t? You walk down the stairs and there you are, like in Miami. You’re on the beach and you’re able to partake in the beautiful ocean or the gulf. But when those storms come, those tropical storms come or those hurricanes come, A lot of damage occurs because we build in those areas. So, I don’t know if the term “retreat” would be what I would really contribute to it, but I think we have to be smarter about where we decided to build. Does that make sense?
Andrew Boyarsky
Sure, it does. Well, the term that I’m using is one that you mentioned, that disasters are basically human constructs. We decide to live in certain areas that are prone to certain hazards and the impact from them. Your example of the Florida Peninsula, which historically has been made up of mangroves, marshland, and swampland; it was not built up, and it was human beings that went and drained and dredged it, and created areas that they could build on it. Historically some of those areas where malaria prevalent because it was swampland. The same is true in Southern California, as you mentioned, with the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and the risks that posed there. E.L. Quarantelli was the one who talked about the sociology of disasters, and more recently, Kathleen Tierney has been one who’s done a lot of research, and refreshed that level of sociological depth and looking at disasters impacts.
Your point that striking that balance between not building in areas that are prone to the impacts of hazards versus the money that we spend in creating the resilience is a common topic. Governor Cuomo talked about after Sandy, “We’re gonna have to cede to those areas that are Mother Nature’s” so to speak. But at the same time, it’s hard when you’ve got, real estate and a housing development lobby that wants to build in those areas because they’re desirable, for folks to want to live in.
Todd DeVoe
Have you ever gone down to Dugan Road in Long Island? It’s all the way at the end near, Montag, I believe. There’s this beautiful dune road. It’s all these crazy kinds of homes, a very wealthy area. It seems like every time a storm came in, like one of those homes were, washed out onto the road. Finally, back in the eighties, New York State said “We’re not gonna come. You guys could live out there, we’re not going to tell you can’t build, but we’re no longer going to come to your rescue. We’re not gonna come and take the sand off the road. It’s going to be a private road, and you guys are going to have to deal with it.” Insurance companies didn’t want to cover (the losses). It was like that thing it’s like, “Hey, we’re not going to tell you no, but we’re not gonna help you out” And I think we could get to the point where we say that as well. We’re like, “Hey, you person who’s flooded out three times, we’re not gonna tell you you’ve got to move, but we’re no longer going to cover your losses.” And I think that’s it. Then it becomes an economic decision. Are you able to afford to live in an area that floods out, and damages occur, and you’re gonna have to self insure? If you have the money to be able to rebuild every single time, then so be it. You do it.
Now I know we could get into the whole, is that equitable and all that kind of stuff. But, I mean, if you have the resources, I mean, you can do it and, if you don’t have the resources, then so be it. Because it comes to the point where, how often should the taxpayer at the end of the day, bail out people. And at the end of the day, if you think about the people that are living in some of these areas, they’re very wealthy people. We’re talking about people that have multi-millions of dollars. They’re building multimillion-dollar homes in these areas that are getting burnt out, like Malibu, for instance. The Woolsey fire comes, burnt some homes out. Malibu is traditionally burned. If you want to build there, then is it my responsibility as a taxpayer to pay for Barbara Streisand’s mansion? Barbara Streisand is a very rich person. Is it the responsibility of California taxpayers to pay for her home that got burnt down, knowing that she lived in an area that is, now I’m sure she is insured and whatnot? I’m picking on Barbra Streisand. If you guys like Barbra Streisand, don’t worry, she’s not struggling tomorrow.
Andrew Boyarsky
I may expect a call from Barbara Streisand after this.
Todd DeVoe
Let’s talk about this on a serious note, when I say serious, I mean people that don’t have the money to be able to withstand these things. And, there is a buyback program that the federal government went through, specifically, in Louisiana and they went to people and said, “Hey, you live in this area that’s gonna be inundated again. So it’s cheaper for us to pay you out” And people said “No. This is my Great, Great, Grandfather’s house. My Nana was born here” or whatever, And, so they don’t want to leave the family farm, and then that’s a serious decision that you have to make because now we’re coming over here saying, “Hey, we’ll pay you out for this.” Whatever the market value is It’s not like they’re trying to move them out to build high rises or anything like that. They really want the mangrove to grow back, and they really want these people to be able to be in a safe area. And there is an economic decision to be made, can you buy the same type of home with the amount of money someplace else? Those are personal decisions that have to be made.
But at the end of the day, again, I say these homes are $300,000 or whatever, maybe less. At the end of the day, are we again, taxpayers, are we willing to subsidize someone living in that location? Because that’s what we’re doing. And if and if we are, if we vote this and people are okay with it and then that’s okay, that’s what we do. We decide this as a society who we’re going to take care of in that sense. But, once that decision is made that’s the direction that we go with. But, we have to take a look at it now, clinically speaking, and this is sometimes where I get in trouble with some of my students. You take the emotion out of it. You clinically think, you think economically, you think through science, you think through these things and say, “Does this make sense to us?” I teach a class called Social Impacts of Disaster, so this is something that’s really on top of my mind.
But what is the social contract that we have created? With those that are living in those flooded areas, and living in the WUI’s? We could talk deeply about Paradise, California, And should people rebuild there? 65% of the city got burnt down. There were some seriously known infrastructure problems up there, they deferred maintenance on issues, things like this, we can have a laundry list on that, that put these people at risk. So the question goes, do we as a society, do we subsidize the rebuilding of the city people living in Paradise? And it’s a tough question because emotionally you say yes. I mean, Andrew’s home deserves to be rebuilt, and, he has emotional connections to that place there. But how many? How many times can we do that before it becomes economically nonviable?
Some links referenced in this podcast:
EM Weekly
sitchradio.com/shows/em-weekly/
Todd De Voe's professional website
toddtdevoe.com/
Master Link for Todd De Voe
linktr.ee/emweekly
His email address for contact: devoet@uci.edu