Ep. 09 - The Inspiration Behind The Name: A Look Inside Florida’s State Watch Office

In Episode 9, listeners get an inside perspective on the State Watch Office (SWO) and its role in maintaining awareness of incidents unfolding across Florida. Staffed around the clock, the SWO gathers and distributes critical updates that help emergency management agencies and state partners stay informed and connected during emergencies.

Throughout the episode, State Watch Officers discuss the fast-paced nature of monitoring and relaying information and stories from the job, including experiences during the Surfside building collapse.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Stay watch off it. Don't you watch your seat? All them plans and paper behind the UC. Stay watch office. Stay fought.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Welcome to another episode of the Watch Office Podcast. I'm Kevin Guthrie, Executive Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. And today I am joined by members of our State Watch Office. So this episode is going to specifically drill into State Watch Office. And for uh, and I'll let you guys introduce yourself in a minute. But, you know, one of the things we hope to achieve with this podcast is number one, let Florida residents know what it is that we do other than just hurricanes. But it also becomes a natural recruiting tool. And uh, you know, as we start to look for high school students and uh college students that are here in the Tallahassee footprint, um, let them know what we do so that they can say, well, you know what, I I really didn't, I don't want to do the finance piece of emergency management, but I might want to do the meteorology piece or the uh the the uh uh operations office piece of it. So as we talk about it today, I just want to make sure that we uh we talk through those things. So I think we'll start with introductions. So we'll let ladies go first. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

All right. Well, thank you, sir. Hey, um, my name is Caitlin Gillespie. I serve as kind of a two-hat format, honestly, which a lot of us do here at the division, but um, I am the deputy state meteorologist, but I also get to wear the hat of the state watch officer. So Woody and myself tag team um the managerial duties of the state watch office. So it's fun for me to dabble in both the weather side, but then also into the more operational sense as well. So um I interned, so that'll be a common denominator. Um I interned with a division back in 2017-2018. Um, got bit by the emergency management bug after Hurricane Michael and my time in the watch office, um, and came back and we're in year five now. So thankful to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Thank you, Kevin.

unknown 2:04

Woody.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

I am uh Woody Harvey. Uh Caitlin said, I'm one of the watch officers, uh is our primary duty. Um basically we're just the supervisors uh that you know make sure everything keeps running, making sure that uh Jeremy and his crew are uh tackling all the stuff they need to. Uh I also serve as the uh state mass notification specialist, um, which handles uh public alerting uh messaging, making sure that all the counties keep their uh certifications up and that everyone knows what they're doing, what they can and can't do uh on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_05 2:38

My name is Jeremy Witt. I'm one of the duty officers in the state watch office. There are two of us. I've been with the division for about five years or so. Um I'm more like the shift line we need that shift lead. Uh be there for the operations officers and anything, anyone needs anything in the office, or any anything from questions to actually getting physical support. Uh, that's kind of my shift in the office. Uh it's it's consuming, time consuming, absolutely, but it's definitely uh very blipping and a great, great position to be in. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Yeah, so I think we'll actually start there, which isn't even on my uh list of topics today. So we've got the um we've got the operators that answer the calls on a on a 24-7-365, and I I think that's another thing we point out here is what you guys do is our 24-7-365 piece of emergency management. I don't know that a lot of people know that we actually physically have a human breathing person uh in at in Tallahassee here all the time, uh every single day. So we've got the operators, we've got the duty officers, and that's uh gonna be where Jeremy and his counterparts come in and they do the uh we I think we have about four shifts a day, give or take, uh, and they they run the shift operations and then the managerial operations is in the uh watch officer, which is uh Caitlin, um yeah, Caitlin and um and Woody. And I I'm gonna mess that up right now. I'm gonna go ahead and say I'm gonna call Caitlin Kaelin, only because we got we got like 15 Caitlin's and 15 Kelins, and I end up screwing that up all the time. So I'll just go ahead and own that right now. So let's start then with what can you and and you guys can all chime in here at once, uh, but explain what the watch office does on a daily basis, and more importantly, what is it that you're doing that impacts and helps Floridians?

SPEAKER_04 4:26

I'll take that one, uh, start off with. Uh essentially every day we're the watch office is basically the situational awareness hub. We're collecting reports on incidents that may not need state response, but could potentially um everything from you know has hazardous materials bills, uh major road closures, uh any major law enforcement activities that could cause uh any sort of population protective actions, you know, evacuation, shelter in place, um, or just you know, we also looking out from other things and how those things can can impact. The main purpose of our office is to make sure that everyone is on the same page and is aware of circumstances that might potentially need a state response when we contact uh other state agencies and their uh emergency coordinating officers or our ESF leads uh to make sure that their folks are tracking on everything because no one likes surprises, you know, as well as our own leadership. You know, we have a pretty robust call-up chain that almost starts with the duty officer. Uh it could be midnight, and if something happens that you know that meets our threshold for possibly needing state assistance, they call Jeremy, they wake him up. If it's something that you know Jeremy can't give them a little bit of guidance on, then Jeremy will call and wake Caitlin or myself up. Uh and then it goes from there. Normally by the time it gets to us, that's when we're letting uh the search chief and uh the operations uh selection chief know, and then hopefully it's not bad enough to get to you woken up at midnight, sir. But uh that that's usually the that's our biggest function, to make sure that everyone has the information.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

And that that that has happened and does happen. Um yeah, I think one of the things that I'll I'll key off of is uh I'll go back to you guys. I I've often said this, you are the heart and the brain of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. You're always on, you're always pumping, you know, you're you're you know, even to the point if you want to keep with the analogy of the respiration. You know, you people may sleep and rest their muscles, rest their bones and all that, but there is a living, breathing, um, you know, functioning piece to the emergency management that keeps, and if you think about it truly through that, uh of the the life air, the the lifeblood, the the the brain, and uh those things is those are things that are keeping people informed. And um, you guys are in the information hub. You start out the response hub, we'll we'll we'll we'll bull we'll drill into that in a second with the with the regional staff. But um it's definitely one of those things that um, and and again, it's we we you talked a little bit about it, Woody. Um, so uh Jeremy, I'm I'll I'll pitch this to you. You know, Jer uh he talked a little bit about hazardous materials, but what are those incidents that we are wanting to keep situational awareness on? I I know that there you may want to talk about the Florida state statute that requires certain notifications, but you know, what is it we're interested in on a day-to-day basis?

SPEAKER_05 7:29

Absolutely. So anything as as what he mentioned, anything that can escalate into something that would require a state response or possibly uh a danger to that to the public as well. We want to keep an eye on monitoring that, we want to keep an eye on that in case it does escalate. Uh, not only that, but we also want our state partners to also be aware of any current information that comes through because the more information they have, the faster response time we as a state can actually produce. Uh so a couple incidents that we've been what I personally think are some that watch office really keeps upset on are one and the hazmat incidents, but two, anything that can really impact a large amount of people, uh, all the way into uh emergency landings for aircraft. Um, you know, big big planes, big buses, you know. Um got 167 souls on board. We want to know when that plane touches down, we want to know if it's on fire, we want to know what happened with it during that time. Um, because the the at the end of the day, bad things could happen. Right. We need to be able to respond to it.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Yeah, we need to be able to respond to it, but we also need to keep our chain of command informed because, and again, that chain of command doesn't stop with me. I think that's very important for viewers. You know, we're the only agency in state government that is a division of the governor's office. So, you know, imagine I think probably the easiest way, and I I learned this very on in my early uh law enforcement careers, you know, basically what we want to know is this the things that can end up on the front page of the newspaper. Or, you know, obviously they're a newspaper starting to date myself, but you know, the digital newspaper, if you will. If it can end up in social media, it can end up uh on uh some type of mass media um news source. We need to know about those things so that we're, you know, so that the governor, Lieutenant Governor, and others are aware of those things. Um, you know, we're probably gonna, I'm gonna use a theme because I I I'm pretty sure Jeremy, you're around for surfside. So that that's a really good no-motice event that really involved a lot of the state watch office very early on, that whole notification system. So actually, why don't we do that? Why don't we unpack that? Um, you know, let's take the surfside building collapse. Um, that was definitely a swore notification that went to the highest of levels all the way to up to include the governor. Um, and and maybe let's just kind of unpack what how how that happened. So whoever wants to take that.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

Let me I'll let me just piggyback off what they both said, because your law enforcement background, right? I think the best way for the public and for Floridians to understand the state watch office is think of us like dispatch, but we don't dispatch people, we dispatch information. Right. And that's the key point that I feel like that rolls up and that's consistent across all of us is it's our job and our duty whenever we walk in that watch office. And we'll touch on this too, but you know, you never know what comes across that phone, the social media scrub, it does not matter. We need to act upon it and make sure that information dispatch goes both vertical and as horizontal as it needs to. So um, but in terms of surf side, yeah, Woody, I think uh duty officer at the time, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:29

The day before I was promoted to watch officer. Um, yeah, so that was an overnight, overnight thing. And it came in as a call, as a building collapse, which there are certain words that you know we we we try to certain words that if you say around us, it's it's very triggering, like building collapse, explosion, etc. We just you know don't use those very often. But the way that that cascaded was very quickly, we realized that it was, you know, there was gonna need to be a lot of support. So we brought in our ESF 409 uh folks into the watch office itself at the onset of what would become a uh a full-scale activation.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Before you go too much further, uh for those listeners that listen to us that are fans of us that doesn't that don't know what ESF 49, ESF emergency support function 409 is fire rescue, search and rescue. So um so just want to make sure people understand that. Go ahead, Woody.

SPEAKER_04 11:22

That's fair. Yeah, I I gotta remember uh the acronyms that we um but so we I mean anytime that there is a structure collapse or a partial structure collapse or anything remotely like that, uh, we do notify our uh the the search and rescue, which run through the uh the CFO's office and the fire marshals. So they just actually send in uh the representative and they operate that first part while we're still in the Intel gathering, just trying to figure out the sizing of the situation. We make sure that we are trying to answer the questions that you all are going to have for us at the executive level and trying to anticipate that. And sometimes the information doesn't come as fast as the questions, but we're actively working at throughout the entire time. Having our our uh merchant support function partners in the room like anything else happens, only kind of sizes it up, scales it up, has the resources available to deploy it. Um and then once once it once to the point where you know we need multiple uh state partners and support, that's when it goes out into the big room and to the emergency operations. Um but even through that, we're still just trying to get the facts and get it to where it's and get make sure we're not make sure we're not using any uh assumptions and make sure we're ground truth.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yeah, 100%. And you know, I think from um, you know, as as Woody was involved in the taking of that call, or the operator was taking of that call, and Woody was involved in that as a duty officer and ultimately watch officer, um, you know, to Woody's point, there's certain things that as the executive director I hone in on, and I remember getting that call at about one in the morning um from you guys. Um, and I it was we have an MCI level one event. Now, for those people that don't know and understand that terminology, we have never had an MCI level one event in in the state of Florida. And to get that call at one o'clock in the morning, that you have an MCI level one event, um uh that's hundreds of people that have been injured, right? Uh I think it's technically a thousand or more. And um, and I I I was like, that that's that's that's huge magnitude. That is huge magnitude for for us. Um and we'll we'll talk about some of the other things uh that that complicate those issues. But you know, I remember saying, uh, you know, did you did you say MCI level one? And I don't know if that was you on the phone that night or not, but um but I I said uh and it they said yeah, they said in fact if you turn on the TV, you can see, and I I remember, you know, being in my bedroom turning on the uh TV, um, and immediately the very first news station I got to, and I don't even know which one that was, but the very first one that I got to um showed. And I and I you know, I can you know I've been I've been I've been in at that point in time and have been involved in public safety about 30 years, give or take. And I and I've been a part of some really big responses, but I had never seen that many ambulances, fire trucks, rescue uh um law enforcement officers on one condensed scene that large that I've ever recalled. So so again, you know, the I think what we take away from this is the system where, you know, Miami Dave called us, the system started working itself, the notifications went up. I ended up contacting the deputy chief of staff, Courtney Coppola, um, with the governor's office. Uh, I remember she answered the phone and she says, if you're calling me, this cannot be good. And I said, nope, um, it's not. Um, that the decision was made to notify the governor's chief of staff and to go ahead and wake up the governor in the middle of the night. I think that's the only time in our history we've done that. Um, and uh, you know, but but it was it was warranted. You know, that was a very, very significant event to Florida, uh, the potential loss of life. And um, you know, those that are injured, you know, certainly warranted it. So that's that's that at the heart, that is what the the watch office did in that night, in those couple of hours, exactly what it was supposed to do. I think um, and I don't want to take a lot of time on this, but you know, we we talked about um as Woody said it, then it started moving into the big room. And what he means by that is it started moving into the EOC. I um the state watch office is again a microcosm of everything that we do. We we we focus in really big bucket areas, finance, logistics, operations, planning, IT. All of those things can be done inside the state watch office at a very micro level for a micro event that uh doesn't necessitate the big emergency operations center um full-blown formal uh process. So, but I always say this, and I know you guys know what's about to come out of my mouth. Everything starts and ends in the state watch office. So, you know, as we as we um something starts boiling up like the uh like the starside building collapsed, it ultimately boiled over into the uh the EOC, which was up and running for about two weeks, I believe. Um, then it started to collapse itself back down. I know that I was down scene uh while we were recovering human remains. I was on scene for about 30 35 days, something like that. But um again, that that that is how the state watch office works on on a, you know, we we we spent a little bit more time on that, but I think it's important for people to understand what is it that you guys do? Uh, because again, you are the you are the breath, you are the heart and the soul of uh and the brains uh behind the operation. Um let's kind of shift yours away from um you know the building collapse and maybe a little bit of the weather. I think everybody understands we monitor the weather, but um, for anybody who wants to take it, what what kinds of incidents or maybe even emerging threats um trigger actions from the watch office? Um let's take that first. You know, what what what what are we looking at in the future? What are what are the things that we think we're gonna want to know about in the future?

SPEAKER_04 17:18

Well, I mean, the uh this the cyber threat has kind of been a uh a new thing that we've been having to adapt to and learn to know what we're looking for. Yeah. Any anytime that a uh a 911 center goes down, even if it's just because of a fiber line cut, we're still treating it and going through the motions. We work really uh closely with Florida Digital Services. Um we've got a great relationship with them as far as back and forth notifications on you know, and they don't always meet our threshold, but we treat them all seriously and we we cut them out and make sure that we're reaching out to whoever report to them, or if it's important to us, we we make sure that we're thinking it that way. Um but you know, uh advancing in technology, uh drones and civil events and things like that, you know, domestic security, um with the people world coming up, we're having to you know get blocked in on some channels that are you know preparing for that and also knowing what threats they're going on. I know our regional technical coordinator sends out a news update every time that there's a new threat space on that.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

If you don't mind, I want to jump in because that really lays a really good foundation of the state watch office being a both proactive and a reactive office, right? We want to get ahead of the curve in everything that we do, maybe not so much as forecast me, but a forecast and kind of get with the trends. And so we do have two um fusion liaisons, and that's Jeremy and his counterpart that partner with FDP and Department of Law Enforcement, and they're in those meetings every week to kind of give us the heads up. And I think that's a really neat thing of what the emerging changing emerging trends are in anything that we could keep tabs on in office.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Well, I think another thing, um, and and if Jeremy, you want to take this and talk a little bit more about it, is um, you know, we use open source Intel, and uh, a couple of the events that we've actually discovered, we proactively discovered through social media. And the the fact that you guys in the in the I think six or eight screens that you guys have at each workstation, one of those things is proactively monitoring social media. You want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_05 19:20

Yeah, so we use uh multiple different uh types of software to actually monitor uh social media. One is uh we have first alert that we do use. Um, that is going to be scrubbing everything for keywords that we have set up and alerting us through every single bit of social media, uh not just social media, but all types of media. We have scanners, uh, we get notifications from scanners all the time. And a lot of times we actually have to sit on this for a little bit and let uh LE will let uh FireSQ do their jobs and get on scene so they can have information on the call. You know, we've we've reached out to a couple counties before and uh and they're like, Yeah, we we don't have anything yet. Give us a second. Um so yeah, we do have, as you mentioned, we do have that up at all points in time. And uh social media is such a large aspect of information sharing, information distribution because one of the fastest. But we don't know that, it's one of the fastest if it's going on right now, 30 seconds from now, it'll be on social media aspect.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Well, I mean, uh the NAS Pentacola shooting. It was actually our deputy state meteorologist at the time, Cameron, was the first one to see that come across uh at the time it was Tweet Deck, and that started the notification process. We we were proactive in reaching out to the county to find out what was going on. And I I think again, I don't want to uh um, but I'm I'm 99% sure that not even the county had been alerted to that situation yet before um and we we had already we were already working it. So, you know, we we're engaging technology. I think that's another thing that um our listeners need to know is we are very proactive at engaging technology. We're trying to get better, trying to get faster, and we're always trying to challenge ourselves. So when we get those notifications, whether we we've got the whether we get it from uh is it TweetTech now or XDech? I don't know what we call that. X Tech XTEC. Um we have it from one of our scribbers. Actually, before I move on to that, I was going to talk about how we get into the counties, but I you you said something and it it reminded me, we actually have a partnership with FSU, um who who helps us in this area. Um the Dial uh group. So you wouldn't one of you guys want to talk real quick about how we partner with um even uh our local university to help us in the state watch office?

SPEAKER_05 21:30

Absolutely. I also start with that one. What do you think we want to jump in after I'm so dial is uh they consistently are using uh open source uh information to scrub all social media aspects and they create reports and we receive those reports and those reports will have hey, these are points of interest. Um we will look at those every single time they come through and kind of scrub through at our level hey, that's actually interesting. Let's go ahead and do that and see if we can fact treat that. Did that happen, or is that just some sort of uh Not that we use open source intelligence at all as truth. Right. But it can help us go find the truth.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

I like to call it open source information and then revent it to turn it into intelligence.

SPEAKER_05 22:10

So one thing we also use the uh exadeck, I guess is what we call it now, is also to help validate some of that information we get. Is this going on one person post it on Facebook or is are 25 people posting on Facebook? The exact same thing. Right.

SPEAKER_04 22:25

And the Dow report does give us the metrics of how many, how much interaction each of us has done. But it's a really great program they've got over there. And we've actually hired some interlevel operators straight out of there. Rob and Daniel and those guys do a great job.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Rob, uh you gave Rob and I was going to give them a shout-out, but uh Dave Merrick, you know, those the uh those guys that are running that program over there. Um integral, absolutely integral um partners that we have. We we have quite a few of those integral programs, but this is specific to the state watch office where they're they're literally involved with you guys every single day of the week. So um, so let's talk about uh let's go to where I was gonna go, and that is how do we coordinate the county? So we get this information, what's the next step? We're we we we we're interfacing with the county and maybe a city uh state partner. What what happens next?

SPEAKER_04 23:14

So I'll I'll take that one. So particularly in the high uh the high stake uh notifications, a lot of times we will well actually what we primarily try to do is go through our regional coordinator because they have those relationships that they can they know who to call because we don't want to tie up phone lines in a dispatch when their their phone's ringing off the hook. We don't want to be another phone call for that director that's getting asked by us. We try to we try to channel that through the the regional coordinator and then they can provide us updates if they're not already on scene. Generally they will get on scene to get us that ground truth and those facts. Um and then from there, after once after the regional coordinator's working that, then we'll be simultaneously making other phone calls just a hey heads up um to you know whether it be Department of Health or a hospital-related issue or you know, D DOT if it's a major traffic or transportation issue, just whoever we need to get involved.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

That's uh that's a yeah, and for those that are not familiar with our regional field team, we we have regional recovery coordinators and regional response coordinators, and we have 10 of each, so 20 people that live in your community across the state of Florida. Uh, we try to, I think it, I think it's loosely in the statute that we try to have somebody every two and a half hours travel time um across the state of Florida, which right now we're into 10 regions, you know, as as we have further inundation of uh people moving into the state. Uh it gives us a metric to try to make sure that we're meeting the need of the individuals that are in those regions. Um I don't necessarily think we'll move to 12 regions or bigger regions, but um for for quite some time. But um to your point, Woody, we we notify those regional field teams, they start interacting with the county, uh, that give that county director, that city director, whatever the case may be, a one, you know, this is the only person who's going to bother you, right? And uh and really try to coordinate and liaison through that individual. So anybody want to add anything to that?

SPEAKER_03 25:10

No, I think that that covered it. Jeremy, do you want to? Well, I think that was really great.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Yeah, so what's one major event? So we we talked about surf side, but let let's let's make it a little more um evergreen, if you will, and that is 2025. Um, what is one event from this last year uh where the watch office played a key role? Uh and what you know, talk a little bit about the response behind the scenes. What did it look like? What was the situation?

SPEAKER_03 25:35

Well, I will not pick a weather event. I would have, I would have picked my winter storm, but I'm not going to do that. Yes, snow. That was so fun. I mean, we that was a huge coordinated effort, um, which we'll touch on when we interface. But um, for one that I'm actually looking at duty officer Jeremy for is um Florida has nuclear power plants. And we had that phone. We have a phone. It is the phone, okay, in the state watch office. The bread and butter of the stuff. And and when that rings, everything stops. It stops, right? Well, at 7:30 in the evening in March 13th, 2025, another day, it went off. And it was a real world, not a communications drill. So I think that right there is a very interesting one. And most people don't know that we really have that pulse and that and that status checklist. Can you walk us through that evening?

SPEAKER_05 26:25

I mean, yeah, absolutely. Uh so uh we'll start uh right before I got the call. I was actually at dinner. Um it was my dad's birthday and uh we were all the way across town, and I got a phone call. It was one of from one of our operations officers. He goes, Hey Jeremy, uh I'm sorry, but um I'm gonna we're gonna need to uh to respond here. Um so he told me all the information. The uh the the utility itself was experiencing power loss to one of its secondary utilities, uh, which is basically saying that it did not have a backup for it, so it did not make the qualifications that it needed to. Um so uh I was actually with uh a couple people at this table and hopped in the car and you know, ran up uh Thomas Hill Road. Luckily I wasn't driving, so like the next step within that process would be to send out an Everbridge to notify all the people uh that this is going on, all the people that need to know that are involved with this utility. When I say utility I'm talking about a nuclear power plant, um I believe it was uh turkey point at the time, I believe. Yeah, there are two sendings in Turkey Point Nicole PowerPlast that we monitor. Um yeah, I actually ended up sending out an Everbridge, notifying the entire team while we're driving in the car. So by the time we got to the watch office and started uh uh getting getting more information about what's going on with the utility down range, uh we everyone else had already got the idea and we were able to send out everything from the watch office. So before that anyone even got to the watch office, they already had all the information in their hands on their phones. And I think that's one very important part of the watch office is always making sure that information is disseminated in a real-world time to make sure that everyone is informed.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

You know, Jeremy, I I'm gonna stop you right there for just a second because you know, um, there's policies and procedures for us to do this. But you know, one of those things I think a lot of people think in government is you know, it's got to go all the way up to the highest level before any action happens. And this is one of those cases where we we are um we respond and we do as soon as that notification comes in. And I I again uh the I don't want to say the fallout, but the the the reaction was that that went out, real world event, and then my phone starts immediately ringing from agency head saying, hey, what's going on here, right? That's really the way it's supposed to work. You know, we we it did not go all the way up to the governor. Now we we notify the governor and the governor's office of it very quickly, but things work the way they were supposed to work because I, you know, and I want uh the takeaway here is I want the listeners and the the enthusiasts of our podcast to understand, you know, the the governor has empowered us to go and act, go and do. He has that expectation of us. Um, and this is one of those areas that we went and did, and you know, for the personal protection of uh the residents of Florida. Um, anything else you want to add to what what was going on behind the scenes there?

SPEAKER_04 29:22

Well, we all uh ended up in the office, I think, within 30 minutes of Jeremy receiving the call, including myself. I was on duty that that day. So we blasted in there. Um we had the search chief present. Um we just had everyone kind of kind of get there to try and figure out what was going on and if we needed to escalate things further, which as Jeremy said, it it was classified as an unusual event, which is the the lowest level of information that we get.

SPEAKER_05 29:47

I was just gonna specify that nothing didn't it was labeled internally.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Yeah, we we we we have levels of stuff that happens, and you know this the the the smallest uh the at the very bottom they we hit the first layer of notification of what was going on.

SPEAKER_04 30:00

So we um we also had to make sure we got in touch with our uh our radiological emergency preparedness groups uh in-house, they got got up here pretty quick as well, and they have the contacts with the utility to make sure that they're getting the the fastest information. And luckily, after I think we were only up there for a few hours before we finally got the all clear via phone call, and then we could, you know, just yeah, but we reacted as the way that we intended, we treat them all seriously, so we don't walk.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

And then all the way up to the top, right? So I'm making sure the governor's office knows about it, and then I was on the phone immediately with Pete Gomez, the emergency management director in Miami Dade County. We're already starting to coordinate. What are you thinking? What are we thinking? You know, if it so again, it was an unusual event, lots of other bad things had to happen before we got to a uh what I think we call a site emergency. Um, so we were a long ways away from that, but all of the things that we train for, all of those things were happening, and and it's it's always good to know. All right, so um brings us to the last thing that's inside uh of the uh state watch office, and that's its interface with meteorology. We uh and you know, Caitlin's already talked about she wears two hats in in the um in the state watch office, but um why you know, and I know that we talked about this uh with the meteorologist in a previous segment, but why weather? Why is weather so important? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

No, that's fantastic because actually, while they were working operationally in that nuclear power plant, nothing dealing with the weather. I was running plume models just in case that random office.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Because the wind is blowing.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

The wind is blowing, something could get transported where it's not supposed to go, right? Whatever that may be. So I was running plume models on my end, ready to go. Um, so, anyways, but it does not need to be a weather event that we are responding to as a state, right? Um, weather has this miraculous hand. Most people say, oh, I roll. Um, but it has a hand and it touches every piece of the emergency management puzzle, and especially the immediate response and the recovery afterwards. Um so it doesn't have to be a tornado, a winter storm, or or a hurricane that we're commonly known for. Um the watch office, we never know when our operations officers pick up the phone. Um most common that comes to my mind is uh in my in my head is a potential train derailment. Um and if there's a train derailment and it's carrying a hazardous material, that does not just say put, that will go somewhere, whether that's through ground or through the air. Think of Ohio, right? I think the Norfolk Southern one. Um so we have you know several class A rails that run a lot of ways uh throughout our state. So having the the whereabouts with that, but also the first responder and our recovery coordinator or response and recovery coordinator safety. So surf side, tying it back to that. A couple dual head with that. Number one is yes, at the same time, it's not a weather event, but we have search and rescue, we have law enforcement, we have our recovery, you were out there. We needed to provide weather support for you guys. It's peak summer, peak summer. Right? Thunderstorms, damaging winds, potential lightning threats. We need you guys to be aware of that. But also at the same time, ELSA was making its way up in the Eastern Gulf. So, with that, where do we go as a statewide logistic and operational puzzle? How do we best serve our state and our counties, both resource and personnel?

SPEAKER_01 33:33

And I know I know we talked about this, Caitlin, in in our previous podcast, but um, even to the point of how we support law enforcement, you know, because weather is evidentiary, you know, it could have a have a big role in evidentiary. Now, I again hazmat is by far the number one. We I think we take more hazardous material reports than any other single classification of report um in our state watch office. But obviously, there's there's certain hazardous materials that don't respond well to water, there's certain uh hazardous materials that don't respond well to humidity, there's things that don't obviously respond well to the wind direction. Um, all of those things come into play. But again, the the former cop and me, you know, um if if I'm on a traffic uh fatality situation and I've got a massive uh front getting ready to move through or just the afternoon spring shower, it allows our team to be able to say, hey, look, there we're working at a fatality accident on I-75. Let me call DHS and V Florida Highway Patrol, let them know, hey, look, you you got a severe weather uh event getting ready to move through your area. You got about an hour before you can do that. I remember we did that uh uh on one where we told them we hit you guys have got about like 15 minutes to process that entire scene. And I know the colonel was uh very, very uh pleased to get that call from us to let us know that they had to move very quickly. But there is it again, you guys are the heartbeat, the soul, the brains behind a much, much larger operation statewide. So um I certainly uh you know I appreciate the fact that we have, and I can actually say this now, we are tied for number one on meteorologists uh for in the in the United States. We're tied with North Carolina. We do have meteorologists that work at other sections of our agency. So if we do claim them, then we're now number one. So, and of course, you know, the Florida Division of Emergency Management, we like to lead the industry in everything we do. So um we we are number one when it comes to meteorologists uh in that interface. Um again, we are a 24-7 365 operation. So um, anybody want a last word before I close this out?

SPEAKER_03 35:39

I mean, as a pitch to try and dip your feet in emergency management, the state watch office here in Florida is a phenomenal place to start. There's no other place that you can walk in the office, a not know what your day brings, but but be able to see an overall expansion and compression of a statewide incident. It starts and ends in the watch office.

SPEAKER_04 36:00

Yeah, that was that was uh the the pitch of you don't we we look for attitude over aptitude. Well, you know, you can you can be as well stuffed as well, but we it's I say I I knew enough to be dangerous because I I I went to FSU and then and graduated uh from uh David Merrick and Robin Daniels uh courses. So I learned a little bit, really had no idea, uh, and turned into watch office for about two months, and then I they offered me a job, and I'm like, yes, absolutely, but no experience whatsoever. Uh, you know, Jeremy, you can probably uh test this too. Yeah. Yeah. Uh you get all of the emergency management wholesale, and you also get the uh the benefit of not knowing what's gonna happen each day. Every time the phone rings, it's scrolling.

SPEAKER_02 36:49

Different thing every day. I think that's what I love about it.

SPEAKER_05 36:51

It's my favorite part about it. Absolutely. And uh and touching on is no uh not having any prior knowledge to emergency management before coming in. I was one of those people five years ago. And uh the watch office is such a great, amazing place because you have your hands in just a little bit of everything. So you get to feel and learn about every single bit of emergency management from the from the base to logistics operations to every section, even a little bit of finance as well in there somewhere. A little bit. As uh directors said earlier, from the bottom to the top, back to us again. So it's an absolutely great opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

So I think um, as we close out, one of the things we need to talk about is you know, this this uh elephant that's been in the room the entire time, and that's Woody's mug, right? So uh it you know, obviously we we run on caffeine, obviously, and uh you know, uh like me, uh probably Woody's doctor said you can only have one cup of caffeine a day. They never said they never said what the fluid ounces are, but you know, so that's that's that's the story behind Woody's uh Woody's mug here is we run on caffeine and he just has one of these a day. Now, if we're activated, he may have two, but uh he just has one a day.

SPEAKER_04 38:02

So one every 12 hours. If it goes beyond 12 hours, then I get that second one.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Yeah, so I just had to, you know, I'm sure people were that are viewing it, that are watching it are like going, holy cow, what a mug. But that's that is uh definitely the the the the explanation behind that. So I want to thank you guys for joining us uh for this episode of The Watch Office. Please uh don't forget to like and subscribe to us. Um it is the best way to stay plugged in as we share more information behind the scenes and insight of how we keep Florida prepared, how we respond, how we recover, how we mitigate against the impacts of disasters for the state of Florida. Thank you so much for joining us.