Listener Q&A: Where can we get supplies? And, what do you do in the Emergency Operations Center?

Tiffany and Devon answer listen questions to wrap up Season 1, including: where to find two-weeks ready supplies and what happens in the County's Emergency Operations Center. 

Episode resources:

• Mountain House
• Ready America
• Judy
• FEMA Trainings
  • There are hundreds of courses, but these may be of most interest to those wishing to volunteer during a disaster. 
  • IS-700.B: An Introduction to the National Incident Management System
  • IS-909: Community Preparedness: Implementing Simple Activities for Everyone
  • IS-288.A: The Role of Voluntary Organizations in Emergency Management
  • IS-317.A: Introduction to Community Emergency Response Team (CERTs)
  • IS-315.A: CERT and the Incident Command System (ICS)
• Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD)
• Red Cross Cascades
• Greenhill Humane Society
• Lane County Animals in Disaster
• Egan Warming Centers

Have feedback for us as we plan Season 2? Please share it with Devon at PublicInformation@LaneCountyOR.gov. 

A transcript is available online. 

Listen online or on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Podcasts or Spotify.

You can find more information, including episodes and show notes, at LaneCountyOR.gov/fan. Sign up to receive emergency alerts at LaneAlerts.org.

The views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of Lane County Government.

Transcript

The transcript is AI generated and lightly edited for glaring errors. Please excuse minor errors.

Introduction:

Welcome to When It Hits the Fan, Lane County's favorite podcast for all things emergency preparedness. Whether you're just dipping your toes into the world of emergency preparedness or you've been building bunkers since Y2K, we've got something for you. Hosted by Lane County Emergency Management, this podcast is all about equipping you with the knowledge and resources to be prepared and stay safe, no matter what hits the fan.

Devon

Hi, Tiffany. Welcome to the last episode of the first season of When It Hits the Fan.

Tiffany

Happy New Year, Devon. How are you today? 

Devon

I am doing well. Excited to pepper you with questions. What about you? 

Tiffany

Good. I can't believe we're coming to a close in our first year. 

Devon

I know, I'm sure it feels like you've been here for a decade, but you're just coming up on your one-year anniversary, and we're very glad that you haven’t you know, fled for the hills. You know, you joined Lane County shortly after last year's ice storm, but you were part of going through that experience and event and helping us identify some lessons learned, some areas for improvement. 

It's been about a year. There's been a lot of public conversation recently reflecting on that incident. What are a couple of the lessons learned that have really stuck with you over the last year, and that you've been working to get us in a better place on?

Tiffany 

Sure. I think they fall into two buckets. What we needed to work on, or what areas of improvement exist within our agency and within the agency interface that we have with our with our public partners and then the public piece. And I think, one thing that we really heard from people, even people who felt that they were prepared, found that there were shortfalls when the event extended through a number of days.

Either they didn't have enough or they didn't have the right types of things. And so I just really encourage people to sort of walk themselves through what if I was getting ready to lose power for five days? What lessons did I learn last year? This is a great time to start, filling those gaps. And then for us, it's it's been how do we respond?

How do we partner with other agencies to ensure the best response and the best service for our communities? 

Devon

And I think we continue to do that with an eye on how do we do that when even the responders don't have power or are trapped in their homes, and that that added a layer of just difficulty and challenge and frankly, pure spite, that I had not experienced before. And so it was a good reminder of how dependent we are on some of these super vulnerable systems. 

Tiffany

Yes. You know, we just had the 325th Cascadia earthquake and tsunami anniversary. And one thing I appreciated about the ice storm, if that's the right word, is that it gave people an insight as to what it feels like when our responders are victims and when those ordinary surfaces on which we rely aren't available for an extended period of time.

Devon

So for this final episode of the season, we, you know, put out the call for people who've been listening to ask us questions, maybe things that we never covered that they were interested in, or things that we confused them on by getting too detailed with it. And so, we're still growing our audience, but a listener named Jeff really came through for us, and he actually sent a handful of questions. So I would love to just get Jeff his answers. I assume that if he's got those questions, other people do as well. So I'm just going to dive in if that's okay with you. 

Tiffany

That sounds great. Thank you Jeff. I'm excited to hear the questions. 

Devon

So his first question was, clarifying question all the way back to our episode on being two-weeks ready. He asked where is a good place to purchase his two-weeks ready emergency supplies and are there pre-made kits for purchase? 

Tiffany

Great question. And this is a big answer. So the, the quick answer is yes. There are kits that are pre-made. Mountain House is a really popular freeze dried company that makes backpacking food and whatnot. It's it's also a good resource to have in an emergency. But I think sort of the obvious thing here is the cost. Freeze dried food is not inexpensive. Pre-made kits are not inexpensive. But beyond that, they may not meet all your needs. You can take an off the shelf kit, but you're really going to need to look at it through the lens of your needs, your family's needs, your people's needs.

And so yes to pre-made kits, yes to Mountain House. If that's your, if that's your tactic. But I think it's good to think about what we can just do for ourselves. One of the key pieces of advice I give people in planning food is to really look at what they do on a daily basis, and how what they're planning may differ.

You don't want to try the new thing, for the first time on the very bad day. And in fact, you're more likely to be successful in this area if you integrate your emergency food planning with what you're already planning. So that looks like cycling food through, what would it look like? The obvious thing here is that you may not have a way to cook, like you ordinarily do.

And so thinking through what what I'm making and what I would need to prepare that whether it's water, an energy source or whatever, that whatever that looks like, finding a way to stick with the basics and practice cooking it in the way that you would need to if you didn't have power or you didn't have access to all the tools that you do on a daily basis is a really, really good idea for a lot of people.

Devon

A hybrid probably works right? There are companies out there like Ready America, or one called Judy, and I meant to look up why they call it that. And I forgot. But those are, you know, could be really expensive, but they're a good place to get inspiration. Or maybe there's 1 or 2 elements that would be helpful to you.

And then you can build your own being more creative and more thrifty, and maybe using things that you already have on hand at home. 

Tiffany

Yeah, I think for me, the, the, the most important thing point to make here, regardless of what you decide, is to practice, practice, practice, both to make sure that you'll be able to prepare the food that you've planned to consume, but also to make sure that people will eat it.

Like, I can sit here and say to you, I'll eat anything if it isn't, liver right. I can eat anything. But that's not true for everyone. Picky eaters. What we do know about disasters is we tend to burn more calories, and so food becomes important. I can tell you stories about people who packed, MREs, the military rations into their pack.

Devon

Oh, no. 

Tiffany

To open them up and and go, oh, my God.

Devon

Those are rough, if your system isn't used to them. I have a coworker who let me try one and never again, never again. 

Tiffany

So you might want to open it for the first time before the very bad day. Okay. What else do we have for questions?

Devon

So Jeff is aware that the County set up an Emergency Operations Center during the Holiday Farm Fire in 2020. And so his question is, how many times has the County activated its Emergency Operations Center, which I might slip and refer to as the EOC and that's what I mean, since that event? 

Tiffany

Great question. For our listeners that may not be familiar with what an EOC is, it is the county coordination center. When something isn't happening we're working on planning or grants or training or exercise, but when a big event spins up in the county, and additional resources are needed, we activate the Emergency Operations Center to provide support to our partners, whether that's cities, fire departments, the general public for those down the stream effects.

So that was the County Emergency Operations Center during the Holiday Farm Fire. We were here to coordinate evacuations, sheltering, animals. You know better than I, but just giving our listeners, a feel for the kinds of things that the Emergency Operations Center does. Also, prioritizing and when a number of jurisdictions need the same thing, sort of herding the cats and helping people, helping ensure that the resources are used efficiently, effectively in our meeting the most immediate needs.

Tiffany

So how many times have we activated since the Holiday Farm Fire? It's probably important to note that at the time of the Holiday Farm Fire, we were already activated to some degree for Covid. We activated in the fall of 2020 for the Holiday Farm Fire, and then not again until the next year for, was that the Middle Fort complex fire? Devon?

Devon

It was. And that would be one of the years that Oakridge got really tired of us. And so, we went through a period of two really intense years and then a third year where Oakridge was, you know, unfortunately, really the focus of those Emergency Operations Centers, we had Cedar Creek that followed. That complex followed in 2022.

Both of those I remember being, you know, many weeks long. 

Tiffany

Yes. And then in 2023, I was actually here on assignment, for the Lookout and Bedrock fires that happened starting in August. Those, were, what, 2 or 3 weeks of activations for those fires? 

Devon

I think heavy activation for the formal emergency operations centers, the fires were an issue, you know, long beyond that. It was a long summer. I do remember meeting you in that emergency operations center, and there's nothing like the feeling of being so grateful when your people are tired and you've been at it for weeks and you have these other emergency managers or people from other communities that do this work in their community, show up so that you can go get a little bit of rest, you know, take care of yourself and your family.

So I remember being incredibly grateful to see you. And I believe, you came with the, Lincoln County emergency manager at the time, too. So we had, like, a whole coastal, whole coastal, cavalry to the rescue.

Tiffany

It was six counties. It was six county emergency managers that were here. Benton County, Clatsop County, Lincoln County, Deschutes County and Harney County. Great. And that was really that. Yeah, that that was a really, amazing moment. Okay. And then was there anything between Lookout and Bedrock and the ice storm? 

Devon

So, we did not need to open a formal emergency operations center for the fires this past summer. Certainly we had staff working them and staying connected with the fire teams, but thankfully we didn't have widespread evacuations. The fires, stayed mostly in uninhabited areas.

Tiffany

and I guess I would I would maybe add to that and say that we were sort of in a warm status all summer. We didn't get involved to the extent that we had in the past, because those downstream impacts didn't pop up. Right? The fires were big and they went on all summer, but we didn't have to evacuate people. We didn't have to evacuate animals. That said, we maintained a posture all summer so that we could activate in a moment's notice if we needed to. 

Devon

So how does the county staff its Emergency Operations Center when it's activated? 

Tiffany

We really approach it in a scalable fashion. Four out of five times there's just a skeleton crew there. I might grab my staff. I might ask you to come over as the public information officer, and we activate. So we're leaning into the event, but it may or may not turn into something bigger. If it does turn into something bigger, we've got a bunch of county employees that come to serve in various roles, and so we would start just calling people to see if they could come in to fill positions as we stand them up. Our system for organizing in a disaster is really flexible and scalable. We don't activate positions that we don't need, and we have county staff that are really skilled and knowledgeable about the specific positions. And so we build to suit when something happens. 

Devon

Yeah, I mean, that's one thing your office has been really good about. And it started, with your predecessor and you continue to improve on it and keep making it better, is the training for county staff, right? Most of us don't get to play in your world on a regular basis. And so really giving all of us a chance who you know, those of us who may have a position to to play in an emergency operations center, giving us a chance to learn about that and practice that has been so incredibly helpful. And then, you know, as our earlier list proved, we get lots of than real life practice around here, you know, to make sure that we're we're understanding that learning,

Tiffany

It's true. You know, you could take a class on emergency operations centers, but it really just gives you a high-level view. It's understanding what it looks like at the local level that is important. 

Devon

I get the sense that Jeff might want in on the action because his next question was whether community members can volunteer in the EOC, or are there other ways people can volunteer during emergencies in general?

Tiffany

That's a great question. I can tell you that we don't typically have community members in the Emergency Operations Center, and that's for a that's for a couple of reasons. One is the training. In order to show up and work in the EOC, you have to have completed a battery of trainings. Not everybody wants to commit to that, but I actually can't have people in the Emergency Operations Center that don't understand the organizational structure because it is the key to our success. And so that's maybe the chief reason. I think a more effective and straightforward way to get involved in the county EOC is not to directly be in the county EOC as a community member, but to tie in to one of the voluntary agencies throughout the county that does plug in to the EOC. COAD, Community Organizations Active In Disaster, is the umbrella organization under which are nonprofits and private businesses come and bring resources to bear during an emergency. Red Cross as well is tried and true, focused on sheltering and blood services, is always in need of volunteers throughout the county. Those are the ones that come to mind for me. Do you have any other ideas, Devon?

Devon

Yeah, I think, Greenhill is another organization that's really involved when we do have a need to shelter people with, as we've talked about in our episode with Cary Lieberman from Greenhill and then with one of our animal welfare officers, Isabel, this season, people love their pets or their animals, and they want them to, of course, be safe, too. And so Greenhill is a great organization, and all of these organizations need volunteers year-round as well. And so that's something that there's an opportunity to benefit not only during a disaster, but also day to day, I think to, we rely so much on the Sheriff's Office Search And Rescue volunteer corps, and they get to do incredible hero stuff on the daily. But they're also really important to that emergency response and helping people evacuate safely during an emergency. And then I think, the Eagan Warming Centers, that's maybe less direct emergency response, but they provide an incredible service, and they fill a huge need in this community, especially during winter storms. And I know that they are always looking for volunteers.

And so if someone's looking for a way, you know, to feel like they've done something concrete and done some, you know, really visible good in their community, all of those organizations are really nice option. 

Tiffany

That's great. 

Devon

I will put there, you know, there are a lot of FEMA courses, Federal Emergency Management Agency courses that are just available to the general public, especially around volunteering and being of service during a disaster. They're online modules. I'll put those in the show notes for folks that might be interested in learning more about that. 

So do cities in Lane County also have their own Emergency Operations Centers? Or is it just the County? And then we kind of serve as the only one in the area?

Tiffany

The answer to the first question, do cities have their own Emergency Operations Centers is yes and no. Cities are expected to have their own Emergency Operations Centers. They plan for them. They all have emergency plans that talk about activating an Emergency Operations Center. Here's the rub with those: you only use them periodically when you have an event. And one of the reasons that Lane County has become pretty adapt and fluid at activating the Emergency Operations Center is because we've had to so many times in the last six years, and we get that practice and you get better at it. And so the cities have emergency operations centers. They have if not physical locations, they have, assumptions and protocols and procedures for how they will respond in an emergency. Do they have an opportunity to do it very often? Not really. 

Devon

Well, and I think, at least in the incidents that I've been able to help, you know, be a support in the EOC during – disasters, have zero respect for city limits or other boundaries that us mortals foolishly draw on maps and, often we all end up working in the same EOC essentially together.

Tiffany

There aren't often isolated incidents within the county. Necessarily, you know, the ice storm is a good example of something that pretty much affected everyone. But if any given community has an isolated incident, I think we're really lucky, in this county and we have people that are ready, stand ready to go and support whoever's in need. 

Devon

I appreciate anyone and everyone who's taken a few minutes to listen this season. In the spirit of, you know, continuous improvement, if any of our listeners do have ideas or suggestions for how we can continue to get better at this and make it something that is valuable to our community, please reach out.

You can reach out directly to the Lane County Public Information Office, which is really just me. And I'll also put contact information in the show notes. We are going to take a break for a couple of months. I think what we want to focus on in the second season, we've talked a lot this season about what all of our residents should be doing, but there's a lot that, you know, the County and other agencies should also be doing. And so helping people understand what that looks like a little bit more. So we've sort of started that with the questions today around the emergency operations center, but I want to branch out and have us talk with more of our partners. The people who do show up and do have a role to play. 

Tiffany

Right. Thank you. See you later. 

Closing:

When It Hits The Fan is brought to you by Lane County Emergency Management and co-hosted by Lane County Emergency Manager Tiffany Brown and Public Information Officer Devon Ashbridge. Music is by the Love Gems. Many thanks to our listeners and guests. We are so glad you're here to help us create a more prepared community. You can find more information, including episodes and show notes, at LaneCountyOR.gov/fan. 

Sign up to receive emergency alerts at LaneAlerts.org. The views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of Lane County government.