Disaster Recovery, Covid-19, and Dog Foster Fails with April Cummings

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with April Cummings, Director of Mitigation Division Federal Emergency, about Disaster Recovery, Covid-19 and Foster Fails.   Read her full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 

1:34  Nic and Laura discuss disaster recovery stories

11:02  Interview with April Cummings starts

12:41  April talks about her foster fails

14:25  April describes her work with FEMA

19:46  April discusses the disaster recovery process

36:44  April talks about FEMA's Covid-19 mission

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review.

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with April Cummings at https://www.linkedin.com/in/april-cummings-4066b91a/

Guest Bio:

April Cummings oversees programs that strive to make communities safer by reducing risks to life and property by using risk analytics, floodplain management and insurance, community planning, various grant programs, and environmental and historic preservation compliance.

She serves as a collateral-duty Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) Lead.  In this role, she and her team provide the initial coordination and response capability prior to and in the immediate aftermath following a serious incident.   

Prior to this position, she was the Deputy Director for the Mitigation Division at Region 3 and the Deputy Regional Environmental Officer for FEMA Region 4 in Atlanta. Ms. Cummings holds an MS in Historic Preservation from the University of Vermont.

Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa

Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcript is auto transcribed.

[Intro]

 Nic  
Hello, and Welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nic and Laura. On today's episode. Laura had discussed disaster recovery stories, we sit down with April Cummings the region three director of mitigation for FEMA to talk about disaster recovery, COVID-19, and foster fails. And finally, Turkmenistan has a crater that's been on fire since 1971. It is known, literally, as a door to hell. It was created when a natural gas field collapsed. So that's something. And I think there's actually more than one of these, I think there's a few around the world, but that's the one that's been burning since 1971,

Laura

That’s crazy. 

Nic
I don't even understand that it's just on fire. So, wow. As always, please be sure to subscribe, rate and review. Hit that music.

[Shout outs]

Laura 
Also as a reminder NAEP’s Pennsylvania chapter the PAEP has a virtual conference with speaker sessions are already in progress but it's not too late to register as they are continuing throughout October. These are happening on Mondays and Fridays, their one hour sessions at nine and noon, you can sign up for those@www.paep.org, and also Nick and I love doing this show and if you love it too, and would like to help us keep doing it, we would love your help, we can't do it without our awesome sponsors, so please head on over to www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com and check out the sponsor forum for details. Now let's get to our segment.

[Nic and Laura’s segment]

Nic 
No, I worked on the 2011 Tornado disaster recovery effort in Alabama, that's where I met April, actually. Yeah, postcards first, and they just clear roads, rescue people, they actually have a quick number system like they'll say hey we searched this building, there were zero people here or there was like one person here and we took out, or there's a dead person. So like they just keep going and moving, because they're trying to save people's lives and so they have to have a way to mark their buildings so that you know that it's been checked. So it's kind of crazy, a little morbid but, yeah, that's totally wild I can't imagine that day after something like that happens

Laura 
Yea, I’d rather be out checking flood levels.

Nic 
Right yes me too. It’s no fun, really, really scary stuff and the one we had was, so there was like 190 Tornado touchdowns, something crazy like that all over Northern Alabama, the largest ones, there were like two F5s and the biggest one, literally a mile and a half wide. Like, that doesn't make sense, but it was a mile and a half,

Laura 
What? Like tell me more about this F5 stuff I don't know what that is.

Nic 
So like there's category ratings for every like just like hurricanes, you know, there's like Category Five hurricanes, there's a, there's a rating system for tornadoes as well, and so is this a similar. I think it actually is literally one to five as well. So f5 is the worst. And it's like 200 plus mile an hour winds. I think this one tapped out at 220 Something like that. And with gusts like 250 so it is a humungous terrifying storm. And we've been talking big data quite a bit but one of the craziest things about that disaster was seeing the post disaster aerials. So you can just see like a little kid drew on a map, where the tornado went, and it's a really, it was a really crazy storm so the biggest one, it Hackleburg, Alabama, so it did a couple of funny things, There was a guard rail in their baseball field. And there's no guard rails within like miles of that town. There's zero guard rails, they have no idea where it came from the superintendent there,

Laura  
they have no idea where he came from.

Nic 
Right, yeah, I have no idea where you got me with that one. That's good. So he decided to send the kids home there's nobody that nobody knew how bad this storm was gonna be, but he's like you know I just send him home, whatever, right, and the storm hit the high school which is where they would have taken all the kids right, and they would have put them in two places. One was the hallway, and the other was the gym lockers, right. So the storm blows through it picks the roof of the high school up smashes it and dumps it straight into the hallway, right. So anybody in there would have been totally, totally would have died.

Laura 
They always took us in the hallway when we were a kids. That’s where you’re supposed to go,

Nic 
yes, it didn't work. Yeah, yeah. And in this case, It destroyed the entire hallway was just, you couldn't even open the door. The debris was all the way to the ceiling. And the gym lockers, you open the door to the gym lockers and you're outside, it literally pulled them out of the building.

Laura 
They're out in the middle of someone else's field.

Nic  
Yes, exactly, Yeah like Hey where did these cinder blocks come from. But that same building. Right, so total devastation same building. There was a desk, like a school kids desk with a huge trophy on it like, like a two foot trophy didn't move. Yeah, Because dorms are weird. It's just crazy and the Superintendent was in one of the other buildings and survived. And it's just, it's random. It's totally random really scary crazy stuff. But yeah, I don't know. Do you actually have lived through one of those like hurricanes when you were in Florida,

Laura 
Hurricanes, yes, tornadoes, not so much. We didn't get tornadoes like they do ripping through the prairie lands. Right, but we do see waterspouts every once in a while which are super cool.

Nic  
Yeah, that sounds like a tornado in the water or something in the water.

Laura 
Yeah, pulls the water up, it's crazy. They look like dinosaur necks. To me anyway. I don’t know how anyone else feels.

Nic 
yeah, I totally. I’m right there with you.

Laura  
I remember seeing two tornadoes when I lived in Ohio when I was little, but it's one of those like memories I can't remember it was real or if I was dreaming it or something. Yeah, like I was sitting on the porch and watching the sky turn green.

Nic 
Yeah, it's super weird it's creepy, like when you see it you're like something's wrong. Yeah, that's what it looks like yeah like I don't like this, whatever is going on I don't like it.

Laura 
Yeah, but I do remember being just afraid of them. I mean, the movie Twister,

Nic 
yeah. I leaned on that heavily

Laura 
Put the fear in us in 80s and 90s and then the drills, you know when you're a kid and they're like pretend there’s a tornado coming, get in the hallway. Put your head between your knees and hope you live for the next hour.

Nic 
like, right, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. And, yeah, and so I guess the differences between the two storms so obviously hurricanes and tornadoes are different. I don’t know if you knew that, but the difference is basically like they one of them has water, and that's worse. So that was what they were telling us like this is bad, you know what happened in Alabama is very very bad, but there wasn’t as much rain, you know, that they had to deal with afterwards because sometimes, then you get mold, and then you have a secondary problem right you have a, you can't just go fix what you have you actually now have to maybe people can't go back to their homes at all, because it's dangerous, or more dangerous I should say, because it's never great, but really scary.

Laura 
Yeah, oh and not to mention the Wizard of Oz, I mean, did that. Yeah, it's tornadoes,

Nic 
yeah yeah that's the very first one, but like, yeah, you know. Yeah, you better be good kids. Otherwise, you know, tornado is gonna get you. Yeah, very much so.

Laura 
Yeah, though hurricanes, I love hurricanes in Florida, because you get hurricane days and usually they're like the most beautiful days.

Nic  
Yeah, yeah.

Laura 
The wind’s blowing, the pressure has dropped and it's cooler than normal and the sky is like this purple color. Oh wow. Pretty cool. But, you know, don't want to underplay the importance of being prepared for the real one, but often they were often, they are just near misses and but you know they're also nature's cleaners, we just happen to be humans trying to be consistent and hold our way there.

Nic 
This beachfront property is really great. Wait, what's that, you know,

Laura 
Nature's like it's time for this beachfront to change. Yeah, we're like noooo,

Nic 
quite literally, yeah, yeah. That's funny. That doesn't care at all. And we had like, so I'm in Raleigh so I'm far enough away from the coast where we just get inundated with rain and like every hurricane that goes through Louisiana, like just will dump on us a few days later, so it's just, just rain though, at that point, but a couple years ago we had two hit us directly, Florence and Michael, and they both came through totally differently, like one Florence, literally sat on Raleigh for three days. Three days 40 mile an hour winds at that point it wasn't quite a hurricane anymore but enough to be you know, that's enough to be like wow there's really something going on outside. They didn't do any real damage to our yard. Michael came through in like two hours and it broke our fence to pieces, like it's just so weird how that stuff works. So it did way more damage, and it was here way shorter, so just, yeah, I don’t know, wild.

Laura 
It goes back the randomness. I felt like in Florida, people like, oh my gosh, she lives in Florida hurricanes and I was like, hit North Carolina way more often than they hit here.

Nic  
Yeah, it's a really random thing like we didn't have any for five years and now since those two we've had, like, we're getting all of them like they're all going through Louisiana, like Louisiana has been hit, like, 10 times in the last two years, it's crazy how that's happened. So, I don't know, it's like there's like stuff that happens like the storm itself is bad, right and there's the recovery effort. So what we're going to talk to April about today, that happens afterwards like almost immediately afterwards, there's the 24 hour like we have to save everybody emergency area and then there's the longer term recovery. So sometimes it's you know it's, there's lots of sadness but there's also some humor in it as well. The town of Cordova was also hit by these storms. 

Laura

Where's that?

Nic

That's in Northern Alabama. So this is all in Northern Alabama, all those tornadoes, 2011, and it did some damage, it actually destroyed a bank there. It destroyed everything but the vault. So, which is already kind of awesome right, but they found out that a day later, some people found out the vault was exposed, and they tried to break into it. So the National Guard had to set up armed guards in front of the gate until all the money was taken out of it. That's just a crazy thing like you never would have thought about it but I loved the vault itself, stood up.

Laura 
People. I would hope the vault would stay, I mean isn’t that why you put stuff in a vault. So that it’s safe.

Nic  
Yeah, but brilliant I mean like a huge storm came through there like a big tornado, and literally the only thing standing like the only thing standing was the vault, like I've got a picture of it, and just the vault. 

Laura

That's funny. 

Nic

There's no buildings, there's no walls, nothing else, It’s just that. So pretty cool stuff. So, not,

Laura 
So it’s not people all coming with their torches and their hammers like thinking they're gonna bust into this thing.

Nic 
Yeah, like this one couldn't do it but they can't, right. That's cool, that's that's a fun place to stop so why don't we, why don't we do that.

Laura  
Alright, let's get to our interview.

[Interview with April Cummings starts]

Nic 
Welcome back to EPR today we are thrilled to welcome April Cummings, the region three director of mitigation at FEMA, which is pretty cool, but more importantly she is one of the coolest people I know, so thank you for joining the show April,

April Cummings 
I’m so excited to be here. Mostly to see your face again.

Nic 
I'm sure I'm sure, and that's why I had to start here, but I was gonna ask you how your dogs are doing but really I just want to know if I can finally take Harold home with me, because he is objectively the greatest dog of all time

April Cummings 
He is absolutely the greatest of all time and you absolutely cannot take him. He's still like the greatest of good guys and is currently a strong contender of Employee of the Year of the home office, Because he's always in my office, before I get to work every morning, like, where are you where my treat. Funny Harold story. He came up to my office in the middle of day. Checking to make sure I was still working or whatever, but he was in like a ton of pain and like wincing and it like made me like panic because I have a lot of dogs, he's definitely my favorite one. So like I immediately called the emergency vet and took the rest of the day off so he could like, lay on top of me, because he's 82 pounds and that’s what would make him uncomfortable. We get this emergency vet, who is not my normal vet and they literally just tell me you have a middle aged dog, who played too hard and tweaked his back, and I’m like how embarrassing.

Laura 
What kind of dog is Harold? I need a visual.

April Cummings 
He is a big oaf. He's a Catahoula Hound Dog, which is big Hound Dog. It’s the dog of Louisiana in case you want to know.

Nic 
so funny and so you say you, you have a few dogs, so I know that. Do you have any foster fails, and did you ever plan to have as many dogs as you have now.

April Cummings 
Heck no, I did not plan to have as many dogs as I have for those of you who want to know, I have four dogs. I purposefully have two dogs. Wilson who is pit-boxer mix and he's 10, and I got him right before Hurricane Sandy and one of our co workers ended up having to babysit him for like two months. And I have a husk named Luna, who's almost 13 Which is insane. And also during Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Sandy, my best friend from Texas. My then fiancé, and they met halfway, so she could take him and babysit him while I was up at Hurricane Sandy. Then I have Harold, the aforementioned best dog on the planet. And during COVID Before FEMA got really involved in COVID mission. My boyfriend and I decided that we would start fostering, which I was always like, that's a terrible idea because I really can't say no to dogs. But we made it through three fosters and we failed on the fourth one. The fourth dog that we now have is currently laying under my feet. His name is Sherman and he is an absolute terror. He’s a 25 pounds terror. I said I’d never have a small dog. I absolutely have a small dog now and I'm obsessed with them, and coincidently he’s become Harold's emotional support dog like they are just little buddies. Pretty pathetic, so I have four with one foster and one dog that’s an emotional support.

Laura 
Alright well we could talk dogs for a while, but let's move on to something about your job, because I'm super interested. So you've worked with FEMA since 2006 Which is crazy. And you're shaking your heads. And you're the region three, where is region three

April Cummings 
So region three is located in Philadelphia, and the way FEMA is broken up there's 10 regional offices. So region three covers the Mid Atlantic area so Delaware, DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, we have six areas, states and the District that we cover five states and the District.

Laura 
Okay, cool. So you are the director of all of that. Of mitigation which is sounds really neat so what does that mean, Did you start with FEMA or how did you get there.

April Cummings 
Yeah, so my current role is that, you know, my division, mitigation we work with the state and local partners to make sure that they understand their risks, mitigate their risk, and then ensure the risks that they can't, mitigate, so we really aim to reduce the impact of disasters, reduce or eliminate risk to people and properties from the hazards and the effects of the hazards. How I got here, my career, I think like probably many is a complete fluke. I completed grad school right after Hurricane Katrina hit, I finished in December 05’. And I was in school for historic preservation. So, right after grad school started working for the small consulting firm in DC. And at the time. A lot of the large contractors to FEMA were looking for additional staff and various technical expertise to go help down on the Gulf Coast, then they reached out to the firm that I worked for, and the head of the firm asked if anyone was interested in going down to the Gulf Coast. For a 60 days since, you know, I think, for when I said yes, I'm like heck yeah I'll do this, why not cool. And then literally that 60 days have turned into almost 16 years now, so it's been a journey that I did not expect to take, but I'm super in love with what I do I really like working for FEMA and the missions that we have. So I yeah I started as a disaster assistance employee that FEMA has different types of employees and I worked as a disaster assistance employee which is people that really just worked the storm at the time and then from there I kind of moved up to different positions I've worked at the region 4 office as an environmental specialist, and then as deputy environmental officer and then almost six years ago, which is, I can't believe I've been in Philadelphia for six years I applied for the deputy director of the mitigation division, because I thought it was a really good opportunity to expand my skill set and got the job and I've been here ever since. I love it.

Laura 
Nice. So you said that it was kind of a fluke. Does that mean what you went to school for was a little bit different or not what you were planning for.

April Cummings 
I went to school for historic preservation, I did my undergrad in history and International Affairs and then I was like, really interested in working with buildings, but like, previously I haven't moved that direction. So, I went to grad school for historic preservation, but I don't think I really knew where I was going with that profession and then I did not know that emergency management needed people that had environmental or preservation backgrounds. So, once I figured that out and this is a perfect opportunity for me and it fit really well.

Laura 
So how has your background in historic preservation helped prepare you for this job.

April Cummings 
Sure, I think that using the technical Historic Preservation skills that you develop, particularly to resolve complex adverse effects to historic properties, helped me develop stronger soft skills, which are transferable to lots of jobs, so working with teams to resolve adverse effects you work off complex problems you have to have good time management, you have to be good at negotiating, speaking in plain language which is why one of my favorite question on interviews is to ask to explain to an eight year old, how would you explain historic preservation to see if they can translate complex issues into simple language for people, but like consulting on the adverse effects you also potentially work with difficult people or at least people that have competing priorities for getting the project done, you are directing a team that you don't necessarily have oversight on to meet the common goal of resolving the adverse impacts to historic property, and then you have to keep in mind that although you have one common goal. Somebody's objective is to just get through the project whereas others is to preserve historic property so you have a lot of complexities thrown out, and these are all skills that are transferable to whatever job that you eventually move towards so I think my technical skills helped me develop my Soft Skills.

Nic 
That's really cool. It really is neat how that all ties together and I don't know. So you know we met in 2011, the disaster and Alabama down there and just going through that environmental review process was, was so wild because it still exists, there's definitely still an environmental review process, but it's very, very different than how things normally go. So can you kind of give us an idea of how NEPA works during a disaster.

April Cummings 
And I would say that a lot of the stuff that we do to prep for environmental review, during a disaster actually happens before disaster so we tried to get a lot of streamlining approaches negotiated with the various resource agencies prior to an event, so that when something happens we have good relationships, and processes to fall back on because usually it right after disaster is high intense, a little bit of chaos happening so we want to make sure that we have our processes and protocols in place so we are able to execute what we need to do very efficiently because at the end of the day we want to help the survivors get back to where they were before the storm as soon as we can so we have to have our ducks in a row, to help that happen. So, after we do that before an event happens during an event or after the event is declared, We coordinate with all the regulatory agencies that cover the impacted areas to discuss what our priorities are, what their priorities are any streamlined or expedited approaches that we need to do that are in addition to the ones that we've kind of pre negotiated before the storm. And then we also want to know what their resource concerns are. So we are in tune with that as we're reviewing our as we're reviewing the FEMA project. So, FEMA, from a NEPA perspective, we have a lot of statutory and categorical exclusions, they've definitely changed since I was an environmental specialist they're more encompassing now, but these STATEXs and CATEXs cover a lot of the activities that we do in the immediate after effects of a storm so it really helps to streamline the review process. And then for laws that are covered under the NEPA umbrella, like the state, or excuse me the National Historic Preservation Act or the Endangered Species Act, you know, we work with those agencies to create more expedited reviews because those are the big ones that triggered quite frequently, at the beginning of disaster. So, knowing that we're not the only customer of our research agencies we really tried to limit the time that we use the expedited timeframe to when we really need them because we also know that they are extremely strapped for resources of all, as well as their level, and then that kind of all the processes that our environmental specialists put in place, and they undertake outages after, but they are also really tied in with the program staff so the various programs that get turned on for disaster, they're really closely connected with them and work together with the state and local to develop the scope of work so we can anticipate what type of environmental compliance concerns that we're going to have to work through or any complex issues kind of start to identify what those projects are that might not be able to be cleared by a CATEX or STATEX under NEPA and get into the environmental assessment territory so we want to constantly be monitoring so we can set expectations about the environmental review from the get go,

Nic  
yeah,Yeah,

April Cummings

It’s a lot of work.

Laura 
Sounds like a lot of work. Yeah, but important work, is there always a disaster like Do you have a time when you're not like you're just planning for disasters are always some disaster going on

April Cummings 
Right now there's always events because COVID-19 nationally, federal events for us. There are you know there are definitely times of the year that we are watching for hurricane season, spring flooding so we're kind of always preparing for that. And then, you know we have certain states that get events more frequently than others do, just due to the terrain that they have within their boundaries.

Laura 
Okay, so how did those get declared what's the process for that happening,

April Cummings 
So that they're getting declared there, just to speak at a very high level of getting into some of the more nuanced details. So when a disaster happens, there's some type of impact to a state, the state, tribe, or territory they can all actually be applicants to FEMA request direct support but they determined that there was a disaster that hit their state. And then they can request a joint damage assessment from FEMA, which is a team made up of federal state and local partners that evaluate the damage so the team will conduct a thorough assessment of the impacted areas, whether it be the whole state or certain counties, and they'll determine the extent of the disaster, the type, or excuse me the impact on individuals and public facilities, and then the types of federal assistance that may be needed. But there's a variety of federal assistance options for them the main ones are public assistance, which is to the court, provide assistance to state, local tribes, territories, for both emergency work like debris removal and emergency protective measures, and then also permanent work which is like repair and replacement to eligible facility, bridges, etc. And then there's individual assistance, which is assistance to individuals and households. So examples of those, that type of assistance is disaster unemployment assistance or crisis counseling for example. And then the last big large grant program that is part of disaster recovery would be the hazard mitigation grant program which is grants to prevent or reduce long term risk to life and property from natural hazards so that that area is under my area of expertise of mitigation grants.

Laura
Oh, that’s a lot.

Nic 
Yeah,

April Cummings 
We definitely work really well together to help the state on their joint damage assessments, and then from there, the government, state government officials will review the damage, and determine the extent of the disaster and its impact, if the governor decides that the state does not have enough resources, they're overwhelmed to respond to the disaster, then they will request certain types of assistance from the federal government. They will submit that request to the President, through the FEMA regional office so our six days were requested to the office. And then, the President will review that and determine whether the state and local need that federal assistance to recover from the disaster and the answer is yes, then a federal disaster is declared, and that is when FEMA, can really start integrating with the states and locals with funding supplies and personnel.

Nic 
Yeah, that's just that simple. Yeah, just a 107 step process right. No, I love it, and it's interesting because so like, there is a lot that goes into disaster recovery, and it's almost like a whole unique economy on its own, but Is it strange to be in the business of disasters, so to speak, like I know you're not like hoping they happen but when you see our hurricane heading toward New Orleans. Do you like go into work mode it's like okay well we got to prep for this.

April Cummings 
I don't think it's strange and I can't, I honestly can't imagine doing anything else. I love the job and like the business, the types of work that we do like we have our steady state job and then obviously we can get turned into disaster mode if we see something coming, so a lot of what FEMA does that is visible is the responding to the events and supporting our states and locals, but a lot of the work that we do is actually in support of the other parts of our mission, which is the FEMA mission is to help people before during and after event. So while we know that disasters are going to happen. We do a lot of work to lessen the impact and make sure that we are prepared for when they do happen, so all year round at FEMA Region three and all over FEMA, we dedicate a lot of times, ensure that we are prepared to respond to disasters. So, we kind of start working in our disaster roles and make sure that we're on top of any changes and things so a lot of time is spent on developing plan, coordinating with our state and local partners to understand their resource needs if something should happen or gap. We spend a lot of time training our staff in their collateral support roles, which are those roles that they fill if there's an event or disaster either pending or one that had happened. And then we also are I most of us acutely track certain seasons of the year like I definitely, you know when hurricane seasons I know when hurricane season started, and I know when hurricane season ends. But like with FEMA, if you know if a storm is brewing out on the Atlantic or down in the Gulf, we definitely start tracking it several days ahead of when it's anticipated to hit landfall, or to make landfall, and then as it gets closer to when the potential landfall is, we definitely begin to ramp up our coordination and our preparation efforts with the states and locals that we have.

Nic 
Yeah, and I can't believe I didn't think of this before but like, that's the preparation before it happens and there's the event itself and then there's the recovery process. How long does it actually take. I know it's kind of hard to do just storm to storm but it's not like over an in a couple of months. Right

April Cummings 
No, it depends on the size and scope of the disaster and the types of damages that they had for our grant program, the hazard mitigation grant program which is one program in the mitigation division that gets turned on when there's an event, they have up to a year to apply for those grants. We want the States to be able to think strategically, and determine the best types of projects and minimize impact of disasters, through use of that grants so it definitely takes multiple years. In most cases, to really recover from events, and that's just from the FEMA financial side that I'm talking about there's obviously a lot of other impacts that communities have as well that take more time to recover from as well,

Nic 
Yeah, it’s really really well said thank you. Like you say there's this this whole large effort here. And so I think it's really important that you have this great ability to be able to command a room, I think that's just incredible. And you're really one of the strongest leaders I know if you tell me to do something like okay yes I do, I will do it right now and you know there's just,

Laura 
Hm, can you teach me that? I need Nic to do what I tell him.

Nic 
Yeah, it's just the fear, no I'm kidding. So what advice do you have for those who are just starting leadership roles because you really are good one.

April Cummings 
Thank you I appreciate that that's a very nice compliment. I think we worked really well together it was super exciting to meet you, together during the Alabama tornados, because I had never worked with the state where they had actually brought in, or had environmental specialists on the State side, so I'm glad we worked well together. So I was actually brainstorming some of the things. Mentoring is super important to me and I've been mentoring, some people at work and I really loved working with people, and I was thinking about if I was just starting what type of advice if I could hear something would benefit me kind of bucketed into four different things. I think listening. Communication is a two way street. Obviously, it's important for any leader to communicate his or her vision, intents and expectations both effectively and efficiently, but it's also super important for a leader to listen you can learn a lot from listening to anybody, whether they report to you, or our teammates that you're on, like working group, whatever that you, if you listen to them you can really learn a lot about a person, and then you can understand where they're coming from and how to better communicate with them so I think listening is super important, I think, leading by example is one of the most important things anybody could do like mirror the behaviors that you want to see in the people that you are working with no matter if they again report to you, or are above you or lateral to you it's so important to mirror those behaviors and not expect something of a staff person that you would yourself, do I think being honest is also very important being honest with yourself, evaluating how you are interacting in an activity or you're doing at your job like that self reflection. And then I think it's equally important to be honest when you're wrong about something, it's okay to admit that you're wrong, but it shows that vulnerability because it's important for staff and people to see how you react to mistakes, and how you recover from them. The vulnerability piece, really and honesty both build trust with whomever you're working with. So I think, you know, you obviously want to have people trust you and one way for them to trust you, is to show them more about how you are as a person. And then I think the last thing is celebrating successes. So often we are moving from one big thing to the next big thing without like taking a second back and reflecting on all the cool things that we have done, or all the accomplishments we either had as a team or an individual, and I think it's so important to acknowledge that and understand how people like to have that celebration, some people don't like the acknowledgement in front of people other people like a written thing, other people love to be acknowledged for their great activities, Nic Frederick. I really think it's important to celebrate those successes and celebrate them in different manners that means something to the people that you are celebrating or the activities that you're celebrating.

Nic 
That is such a great answer. I mean, damn

Laura 
That’s it. She covered it. If you want to make a leader, there's your five minutes of to dos. So, get to it.

Nic 
Yeah. I love that, and being vulnerable Yeah, and you know, celebrating successes is really important too, yeah it's really really great, great answer.

Laura 
Yeah, so that's all awesome. We're ready to be good leaders but now let's think of the technical side, so there's the GIS component to a lot of what FEMA does. So how can someone in GIS, what kind of skills do they need and what kind of projects do you work on in FEMA with GIS.

April Cummings 
Yeah, so we already talked about how technology and April authority set sail for me so there's a lot of smart people that can do GIS and can that are really great at it in our office. So, overall, in most of the countries floodplain maps are actually all digital. So, meaning they consist of the GIS data layers that can be viewed by the public on a national viewer, and if you're interested that national viewer is the National Flood Hazard layer and region three last year became the first region to actually have complete digital map Flood or Flood Insurance Rate Map, so excited about the accomplishment, talking about things to accomplish and celebrate that is mine, and then when there's a disaster event data collected after the disaster on the event, including stream height, high watermark damage data etc. and then FEMA compares this data with the floodplain that’s currently mapped. And if there's significant flooding that occurred outside of the actual floodplain, we could trigger a remapping study with which we would re-map those trees or that area to see if there should be changes in the floodplain. We do a lot of a lot of what we do is GIS driven, and I think the most important thing is, it's one thing to have GIS layers and data it's another thing to be able to tell the story with that information so we're working really hard on making sure we can actually tell the story of what the data is telling us, because so many times you can just see something on a map, but it doesn't necessarily translate so helping to make sure that those stories translate to meaningful decisions, whatever level of decision making is happening so the locals using as a state using it, and then using it to drive well moving mission.

Nic  
Yeah, yeah, which is really really neat stuff and it's really cool that you say that there are the other folks who are very good at technology. So you don't have to be. Yeah, you kind of mentioned earlier to about COVID-19 and FEMA’s help, supporting that effort, which I don't know if a lot of people know, but you also do working on that effort, you almost met, Barack Obama, but you were taking off assignment, the week before he was going to show up. Like what happened there whose kneecaps, do we need to take out seriously like what the hell. 

April Cummings 
So it actually makes me laugh, that I missed Barack Obama but before I get into that, Let me just talk about FEMA’s mission in the COVID vaccine mission this spring so I was actually supporting a few vaccination centers, the goal the vaccination centers were to provide equitable access to vaccination, and to provide a number of vaccines a day, so the last night I was out was at the Greenbelt community vaccination center, and our goal was to vaccinate up to 3000 people a day, so I'm not gonna lie, I've worked with FEMA for a long time as we already discussed earlier in this podcast, but I just say this is literally the best one of the best missions I've ever been a part of, if not the absolute best mission I've been a part of so the mission really required a whole government approach we had support from the State Department of Health, the State Emergency Management Agency, all different federal partners were coming to support us, We had, National Park Service, the Navy, Army and the Air Force, other components within the Department of Homeland Security umbrella that we work in, and then we have local partners, both the medical facility at Greenbelt, so in my normal day to day job as a mitigation director, you know, the project that we undertake takes years to see fruition, but like at the vaccine site, it was instant gratification, a person walked in, in our case they walked into the vaccination site, their registration was confirmed they were vaccinated, and then they sat in observation for a limited amount of time, and then they walked back to whatever mode of transportation they came there on, and that took all of 30 minutes they literally saw the end result of what you were doing in 30 minutes instead of like three or four years so amazing. We also have, you know you got to see people. Some people were super anxious coming in because they hadn't been around that many people in a year. Other people were super excited to come in and get shot and couldn't wait to like plan their next trip, Or go hang out with friends again it's been a year. So, we wanted to start capturing reasons why people were coming into the vaccination center, and we had great External Affairs team there and they like created the little wire handout that people could send via Why I got my COVID-19 vaccination today and then people could write whatever answer that they wanted to put and I'm not gonna lie. It was like a tear jerker wall, it was like a happy tear jerker wall. If you needed to see why we were there just go to that wall and you'll just feel great about what you're doing I mean like, I'm not gonna lie, my favorite sign, and I still remember this was, why did I get my COVID-19 vaccination? It said, because I needed something to do today and I was like, that’s alright, that’s cool.  A lot of people because they're getting married. A lot of people were saying it because they were doing it because they cared about their community and it was just awesome to see this stuff, so that was a great mission, the site that I was at, Greenbelt, was really close to Washington DC, it was on the metro line because we wanted to make sure that people that didn't have access to cars could get to the vaccination site so it's right on the metro line, we had like paratransit there so we really wanted the site, super accessible to everybody. And I was part of the planning from the pretty much from the beginning. And I had a deputy site manager that I had never worked with before. So to get to know him a little better. I'd ask him some random icebreaker questions each day, and the icebreaker literally sparked joy in my soul because he was like, oh you're asking me another question, but it was like super important to get to know him better so we could work better together. So one of the questions that I asked them was if a VIP came to this site which VIP would like immediately make you be I need to be here I need to see this, and I don't I honestly don't remember what the answer is, but I wrote it down somewhere and I still have that, but my answer was the second gentleman because I just loved his little tours that he was doing at the time, so I left the site, and my deputy site manager took over for me. And so, texted me immediately as soon as he could because as a picture of Obama at a site. And I was like, I think, it's not always like better than the second download April I would have done everything in my power to get to here. But I was like super excited for the team and for Dave, my deputy to meet him, you know, they just did so much work and they were so involved in the mission, it was an honor for all of them and I'm super happy that they were all able to meet him. So no kneecaps. We’re good.

Laura 
Near misses.

Nic 
I know, I know. I'm jealous for you.

Laura 
So, Nick has told me a lot about the work that you guys have done together, and also has shared some funny, interesting stories with me but we like to share them on the show as well so do you have any crazy stories you'd like to share with us.

April Cummings 
Gosh, I was thinking about this, and I don't know, Hitting 40 is also making me forget stuff.

Laura 
It is. It totally is. I have the same problem.

April Cummings 
You know, I think it's not really crazy but when you're working events, you know, you're most likely away from home, you're working long hours, and you are, you know, it's most stressful it can be stressful. And so you kind of become family with the people you're working with, and you create friends from all over all over the US. And I think that's one of the best things about the job obviously Nic and I are friends from when we met in 2011 I mean, never would have met him otherwise. Yeah, but my very first disaster which was Hurricane Katrina. I met my best friend, and we still travel all over the world and all over together, but it's kind of funny how we met, because I was working, as I mentioned earlier at a consulting firm in DC and then worked with this woman named Krista, and I kept hearing her on the phone with this woman because she was talking about how her friend's dog just got hit by a car. The dog was fine. And I was like that, like, obviously I'm a dog lover, so it's like, you know, hurting my heart but the dog was fine and then fast forward as I mentioned, our company got asked if we had anybody that could go support any historic preservation roles. So I jumped up at the chance and Christa turns me and she's like my best friend works down there at that office. Do you want her number, and again 24 year old April's like, I'm not gonna meet her, I don’t need her number. I literally sat in the desk right behind her. Like there's 800 people out there I'm never gonna meet her, I absolutely met her. The first five minutes I was at the field office, but I didn't know her name. I heard her talking about her dog, like, Are you the woman that has a husky. She's like are you the one from DC. And we literally became best friends since then and I've taken some like wild trips around the world and throughout the US and I would not have it any other way, like working for FEMA has changed my life in so many ways, professionally, obviously, but personally I've met so many great friends. Awesome.

Laura 
I love a good friends story.

Nic 
For sure. So we are almost out of time, but is there anything else you want to share before we let you get out of here.

April Cummings 
I would be remiss if I didn't say where it rains, it can flood so everybody should look into flood insurance, but really important way to protect your property. In the event that something happens in your community. And I just want to thank you guys for having me and it was a lot of fun.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai