5 Essential Elements Every Emergency Management Agency Needs

Emergency alerts and warnings can save lives—but only when organizations have clear, effective policies guiding their decisions. In this episode of The Alerting Authority podcast, emergency communication experts Dr. Jeannette Sutton and Eddie Bertola discuss why alerting policies are often overlooked, how weak or outdated policies create operational risks, and what agencies can do to strengthen their public warning programs.

Eddie introduces the Alerting Policy Maturity Spectrum, a framework that helps organizations evaluate where they currently stand—from having no policy at all to maintaining a fully integrated, regularly tested, and continuously improved alerting program. The discussion highlights common challenges such as outdated documentation, verbal agreements, fragmented procedures, copied policies that don't fit local needs, and policies that exist only on paper.

The episode then dives into five essential policy elements every alerting authority should address:

•  Geographic targeting strategies to avoid over-alerting and alert fatigue. 
•  Timing and quiet-hour considerations for effective public warning delivery. 
•  Approval authority structures that prevent delays during rapidly evolving emergencies. 
•  Training requirements that build confidence through realistic exercises and scenarios. 
•  Ensuring policies reflect operational reality and the unique needs of each jurisdiction. 

Through real-world examples involving missing persons, hazardous materials incidents, flooding, severe weather, and public safety alerts, listeners gain practical insights into developing policies that support faster decisions, improve accountability, and enhance community safety.

This episode is especially valuable for emergency managers, public information officers, dispatch supervisors, public safety communications professionals, warning coordinators, emergency operations personnel, and government leaders responsible for emergency notification systems, IPAWS, Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), Emergency Alert System (EAS), and crisis communication planning.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hi, I'm Tanessa.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

And I'm Eddie Bertola.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

And we welcome you to the Alerting Authority. And as always, we encourage you to subscribe, follow, listen, and most importantly, participate in these podcasts. We want your concerns, questions, ideas, problems, pain points, and success stories so we as alerting authorities can better do our jobs and make our communities safer. And today's episode is brought to you by the Warn Room. If you have 360 characters to save a life, are you ready? I am Dr. Jeanette Sutton, and at the Warn Room, we turn disaster science into life-saving action. If your agency is struggling to craft the perfect alert, we are here to help you get it right the first time. We offer specialized warning boot camps to sharpen your team's skills, expert consulting for crisis message development, and access to the warning lexicon, a plug-and-play library of evidence-based templates for nearly 50 different hazards. You should stop guessing and start alerting with confidence. Visit thewarnroom.com to book a training or explore our message libraries. The Warn Room, expertly crafted alerts for a safer world. All right, so today we are welcoming back to the show Eddie Ace Bertola. And I asked him to uh talk to us today about a topic that he is passionate about and spends a lot of time sharing with alerting authorities across the country who have asked for advice on how to do this better. And what this is is developing policy. Um policies for alerts and warnings.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

People are gonna be like, I'm done. Policy.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

No, this is a good thing. This is like the how-to's. This is like the the what's and the whys. And the what's and the whys are so important because it it reduces the delay that it you will take, the delay that you will have as you're trying to decide: do I issue, do I not issue, who has to approve, who doesn't have to approve, what are my strategies for getting through this process quickly so that I can get a message out the door when time is short. So policy, boring, but this important and thrilling and exciting. And so here today we have Eddie Bertola to talk to us about policy. He's gonna give us a rundown on um the importance of policy, and then I'm gonna ask him to give the top five um the top five things to include an alert and warning policy so that you have good takeaways.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Now, I I think it'll be a fun topic, honestly, because um, Jeanette, you you and I interview a lot of people, and really it's been wonderful learning from people, but we're also experts in our own right and and in what we teach and what we do. And I really want to make sure that, you know, we mention policy all the time. And and again, this is it's a joke, but it's true. People think of policy as a four-letter word, as a negative, like the F-word or other things, like they're just like, oh, policy. But it really can be a liberating document. Um, it it really should be there to provide um empowerment to your to yourself or to your organization. Um so I'm looking forward to talking about it. And I hope sincerely that you guys stick around long enough to hear all of the different things because I promise you it will help you and and it will protect you. And you're probably gonna be like, we need to look into this.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah. All right, so let's get going. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Do you have a slide to share with us?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Can I do my that spectrum that I've I've talked about a little bit just to kind of describe policy and then we'll get to questions?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

I would love that. And uh so Eddie has a a slide that he shares. So if you are listening to us, you might want to check out the YouTube version of the podcast for today so that you can actually see this spectrum slide. It's the alerting policy maturity spectrum. And it it um it goes from zero to seven. And I would want to be in that seven category, not the zero.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

That's right. And when when we go live with this, so when it launches, I will also push this out as well so you guys can see it. So you you have it. Um but essentially, all of us with our policy for alert and warnings, we fall into one of these seven categories. And I I invite you to challenge me on this. Please, please tell me that no, you know, you're not or you're somewhere else. This is based on my experience and talking to different organizations domestically, internationally. This is where people usually fall. And so, zero, that one's the easy one. And Jeanette and I were talking about someone that that we've worked with that's in this category, um, but they have the desire to improve, which is good. Zero, you got nothing. You have no policy. Um, everything is an ad hoc decision, and everything is the first time just because you don't have anything. And and it's a tough place to be. Then it moves up to the first position, which is outdated policy. Um, fun quick story. I um referenced, well, I was asked to go and look at um some policy and talk to an organization, and their policy was no joke, I think from the late 50s was their last policy revision on this subject. And obviously it didn't have anything with modern alerts, warnings, but it was a communication plan. I think it was from like 58. And I started laughing, and I'm like, you guys set me up. There is no way this is real. And they said, Well, you know, it's it's real. We don't use it. We technically have a policy, but we do things completely different. Um, and it it really existed now. Years may not be like from the 50s, um, but if it's even five years, think of all the changes and advancements that have happened since that time. Um, we really need to look at that. So the next one is uh word of mouth operations. I wish uh and maybe we can share some stories with this, but I will ask people, okay, so what do you do? Well, this is what we do. Well, where's it written? Well, it's kind of written here, but we just know this is what we do. Oh, I work with this other individual because that's the agreement we have. And it's just like, uh, okay. It's not inconsistent, they're doing it all the time, but it's just, it really is that handshake agreement. Then you get into uh Frankenstein policies, which is the third one. And and I laugh with this one because I there was there was an agency, it's been fixed now. I was like, uh, when we're doing uh an analysis, we do what's called an RFI or a request for information. And I say, Can you send me all of your policies, procedures, SOPs, governance documents, everything so I can get an idea of what we're doing. I think there were like 25 different files. And I started laughing and I said, Well, do you have anything else? And they said, Well, yeah, we we're missing one or two. So they sent those to me as well. And and I said, How do you manage all this? And they said, Well, it's it's here somewhere. And it literally was just pieced together and it referenced different ones, and and we we had a good laugh about it. And so they obviously understood um it, it just it was tough. Um, and that's whenever you have multiple documents like that, things are going to conflict um because it's virtually impossible to manage all those different sources of information. Okay, then we have move up to number four out of seven, and that's your cut and paste policy. This does happen often, and it's somebody's like, Hey, do you have a policy on that? Oh, perfect. And you literally change the heading. Um, I reviewed one where they changed the heading, it was a county. They borrowed it from another county, they cut and pasted and they tried to do that control F or to find or replace. I think that's control H or G. I'm not even sure. But they replaced their name for the other county all the way through. And then everything else was the same. And I was just like, okay. And I was able to find some errors, and they're like, well, it was a good policy for this other county. So we wanted to cut and paste it and use it for ourselves. Again, the there's a part I have in here in the slide where it said the staff doesn't buy in. It's big where if you're just taking from somewhere else and you don't go through that process of development for yourself, it's hard for this to really impact culture the way it should and to get your staff to buy in. So then we go up to number five. We're getting to that really good green area here. Um, number five is called the shelf policy. And this is where you do have a policy that exists. I mean, you you could have gone through the effort to make it, it's nice, but it's on the shelf. It collects dusts. You're not training on it, you're not exercising it, you're not uh reviewing it to make sure you have any updates. Uh and again, you have it, but it, but it's really just a shelf policy. Quickly, number six is your operational policy. Uh, this is a good place to be. This is not bad. Um, it basically means you have something that is for your jurisdiction. It explains and defines the different thresholds for alerting. You use it, you exercise it, and and it's and it's positive. So if you're in in the level of six, I would give you a high five and say you're doing really, really well. The ultimate goal is to be in number seven. And this is what we have the mature integrated policy. And for this one, you test it regularly. It's updated because you do after actions as a part of this, and you're like, hey, what can I do? Um, as Jeanette and I talk to different amazing people, I literally will go back and be like, what do I need to adjust? Because I've learned something new that needs to be applied for my jurisdiction, for the way I teach, for whatever it is. That's the integration piece. Um, it's supported by leadership. Um, and there's there's a thing on here that's probably the toughest one. It's your staff can explain the whys. Because this basically says we have that policy, but I've also empowered my staff to have that level of confidence through their competence so they can explain the whys of of what's happening. So that in a super quick nutshell, Jeanette, is the alerting policy maturity spectrum.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

This is a super helpful visual. Um so I really do hope that people, you know, take a take a look at this graphic and see where you fit in. Um, the the ones at the the low end, the zero through two, boy, that seems pretty dangerous to me. Um, the three and the four, it's like just due diligence. Like you've got it done because it was a requirement, but you don't really know it and you don't you couldn't actually act on it because you haven't integrated it. Um, but the the work that's necessary to get to a five, six, and then a seven, I mean, it it really does require a commitment. One of the things that I learned recently as I was thinking about policy and about um AI and how AI might be able to help to create a policy, like a cut and paste policy or a shelf policy, is that it's really hard to find policy documents to even pull from. Like for alerts and warnings, those seem to be pretty uh pretty rare. Like maybe there's a lot of organizations that fit in that zero category of just nothing written, hard to find somebody else's policy to um uh uh, you know, where do you even start? Like, is that what you found also?

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah, and and again, you're you're totally correct here. Alert and warning policies are hard to find and they're like very specific to the jurisdiction. What I find, I would say more often than not, um, are organizations, and this is public or private, where they have it referenced in other policies to say this is how, like, this is what something we would communicate about, or we we need to send a communication on this. But they don't have a separate policy or they don't go into what that actually means. And there are a lot of emergency operation plans that exist. And there are federal requirements to have an EOP or other documents to receive funding or other things. Again, all good, but it's a check the box type situation where they're gonna be like, hey, you need to send a message or you need to reference alert and warning, but there isn't anything specific to be that foundation for the alerts and warnings.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

And I think it's possible that one of the reasons there's not a real strong standard for having this kind of policy is that these don't easily fit into the emergency support functions or the annexes that, well, it is, it would be an annex, but in terms of being like a communication emergency support function or a public information, it just doesn't, doesn't naturally fit into either of those categories. And so it's almost like it's this little nice to have until you actually really need it. And then you better have it because you really need to know how to do this correctly.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

No, I a hundred percent. It's it is not an ESF. You guys have heard that term in this space, right? Emergency support function. And communication and alerts and warnings is all wonderful to talk about. The second that it doesn't go well, oh my goodness, the fingers are pointing and it just goes from bad to worse. Um, and that's why we have policy. That's why we have it. So, anyway, that's the spectrum. Um, but like go ahead and we can shoot on some of the other questions, and I'm interested to see what you have.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Oh, it's pretty simple. Eddie, can you share with us your top five recommendations for things to include in an alert and warning policy? Start with number five and work your way up to one. So number five.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Okay. Um, number five, and I have it here on the slide too. So if you're on YouTube, you're cheating, which is fine. Um, you're using your resources. Um, I have it, it's geographic targeting. Um, it's so important to include in a policy. When you're on the phone with someone, when you're at the scene somewhere, and you have people trying to make suggestions on where you should send an alert, it's really hard, um, especially if you don't have it written in policy. Um, I've had many discussions with sheriffs, with uh chiefs of police, local EMs, government officials, and they're like, hey, we have this going, we want to alert, and they'll tell me this massive area. And I'm always like, okay, why? Tell me tell me the reason. And they said, we just want to let people know. And I said, I that's great. I want to let people know too. However, and so then we go into the policy portion to say, in these situations, this is this is the area that we alert to. And in the policy, it's very clear and it needs to say, right, if there is evidence that lets you know you need to alert to a greater area, do it by all means. Um, I a really good reference for this is missing endangered persons because you're gonna have grandma who has walked away from a memory care facility, which again, she needs to be found. She has a walker with two green tennis balls on it, and she is just going, going, going. I have had people call and say, can we alert my entire county and the county next to me? And it's like, no. Why? Like, tell me. Like, did grandma jump in a car? Um, does she have turbo on that walker? Help me understand. And they're just like, well, we just want people to know. And I said, No, I get it. But I also want to be cognizant of over-alerting, about, you know, ringing the bell so loud that people are going to be like, well, what's going on? And then they look at it and they're like, well, that doesn't impact me. I'm too far away. And so within a policy that that I wrote that I recommend for for that situation that I just gave you, is we found, and this is again just based on our data, is that someone who is a senior citizen travels approximately a quarter mile per hour as far as how far away I'm going to alert. So if they have been missing for four hours, I would go a mile radius. Um, and then I would continue up to five miles. And again, I am looking for more data. I am looking for more information so that I can keep adjusting it. That was just based on approximately 2,300 different ones that that we had dealt with at the time. And so I looked at all those numbers from where somebody left to where they were recovered, and I said, we can live in this area. Um, will there, will there be that one that that ditches the walker and just starts running, sprinting somewhere? There may be. But in the absence of additional data, that's what we stuck to. And again, the reason that we could do that is we put it in our policy and we were able to reference it. Um, all the cool tools that we have for alerting are meant to be geographically targeted. Um, and if you don't understand which uh tool should be targeted in which way, you need to go learn your tools. All right. EAS, that's that is really hard to target to a jurisdiction that's you know small because it's done through TV, radio, and and those are large broadcasts. The wireless emergency alert, it's much easier. NWEM or the non-weather emergency message for National Weather Service, harder to contain. A lot of your opt-in stuff is super easy to contain, and that's another great resource. But geographic targeting, you need to put it in. Um in the if you don't put it in, what you're gonna get are people that just alert to the entire state, the entire county every single time because it's not in policy to say it should be done smaller. So that's number five.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

That is great. I can imagine that people have some questions about this one. Um, because as you're talking, I'm thinking about the RAND study that showed statewide alerting leading to people saying, uh-uh, I'm done, can't handle it, doesn't apply to me. Um, but I'm also thinking about how do you select the boundaries for events where like toxic fumes? And I mean, in a policy, you probably need to have something that says, I'm gonna talk to my subject matter experts on the plume modeling and the weather, and determine that their expertise is going to play a role in how far I issue this message. 100% and then I also think it do you do you think this is me thinking out loud? Do you think that this geographical targeting is being managed by some organizations through the drawing of zones?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Um I do. I I do think it's being managed that way. Um people are trying to get ahead of this, and what they do is is they're like, okay, so if I have a city, I'm I'm gonna put it into zones one through five, let's say. And if I have an alert that's in one of these areas, I'm gonna determine I'm gonna activate zone one and three or whichever it may be. That's that's a good step, but we really have the technology to to do more and and to get into the weeds more. And we have map drawing capabilities that do not take that much time to where you can actually have a place. And if we go for the incident which you referenced, which is a hazardous materials incident, we can determine where that has mat is and then use our experts, resources, meteorologists. I mean, and and you may not have any of those people, because we have some organizations that are so small, but you have the ERG, you have other um emergency uh references and resources where you can say, okay, it says in this situation, if I don't know that much about it, I need to evacuate, you know, a mile or shelter in place or stay indoors, whatever it may be. You have some general resources. Um, go from that. Because what happens is if you just do the full zone, you most likely Will have places within that zone that are not impacted and are thinking to themselves, why are you telling me this? Um we really have that ability to get into the weeds and click create a polygon, another square, something. Um and if you don't have that technology, or if you're not sure how to use it, um, that's something that you need to address.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Yeah, and this is not even getting into the contents of the message, um, which goes along with that geographical targeting question. But um, this is, I think, very provocative to think about putting that specifically into a policy. So I love number five. Um, I'd love to see some examples of how people are putting number five into their policies. Okay. Number four. What is the number four thing that you would put into an alert and warning policy?

unknown 22:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Number four is also super controversial. I love it though. It's timing and quiet hours. Um, I am a huge fan, huge advocate for writing down timing and quiet hours in your policy, in your governance documents to say, on the norm, right? Ever and we're doing alerts and warnings. And this is just an example. We're not sending out a wireless emergency alert before 6 a.m. or 7 a.m., and we're not sending one out after 10 p.m. Okay. For many situations. Those should all be shoulds, not shalls. And the difference policy-wise is if it's a shall, that essentially means you don't cross the line. If it's a should, a should basically says there better be a really good reason if you're outside of this policy discussion. And so I always try to get people to reference some quiet hours so that their organizations, the leadership, everybody understands this is the general operation time for our alerts and warnings. If there is something, let's say you have a fire that just kicks off in the middle of the night, or or some other type of hazard, um, tornado threat, something that you could not um perceive beforehand, and you're like, we need to send it out. Well, then send it out. There's nothing wrong with that. But having some quiet hours defined, I think is a really positive thing. Um, it's something that we found and I still find, especially, I keep going to missing persons because that's where we're seeing a lot of uh use right now of alerts and warnings. And I would say misuse at the same time. Um I've seen reports come in, and again, I'm gonna go to our senior community, where you have someone who has left, um, eloped, gone away, driven a car, and they have a cognitive impairment. They're they're walking around. And let's say it's five in the morning or four in the morning. Um I I have seen alerts go out countywide for this person when it's like, okay, when is the best time? Let's look at this a little bit more. Can we wait until six o'clock? Do we have a medical issue? Do we have a weather issue? Do we have anything else? And if the answer is no, okay. Because if they're sitting in a park, if we know there's not a medical reason, we're just we need to find them. Sometimes we wait until that time, six o'clock or whatever it may be, because we think what is the most effective time to do this? And so that's one aspect of timing. There is another aspect of timing, which has to do with people who are traveling in a car, or if if you have to alert a greater area. And I remember this was for we talked blue alerts a little bit. This is a fun blue alert one. A blue alert is jargon, folks. It means that um I guess I have to be careful, it means different things to different people. The one I'm referencing is one that is nationally sponsored, and it essentially is an alert that goes out to let the community know that there is a suspect or somebody that is wanted in connection with serious bodily injury or death of a law enforcement officer. So there's been something that's happened, a police officer's been critically hurt or killed, and this person has fled. And so a blue alert can be issued for that. Well, we had somebody who was traveling southbound. We knew in California they were going south, and they were still about six or seven hours away from the border, but they had made comments that they were gonna take off for the border. Now, I can just light up the entire state and say, hey, everybody, you should be aware. But I didn't want to do that because of timing. And I thought to myself, what is the better time? And so I sent out an alert for our local area where the incident happened. And then about an hour or so later, uh, an area south where we projected them to be going, sent out an alert for that lower section, right? Because that was the better timing for them. And then I was queued up to send it for one even further south in another hour. And it essentially was trying to light up sections of where I thought this individual was going based on the investigation, but to make sure that people got it and it was the right timing for them. And it ended up working, and the the person was located. Um, and it was I think three sections further south from where we were at the time of the incident. So that's the other part of timing.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

And thinking through these problems before you have to face them is the real value of developing policy around it. Um and the, you know, your number five about geographic targeting and your number four about timing. It's the process of thinking through the complications, the complexity of these different incidents and identifying your resources ahead of time that just will help to speed things along and you can make better decisions because you've already done the hard thinking instead of trying to do it at that moment.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

And if you get Jeanette or I at our at a training or anything, one of the ways that we really like to go through all of this, because it can be dry if we're just reading paper. Um, we do a lot of scenario-based examples and we test policies, procedures, um, governance documents, right? The umbrella term for all of this, um, through experiences and through exercises. And whether they are fun nail salon ones like we've done in Michigan recently or others, um, we try to insert variables into the exercise to test out your policy. And and it's not to point something out to say ha ha. It's really to think about okay, in a real situation, how would your policy support this? Um, so you're totally right, you know, and we have fun doing it.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Yeah. All right, moving on.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

What is your number three?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Okay, we're getting there.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Um, number three is just the approval authority. And what I do see in in policies often is this is the person. And and it won't list a name, it'll if list a position to say this person needs to be the one to approve it. And that's it. And and I'm thinking to myself, okay, does that person ever go on vacation? And of course the answer is yes. Does that person get sick? Sure. And then it goes back to a word of mouth operation. Well, if I can't get a hold of this person, this is who I call. Well, get that into policy. Put it in there to say, this is the person that's going to approve the messages. Great. If I can't get a hold of that person, who do I need to get a hold of? Now, there needs to be a caveat. There needs to be an exception. This is again, it's a should not shall. Here's an example. If you are a firefighter and you're responding to heavy rain and you are knee deep in water and you see it rising, and you are trying to evacuate people. I mean, this is a freak storm. And you guys tried, it's just happening way faster than you could have truly predicted. And you are calling dispatch to say, can you please get out and alert immediately? We need to get people out. It's 4 a.m., it's whatever it is. There needs to be something in your policy to say yes. We need to have someone who's at the scene in an exigent circumstance to have the ability to say, send it out. Because even that small little process of, okay, let me call and get permission to do this can take 10 minutes, 15 minutes. What if that person doesn't immediately answer? It could take 30 minutes when we need that alert out immediately. And so there is the blue sky time. It's like, hey, we we're gonna do this. We're we're doing preparation for a hurricane, for something that's a known event, a special event, whatever it is. But in those moments when exigency is, I mean, you feel it, and and you have the scene just erupting, and someone is there saying, This is what I need to help save lives, that needs to be in there for the approval process. And we need to get out of our own way. And there are a couple agencies that I have seen that are putting this in that it's like, yes, and unfortunately, it's come because of tragedy, because they're like, I am really sorry, I didn't pick up the phone, and 30 minutes passed, and we we just missed out. And and it's and it's horrible. You don't want to be in that situation. And so having that approver, that's great. Have it in there, having that secondary, that's all great. But you need to put in, and this is that, that little poke here, get something in there that explains that in an exigent circumstance, that those people on the phone, whether it's the person on the scene, the dispatcher, whoever's right there working it, has the authority to push out a message.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

That is so important.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

We are s really close to the anniversary of the floods that happened in Texas in Kerr County, and there are stories of dispatchers not having the authority to push out messages when a volunteer firefighter called and said, This is really bad. And so there it's it is real life. It is you know, we have these recent experiences where it could have made a difference. And so I fully support your suggestion for that shall and should in the policy around approval and including phone numbers, like updated recent phone numbers, updated recent email addresses, like that's really important too, because you don't have time to be searching around for that information when you're under pressure.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

No, and and for those people who are on call all the time, um, I my heart literally, I know what that's like. And for anybody who's listening, there are often policies that exist that say, hey, we need to call this person after hours or whatever it may be to get permission. There, there's wisdom in that, in the fact that, you know, we need to have, you know, a leadership role to say, okay, thank you for letting me know. Yeah, let's proceed. I I get all of that. It is hard living your life always on call. It's hard to expect someone to always have that phone there. Are they ever going to shower? Are they ever going to go to sleep? What happens if the ringer doesn't work? All these little things of reality. And again, if you have it in your policy to say, we are going to attempt to make this phone call to this person, if they don't pick up, I know that policy says I can send this out because I'm going to err on the side of safety, and we're going to send it out. Like putting those things in will save lives. Is it always going to like be fairy tales? No, it's not. Can there be times when it's the person calls and says, okay, wait, I just saw you called. What are you doing? Okay, here's what's happened. No, don't send it out yet, and the message is already out. That absolutely can happen. But I would rather be in that position than what Jeanette was describing, right? Where we don't have it in the policy to allow the dispatcher, whoever it is, to support the people on scene, right, when they need it most.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Right. I can imagine that some people are saying, well, that's just crazy. I my people aren't trained to do that, but I I see on your slide that your number two. Your number two is the importance of training requirements. And so tell us about that. Eddie, what is your number two?

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Oh my gosh, I know. It's funny. It's it's it's not a secret, folks. Training. Um, you can let's say you hit number five, four, and three perfectly, right? You've got geographic targeting, timing, approval authority, man. It's the best policy in the world. If you don't train to it, it's garbage. It doesn't mean anything. It really doesn't. Um, you need to establish within policy, so it's not just the decision of somebody that can change, what is your training cadence? Um, are you doing Wii A Wednesday training? Are you doing, I mean, come up with something. And is it to where it's focused on everybody? But you need to have that training identified. If you go off of just the national requirements, right? Here's the big joke, folks. Um, in order to use iPause, you need one person within that alerting authority within that jurisdiction, just one, one person to take the online course. That's it. Because they know that it's going to be up to you, the locals, to determine how much do you need to train? What other training, you know, how should you train all these things? Um, they're doing just the basic to say, here are the keys. Now please go train. Um, so establish some type of training policy. If you have questions on it, we can have a whole other podcast on how you should train, what you should train, but it should be scenario-based. And one of my favorite things to do. So if you ever get us out there, this is what's going to happen. I'm going to ask your leadership to leave the room. I'm going to say, here's the scenario, folks. We are going to run through the scenario, come up with the outcome. Then I'm going to bring in the leadership and I'm going to say, okay, here's the scenario. How do you see it? Like what would you do? And to see if there are conflicts. And there are often conflicts. And then we get to talk about now, is this a conflict within policy or within culture? Like what? And uh it really helps to identify the gaps because the conflicts often occur where the gaps in policy exist. And it's in those, well, I would have done this because if if the person who did it initially before while leadership was out of the room, if they followed policy, man, they're super confident. They're like, I'm good. Because the person can come in and say, Why'd you do this? And you say, right here, this is exactly why. And leadership is going to go, okay, great, we support you. Or if they don't, they can say, Let's adjust policy, but it's not on you. Um, so training. It's got to be consistent. It's got to be verifiable, right? We need to know we do it, and it's got to be um in a way that's realistic. Um, and I go to some of our stories, Jeanette, and some of our training. We have we have had it to where it's all like all happy, people are writing messages, and we have to put pressure on them and say, okay, guys, let's let's actually look at this. You have five minutes to complete this because in a real real world situation, you may not even have that. And so when you put pressure on them, the mood kind of changes because you want them to experience that that adrenaline as much as you can, that, that fear factor. And if all your training happens between eight and five, Monday through Friday, then you're missing something. Um, another fun thing I like to do, and I will do this for you guys if if you call me, right? And we we work together. Um, I have done 10 p.m., I have done 2 a.m. random call training to test your process, to test the on-call, all these different things. And then at the end, we're we talk it, you know, talk it out. But you have to work through these things. Um, and again, if you're our wonderful on-call people that we were talking about with the approval authority, if they don't experience what it's like to get that phone call at 2 a.m. and have to make a decision, well, then they may not be very willing to make a change in the policy. But if they're getting that going, wow, I'm really not in a position to open my computer, read a message, look at it with confidence and say yes, well, then they may delegate the authority somewhere else. Um, so they're just fun little things to do. But man, training, gotta be number two.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

I love that. And you talked about um how and when and making sure that there's routine cadence and scenarios and and and that. And I would like to add who is included also in addition to leadership. But it's it is those those people who are sitting in a dispatch center in the middle of the night need to be included in training just as much as the people who are the decision makers at three o'clock in the afternoon. So who is everyone who might touch this? It needs to be part of it.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

100%. I again, folks, this this isn't an argument. I'm telling you. Just start applying this and you're gonna just be in a much better position.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

All right. Number one. What is your number one thing to include in an alert and warning policy?

SPEAKER_00 41:00

So I'm probably gonna get in trouble for this one because it's not a specific thing. Um, and people are gonna be like, well, what's specific, right? But the number one thing that I I need to see in a policy as I'm reviewing it is it has to match reality. And your your policy and operations, sometimes we write them in a way where everything is roses, everything works, all of our computer systems work, communication systems work, everything is just great. Um, and all our staffing, I mean, we're fully staffed, we're all these things, but it doesn't match reality. And I will have to respond to people and be like, hey, this is a wonderful policy, but this doesn't match your jurisdiction at all. Um, and or if we have specifics to say, hey, this is good, but at night, you really don't have two layers of leadership. You know, you have an on-call, and then you have the people that are out working on the front lines. And so it's helping people understand that while we write all these wonderful things, it has to match your jurisdiction. It has to be tailored to you. Um, that's one of the things. So Jeanette brought up something in the beginning, and just to kind of circle around to it, it's hard to find policy documents. It's hard to find all these, you know, examples that we can kind of plug and play. And it's because every jurisdiction is different. You have some that have an alerting group, but I'm not kidding, with four or five people on 24 hours a day because they are over either a large state or um New York City, all these different large population um centers. And then you have others that are, you know, and we make this joke lovingly, folks, but it's like you're in charge of the alert and warning, you're the EM, you're also the dog catcher, and you have to read water meters during the day, right? All these things that you do, and this is just one thing. And so taking a policy and basically writing all this stuff in that's not realistic, that's something you can do, then it's it just doesn't make sense. And you're putting yourself in a bad position. Um, policy is the thing that's going to protect you. And it's gonna protect you not only legally, right? Where you can say this is why we did it, but it's gonna protect you inside. And uh all of these experiences that you're gonna deal with, and many of you already have, whether it's an emergency management, whether it's a missing person, they are emotionally exhausting, physically demanding, and they are resource intensive. And at the end of the operation of whatever it is, you're going to look back and you're going to become very critical of yourself, especially if, you know, tragedy followed, you know, if people lost their lives. And so having a policy that is defensible, having a policy that that's supporting you is key. And so basing it in reality is my absolute number one thing. It's got to match your jurisdiction, which takes a little bit more effort because you need to go through and tailor it, but it will be the most benefit to you.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

This has been great.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

I think your top five are really excellent goals for alerting authorities to strive for.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Reach out to us. At the alerting authority, we really look and try to empower you. The tagline or one of the lines that we use is confidence through competence. We want you to feel confident in what you're doing because what you do saves lives. It really does. It's not just about sending an alert out. It's not just about pushing out, you know, messages through your computer. It's about giving your community critical life-saving information to give them the best chance to survive, to not only survive, but but thrive. Emergencies are horrible situations. And fear is just one of our enemies. And while we cannot mitigate fear completely, what you can do is provide people with information. There's an example locally that I have of where a message did not go out. And this was after a tornado. I mean, power was out. I mean, it was a pretty bad situation. And I remember talked, I talked to some local leaders, and I said, okay, help help me understand why you guys chose not to send a message out. And A, they did not have a policy about it. And so the decision ad hoc in the moment was people already know what to do. And I looked at them and it was one of those, like, oh, honey, like, bless your heart. Like, you poor thing. No, they don't. And the situation here was their actual situation is there were people that were breaking into local grocery stores just trying to get food. Because they, they're just like, hey, it's been a day or two. We need to get some food because we've lost all of our refrigerated stuff. Like, we'll get some dry goods. It wasn't criminals looting. It literally were a few families that were like, this is our source for food. Okay. And they broke in and got some food. And, you know, there was this thing about why'd you do that? You know, we were sending food to you. There was, there was a convoy of cars, you know, that the county was responding to that area to say, here, we're going to set up food. And it was that whole misunderstanding of, I didn't know you were doing this for me, county, you know? And because of that lack of a message, because of a lack of understanding and a lack of policy. So these are all like very real-world issues. And if you are thinking to yourself, I probably should get my policy checked, please. I mean, I mean, do it. Jeanette and I both would rather work with you proactively than after an incident when we're asked to come and do a review or anything like that. Um, now is the time. And so how it works is again, you reach out, we respond back and say, no problem, what do you want? I will probably do that RFI I talked about and say, send me what you have. And then we can do a gap assessment. We can look, we can build your policy. And what's fun is we build it to your jurisdiction. And if you're like 90% there, great, we'll help you get that next 10%. If you're at about 2%, we're gonna help build. Folks, there is no silver bullet that makes it all magic. Starting from scratch can take time. And I don't want you to think like this is some like AI generated, hey, okay, we're gonna put your name in and make a policy for you. Um, because again, my number one is it has to match your reality. It has to match your operations. And so once we create that policy, we are going to vigorously test it. And again, in a safe environment, in a safe way where nobody, nobody gets hurt, but to say, realistically, does this work for you? And then we make adjustments to that policy. But at the end of the day, you are going to have something that you can feel confident in that you know you can use in an emergency, you can use during a regular day. And it's gonna help keep your community safe. So that's what that's what I would say. Go to the website, please reach out, um, throw comments in here, and and we will be happy to assist. What are your thoughts, Jen?

SPEAKER_02 50:25

I think this is great. You know, we say at the beginning of every podcast that we want to hear your questions, concerns, ideas, problems, pain points, and success stories. And I think that you just covered so many of those in this conversation about policy. You raised the kinds of questions and concerns that you see every time you're looking across the country and working with organizations in training. You've offered a bunch of ideas about how to address those problems and pain points that you've seen in the lack of policy. And this the success stories is hearing about organizations that are moving forward and how the alerting authority can do the same thing by helping all of our colleagues' organizations to improve their policies. So I think this was a great conversation. Thank you for bringing your wisdom and sharing that with all of us. And um, I truly appreciate it. So for everyone who's listening, thank you for joining us today. We at the Alerting Authority want to share your successes, and every second has a story, and we're here to share yours.