The Emergency Management Network Podcast

Episode Description
The storm passes. The rain stops. The winds die down. And sometimes, that is when the real emergency begins.
Electricity is the backbone of nearly every system modern communities depend upon. Communications, water and wastewater systems, hospitals, fuel distribution, traffic control, grocery stores, banking, transportation, emergency operations, and even our ability to receive warnings depend in some way on reliable power.
In this episode of the Emergency Management Network Podcast, we examine the vulnerability of the American electrical grid following major storms and extreme weather events. The problem is bigger than a few downed power lines. Hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos, ice storms, flooding, wildfires, and extreme temperatures can damage generation, transmission, substations, and local distribution systems simultaneously.
More importantly, we explore what happens next.
What does a 24-hour outage mean for a community? What changes at 72 hours? What happens when backup generators begin running low on fuel, cellular sites lose power, medically vulnerable residents need assistance, grocery stores cannot refrigerate food, traffic signals stop working, and public safety agencies are operating on emergency power?
For emergency managers, the electrical grid isn’t simply another piece of critical infrastructure. It is the infrastructure upon which much of the rest of our response system depends.
We discuss where the vulnerabilities exist, why severe storms continue to expose them, and what emergency managers should be doing now to prepare for prolonged and cascading power failures.
The question isn’t simply whether the lights will come back on.
The question is: What can your community continue to do until they do?
Show Notes
This episode explores the intersection between extreme weather, electrical-grid reliability, critical infrastructure, and emergency management.
We examine how severe storms can damage transmission and distribution infrastructure and why the consequences extend far beyond homes losing electricity. Major outages can quickly become cascading incidents affecting communications, healthcare, transportation, water systems, fuel supplies, businesses, food distribution, and government operations.
Topics include:
* Why severe weather remains one of the greatest threats to electrical reliability
* The difference between generation, transmission, and distribution failures
* How damaged substations, transmission lines, poles, transformers, and vegetation can complicate restoration
* Why undergrounding electrical lines can help in some circumstances but is not a universal solution
* The growing importance of microgrids, distributed generation, battery storage, and backup power
* Generator dependence and the challenge of maintaining fuel supplies during prolonged outages
* Telecommunications and cellular-system vulnerabilities when commercial power fails
* The consequences of simultaneous power and communications failures
* Impacts on hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, pharmacies, dialysis centers, and medically dependent populations
* Water and wastewater system dependencies on electricity
* Traffic signals, transportation networks, fuel stations, and supply-chain disruptions
* The role of utilities inside the Emergency Operations Center
* Identifying critical facilities and prioritizing restoration
* Community Lifelines and cascading infrastructure failures
* Planning for outages lasting 24, 48, 72 hours—or longer
* Why continuity planning must assume that commercial electricity may not be immediately available after a major disaster
The Emergency Management Question
Emergency managers cannot rebuild the nation’s electrical grid, but we can understand our dependencies on it.
Every jurisdiction should be asking:
What stops working when the power goes out?
Then:
What stops working when it stays out for three days?
Those two questions can reveal vulnerabilities that may never appear in a traditional hazard assessment.
Electrical resilience isn’t simply a utility problem. It is a community resilience problem.



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Episode Description
What can emergency managers learn when disasters strike very different communities at nearly the same time?
In this episode of the Emergency Management Network Podcast, Todd DeVoe and Andrew Boyarsky return from the IAEM Region 9 Symposium in Honolulu with a fresh perspective on preparedness, logistics, resilience, and the power of community.
The conversation begins in Hawaii, where geography changes nearly every assumption emergency managers make about mutual aid and logistics. When help, equipment, food, and personnel may be thousands of miles away, “leaning forward” isn’t simply good practice—it can be essential.
Todd and Andrew then turn to the severe storms, flooding, and tornadoes affecting Indiana and other parts of the country. Different hazards. Different geography. But many of the same lessons.
Emergency managers cannot afford to plan only for what happened last time. Wildfires can create tomorrow’s debris-flow problem. Extreme rainfall can overwhelm places that have never flooded before. And communities that wait until disaster strikes to build relationships have already lost valuable time.
The most important lesson may also be the simplest: preparedness begins with people.
From involving residents in emergency planning to knowing the people who live next door, resilience is built long before the EOC activates. Government can facilitate the process, but it cannot create resilient communities by itself.
Two storms. Two very different places. One lesson: know your community, understand your vulnerabilities, build relationships before the disaster, and prepare for the events everyone says could never happen here.
Two Storms, One Lesson
Community, Preparedness, and the Paradox of Paradise
Hosts: Todd DeVoe and Andrew BoyarskyPodcast: Emergency Management Network Podcast
In This Episode
Todd and Andrew reflect on their time at the IAEM Region 9 Symposium in Honolulu and the lessons that Hawaii offers emergency managers everywhere.
Hawaii’s beauty comes with significant vulnerabilities. Distance from the mainland, separation between islands, limited transportation routes, and dependence on imported resources mean emergency managers must think differently about logistics and mutual aid.
The discussion then moves to severe weather affecting Indiana and other parts of the United States, including flooding, tornadoes, high winds, and the challenge of preparing for hazards in places where people may believe, “That doesn’t happen here.”
Todd and Andrew explore what these events mean for emergency managers preparing for the next disaster—and why yesterday’s assumptions may no longer be enough.
Topics Discussed
* Lessons from the IAEM Region 9 Symposium in Honolulu
* Hawaii’s unique emergency management challenges
* The logistics of supporting remote and island communities
* The importance of pre-positioning resources and leaning forward
* Severe storms, tornadoes, flooding, and changing hazard conditions
* Wildfires and the secondary threat of debris flows and land movement
* Normalcy bias and the danger of saying, “That never happens here”
* Thinking about the unthinkable
* Community Lifelines and community preparedness
* Bringing residents into the emergency planning process
* Building relationships before disaster strikes
* Knowing your neighbors as a preparedness strategy
* CERT, VOAD, COAD, nonprofits, and volunteer organizations as force multipliers
* Government’s role as a facilitator rather than the sole source of solutions
* Hawaii’s “paradox of paradise”
* The spirit of Ohana and what it can teach emergency managers about resilience
Two Storms, One Lesson
The hazards may be different, but the lesson is remarkably similar.
Emergency managers must understand the communities they serve—not simply their hazards, infrastructure, and response capabilities, but their people, relationships, vulnerabilities, strengths, and culture.
Preparedness cannot begin when the warning is issued.
It begins when neighbors meet one another. It happens when residents participate in emergency planning. It grows when government, nonprofits, volunteers, businesses, and community organizations build relationships before anyone needs them.
As Todd observes in the episode, government doesn’t always have the answer to every problem. But it can help create the conversations, partnerships, and conditions that allow a community to become stronger.
Key Takeaway
Understand where you live. Know your vulnerabilities. Listen to your community. Build relationships before the emergency.
Because when disaster strikes, resilience isn’t something we suddenly create.
It’s something we discover we have already built.
Stay safe. Stay hydrated.



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Manufacturing Quiet Tuesdays
National Emergency Management Awareness Month, and a Confirmed Administrator at Last
Host: Todd T. DeVoe, CEM Runtime: 11:45 Recorded: August 8, 2026
SHOW NOTES
August is National Emergency Management Awareness Month, and this year it arrives alongside news the field has waited two years to hear. On Friday, August 7, the Senate confirmed Cameron Hamilton as Administrator of FEMA, part of a block of 74 nominations. After two years of acting titles and senior officials performing the duties of, there is a name on the door that stays there.
Todd DeVoe uses the occasion for something other than policy analysis. This one is a thank you. Not the conference kind. The real one.
He works through the profession person by person. The one-person department that also serves as the planning section, the logistics section, and the PIO. The planner who has read the same evacuation annex forty times, looking for the change that will matter, and who will never be told it worked. The duty officer at two in the morning, with the full picture assembled by four. The recovery specialist is still sitting at a kitchen table over a three-year-old declaration. The exercise designer who wrote a scenario meant enough to embarrass people, because an exercise that everybody passes taught nobody anything. The FEMA staff who stayed through the uncertainty. And the twenty-six-year-old, at their first activation, convinced everyone else in the room that they knew something they did not. They do not. Everybody is reading the same situation report.
Then the harder part. This profession’s best work is invisible by design. The evacuation goes smoothly, and there is no story. The warning goes out early and the numbers stay low. Success is indistinguishable from a quiet Tuesday. Todd reaches for Marcus Aurelius on the vine that produces grapes and does not go looking for applause, and lands on what Awareness Month is actually for: not asking for credit, but explaining what the quiet costs and who pays for it, so the October budget conversation goes a little easier.
The last thank you goes to the families. The empty chair at dinner. The eleven-word activation text that reorganizes a week. The skill of falling back asleep after the duty phone rings at three. And the thing most people miss entirely is being the first responder to the responder who came home from a bad one and could not yet talk about it. There is no ICS position for that. Maybe there should be.
CHAPTERS
00:51 The Senate confirms Cameron Hamilton as FEMA Administrator
02:56 Doc, welcome back. Why a permanent name on the door matters
03:07 Awareness Month, year two, and the traction it has built
04:08 Thank you, department by department
06:13 To the ones who are new: stay
06:40 When you do your best work, nothing happens
07:05 Marcus Aurelius and the business of manufacturing quiet Tuesdays
07:58 To the spouses, partners, and kids
09:26 A wildland firefighter son, and both sides of that door
09:42 Not a profession in decline. A profession that took a hit and stayed on its feet
10:52 Your assignment for the rest of August
YOUR ASSIGNMENT
It takes about four minutes. Find one person in this field whose work you have benefited from and tell them. Not on social media. Call them, and name the specific thing they did. Then find one family member, yours or someone else’s, and thank them for the hours that got taken from them.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
IAEM launched National Emergency Management Awareness Month in August 2025.
Auburn, Washington signed its proclamation on August 3.
San Bernardino County is running a campaign called Behind the Ready.
Senate confirmation of Cameron Hamilton, August 7, 2026, in a block of 74 nominations, 51 to 47.


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Episode Description
August is National Emergency Management Advocacy Month, a time to recognize the importance of speaking up for the emergency management profession and the communities we serve.
In this episode, Todd DeVoe and Andrew Boyarsky discuss why advocacy is essential to the future of emergency management. From educating elected officials and building partnerships to securing resources and strengthening community resilience, advocacy isn’t about politics—it’s about ensuring emergency managers have a seat at the table before decisions are made.
Todd and Andrew share practical ways emergency managers at every level can become advocates, explain the difference between advocacy and lobbying, and discuss how small conversations can lead to meaningful change. Whether you’re a student, practitioner, volunteer, or executive, this episode will inspire you to help advance the profession and better prepare the communities you serve.
Show Notes
In This Episode
Emergency management has never been more important, yet many people—including policymakers—still don’t fully understand what emergency managers do. National Emergency Management Advocacy Month provides an opportunity to change that.
Todd and Andrew discuss:
* What National Emergency Management Advocacy Month is and why it exists
* Why advocacy is a professional responsibility
* The difference between advocacy and lobbying
* How emergency managers can educate elected officials and community leaders
* Why relationships built before disasters matter
* The importance of telling the emergency management story
* How advocacy can improve funding, staffing, planning, and preparedness
* The role of professional organizations like IAEM and NEMA
* Practical advocacy ideas for emergency managers at the local, state, tribal, territorial, federal, private-sector, and nonprofit levels
* How every emergency manager can make a difference—even without holding a leadership position
Key Takeaways
* Advocacy is about education, not politics.
* Emergency management deserves a voice wherever public policy is discussed.
* Strong relationships built today strengthen disaster response tomorrow.
* Every emergency manager is an ambassador for the profession.
* Advocacy helps build safer, more resilient communities.
Challenge for Listeners
During National Emergency Management Advocacy Month:
* Schedule a meeting with a local elected official.
* Invite community leaders to tour your Emergency Operations Center.
* Share your emergency management story on social media.
* Mentor someone entering the profession.
* Participate in advocacy efforts through your professional association.
* Take time to explain what emergency management really does to someone outside the field.
Quote of the Episode
“Advocacy isn’t about asking for more. It’s about helping people understand the value emergency management brings before, during, and after disaster.”
Connect With Us
Follow the Emergency Management Network for more conversations with leaders from across the emergency management profession. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share this episode with a colleague who is passionate about building more resilient communities.


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EMN Podcast Episode Description
The Most Beautiful Game: Managing the FIFA World Cup 2026 from the JTOC
What does it take to keep one of the largest sporting events in history running safely behind the scenes?
In this special episode of the Emergency Management Network Podcast, host Todd DeVoe takes listeners inside the Joint Tournament Operations Center (JTOC) during the FIFA World Cup 2026, offering a rare, first-hand look at the emergency management professionals who worked around the clock to support one of the world’s most complex events.
While billions of fans watched the action unfold on the pitch, another team was monitoring weather, coordinating intelligence, tracking team movements, managing rumors, preparing for protests, supporting public safety, and solving problems before the public ever knew they existed. From the Planning Section to logistics, communications, technology, and multi-agency coordination, this episode explores what it really means to operate at the center of a global event.
Todd shares stories from more than a month inside the JTOC, lessons learned from building an interagency team under pressure, and the leadership principles that transformed a room full of professionals into a family. You’ll hear about the challenges no one saw, the victories no one celebrated on television, and why success in emergency management is often measured by what doesn’t happen.
Whether you’re an emergency manager, first responder, public safety professional, or simply curious about what happens behind the curtain of a mega-event, this episode provides an inside look at the planning, coordination, and resilience required to support the most beautiful game.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
* How a Joint Tournament Operations Center functions during a global sporting event.
* The role of emergency management in supporting FIFA World Cup operations.
* Lessons in leadership, planning, and multi-agency coordination.
* How situational awareness, information sharing, and decision-making work in real time.
* Why relationships—not technology—remain the most important resource during complex incidents.
Join us as we pull back the curtain on one of the most ambitious emergency management operations ever undertaken and discover how thousands of hours of preparation made the extraordinary look effortless. The FIFA Tournament Operations Center serves as the central hub connecting host cities, venue operations, security, communications, and tournament leadership to ensure seamless coordination across the competition.
Because in emergency management, the best stories are often the ones the public never hears.



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