What Every Emergency Manager Needs to Know About Alerting and Warnings

What separates good emergency alerts from life-saving emergency alerts?

In this episode of The Alerting Authority, hosts Dr. Jeannette Sutton and Eddie Bertola sit down with Thomas Walmsley, Director of Emergency Management for Bernalillo County, New Mexico, and the 2024 IAEM USA Emergency Manager of the Year.

With more than two decades of experience spanning military service, law enforcement, local government, federal programs, and academic research, Tom shares how modern emergency managers can leverage data, AI, and evidence-based messaging to improve warning systems and community resilience.

The conversation explores practical lessons learned from real-world incidents, the future of alerting standards, multilingual communication challenges, and how emergency managers can use tools like ChatGPT and AI to develop stronger message templates and better preparedness programs.

In This Episode:

- How Tom Walmsley became IAEM's Emergency Manager of the Year

- Building stronger emergency alerts using research and templates

- Using AI and ChatGPT in emergency management

- IPAWS and Wireless Emergency Alerts best practices

- Cross-jurisdictional support and mutual aid agreements

- Pace planning and alert system redundancy

- GIS, Esri, and demographic intelligence

- Bilingual emergency alerts and Spanish-language messaging

- Evacuation planning and transportation considerations

- National standards for emergency management

- EMAP accreditation and professionalization of emergency management

- Lessons learned from alerting mistakes

- How data-driven decision-making improves public safety

Whether you're an emergency manager, public safety professional, PIO, researcher, first responder, or simply interested in disaster preparedness, this episode offers practical insights you can apply immediately.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

I am Tim Listen.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

And I'm Eddie Bertel.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

And we welcome you to another episode of the Alerting Authority. And as always, we encourage you to subscribe, follow, listen, and most importantly, participate in these podcasts. We want your questions, concerns, ideas, problems, pain points, and success stories so we as alerting authorities can better do our jobs and make our communities safer.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

And we want to thank our sponsors. We know that it's because of our sponsors we can keep doing this. And the sponsor for this episode is Everbridge. Everbridge is an alert origination software provider. They're used by more than 6,500 global organizations to keep people safe and reduce disruption to operations. They help leading enterprises and government organizations across the globe build digital and physical resilience by using their industry-leading solutions. Today, their high-velocity CEM platform, powered by purpose-built AI, sets a world standard for business resilience. With Everbridge, customers can confidently anticipate, mitigate, respond to, and recover from their critical incidents. So thank you to Everbridge.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

So Eddie, I'm really excited to get to talk to our guest today.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

I heard he's a cat person. I don't know. He's going to have to I heard he is.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Well, it fits in pretty well because we frequently talk about cats or at least have cats in the picture during our recordings. So it works really well. Um no, this is this is exciting because not only is he an emergency manager, he is also recognized by IAEM as being an emergency manager of the year. So he brings a ton of experience to us. And today we are interviewing Thomas Wolmsley.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Right. That is pretty exciting. And I know we've been trying to get him on for a little while. Um anyway, I'm excited to hear about his background and see what he has to share.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah, well, let me read something for you first and then we'll jump right in. Um, so Thomas Wolmsley is a certified emergency manager who serves as the director of emergency management for Bernalilo County, New Mexico, where he leads strategic preparedness response and recovery efforts for a population of more than 675,000 residents. With over 20 years of experience in public safety and emergency management, his background spans military, law enforcement, and government services at the local, state, and federal levels. In his role, Thomas directs emergency operations center activations, oversees critical infrastructure and resilience planning, and represents county priorities in state and federal forums. His leadership has helped integrate emergency management, homeland security, and community resilience into a unified coordinated system. Thomas was nationally recognized as the 2024 IAEM USA Emergency Manager of the Year. He's known for his collaborative systems-based approach, and he previously served as president of the New Mexico Association of Emergency Management Professionals and is a member of the MACO Resilient Counties Advisory Board. He is a FEMA Vanguard Executive Crisis Leaders Fellow and a graduate of Arizona State University's Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program, where he also continues to conduct academic research with real-world application to strengthen the next generation of emergency managers. So you can tell by his bio that he is incredibly well-rounded in his profession, his experience, his leadership. And we are thrilled to welcome you to the show today. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

I'm super excited. When uh when they reached out and they said, Do you want to be on a podcast? And I was like, Yeah, I'd love to. And they said, With I was like, with who? And they were like, Well, you know, the Alerting Authority and with Dr. Jeanette Sutton and Eddie. And I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. Like, this is a big deal for me. So all of that other stuff on paper means nothing.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

No, I always that that is a great bio, by the way. And it's funny, whenever people read like a bio for, I'm sure for me or for anybody else, if you're if you've had it happen, you're thinking to yourself, wow, I've been through a lot. Like there, there's a lot that has happened. And then the other thought is like, I hope my mom's listening to all of this, right? Um but a all of those little things that she read are huge. And if you could tell the influx in her voice, and I'm sure the listeners could too, when she mentions anytime the word research and continuing all of that. Um I am excited to hear all about that as well, because essentially it's saying you're not just doing what's been done, is you're actively trying to improve the program. So great bio. Thanks.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

I'm a I'm a big data nerd, uh, is the thing. So I I don't have hobbies, or I guess my hobby is this.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Um I think I would lie and and probably say I have a hobby when I don't really have one either. Um it's it's really it's it's this information. And once um Jeanette honestly came into my life in this field, um, I have probably spent more time reading about the research, and that has become I I guess a hobby, but it's definitely it's completely changed the game. Um, so I'll I'll just start with the first question here. And this is kind of what we're talking about as we go through bios and backgrounds. But everything you heard in the bio, I again, it's it's great. Can you give us your take on it? A little bit about yourself, your role, and kind of your day-to-day, and and whether it's to do with, you know, because we're gonna talk about messaging, but what's your day-to-day in this space?

SPEAKER_02 6:25

Uh yeah, so I've been, I'm gonna hit my 10-year mark with Bernalillo County this year. Uh, and so it's been pretty exciting to go down this path and you know, get to work in a lot of different spaces. I remember kind of early in my emergency management career, I had this discussion with, you know, someone that had worked in the profession for a while, and it got into this argument of like, what's emergency management experience? And I was like, well, I came from the military and law enforcement, so I've got a hundred years of experience. And I kind of quickly learned that there's a big difference between the two. But I got to spend a couple of years at the state of New Mexico as a regional coordinator, getting out and working with locals. Uh, I had the opportunity to come down here to Brennaleo County as the deputy emergency manager and lots of really just broad experience, you know, getting to work with a lot of different organizations. We're such like a like forward-facing organization. So it's a lot of collaboration and coordination with partners in the region, but then also a lot of internal work. Um, and then in 2022, my boss retired and I moved into the the director position. And it's just been kind of really neat to kind of take the program in that direction that I want to go. Day to day is um, I I hate the word busy, right? Because everyone's busy, but it's it's fulfilling, I think is the way to describe it. Because we're doing a lot of work um, you know, internally with like our county and working with the different departments there, but then a lot of that external collaboration with like our regional partners, the the city of Albuquerque. We have four tribal communities within Bernalio County. We've got national labs, we've got federal facilities, universities. So it's just um so it's not complicated at all. No, I'm just a social butterfly.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Um, you know, when I when it comes to things like that. So, A, thank you for your service, by the way. Um, and can you give us like in this kind of expanding on the bio? People who may be listening may think, oh wow, he just he got his position and he he started right where you are as director. Um what what has been the progression? Now you said military and law enforcement. Can you tell us, you know, the service, where you work for law enforcement, and kind of how you got to be the director?

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Yeah, so um I grew up in Maryland. I'm not a native New Mexican, and I joined the the Maryland Army National Guard back in 1999. I eventually got a position um at a military base there as a civilian police officer. And, you know, I think that was where I first got into this, like I guess, want or like love of like big event planning. Um, we'd have like, you know, generals and things like that come on. And oftentimes it was like me just like setting up traffic cones or sitting at a traffic control point. But eventually I got to to work in some of that planning component to it. Um my military service at one point, you know, we got activated, we deployed to Iraq back in 2008, came back. Um, and kind of long story short, we relocated to New Mexico in 2012. Um, I had one of the neatest jobs in the world, but also probably one of the most stressful jobs in the world when I moved out here. I worked down at White Sands Missile Range, which is down in southern New Mexico. Um, and it's massive. I think you can fit the state of New Jersey inside the range. And my job there was what they call the mission coordinator. And I was like a liaison between the law enforcement and security and the missile test operations. And so um I got really, really good with roadblocks and evacuations. And so they would evacuate chunks to the range to do missile testing. Um, and I would joke, I don't know if this is official, but it's like a test range, not a perfect range. Um, so oftentimes you're doing these large zones that you're evacuating and uh setting up roadblocks. And, you know, I think that was where I really started to pick up a lot of this, like working with other organizations, kind of seeing what they need to do, what we need to do, how can we support each other in these different scenarios? Um and just a lot of um long nights, very stressful, very high tempo job. Um, I became an uh like an expert in backwards planning. Um, if they want to do something at and they want to test a missile at eight o'clock in the morning, we may start at midnight um with different phases of what has to happen. And so it kind of really just piqued my interest in in moving into like a profession that that that works at that level. Um, and so, you know, our our end state was to move up to the Albuquerque. I applied for a job with the state of New Mexico, you know, took that job as a regional coordinator. And I got some, you know, really interesting advice, like my first day. He said, one, like you're probably gonna be here about two years, and you got picked up by a local. And it was like two years in a month that that that happened. But I got to experience a lot of different things. And I think it was for me, moving into this profession was almost starting over. And I know a lot of folks that that come from you know, a background like that of like I've worked in public safety for X amount of years. Like I should be like entitled to this like senior position based on my experience. Uh, and I think the reality is like you may have to start at the bottom. Um, and that was that was kind of where I did. But you know, I think with that background, you're able to kind of advance and take some of that that knowledge that you had, like translate it or crosswalk it into what does that mean in the emergency management field, and then then kind of move forward with that. So um, you know, have the opportunity to to come down here to Bernalillo County, which you know, the city of Albuquerque is like our you know, our our our seat here. Um and and while I would say I was the deputy emergency manager, like I was, you know, running all of the exercises, developing all the plans, lots and lots of training coordination. So, you know, for the first couple of years of my career here, it was a lot of just like boots on the ground kind of kind of work.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah, I love hearing those stories. And for those who are not familiar with test missile ranges and evacuations, you don't have people living out in those ranges that need to be evacuated, do you?

SPEAKER_02 12:52

No. Um it is um fairly controlled. You know, it is a controlled access facility, but um ensuring the safety of someone. Maybe someone didn't get the notice that that we're doing something. So like my job was to make sure we had the checkpoints in place, and then they would sweep every area that was out there. Uh the unique thing about the missile range is there's two state highways that run through it. Um so in the northern and southern ends. So we would shut down the state highways for an hour, two hours. Um, and then there's a national park in the middle of that. There's a border patrol checkpoint. There's a lot of, I guess, just moving pieces behind that.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Thank you. That that helps me understand how you needed to evacuate, you have to stop the traffic. Anybody who's uh hiking and backpacking through a national forest, they all need to be moved out of the way of the danger. Yeah. Um okay, that thank you. That helps tremendously. And it actually helps me as I think about how you might have been communicating with those people about the danger and what they need to do and how that affected what you brought into your county position as a deputy director. So when you first started, how would you approach public alerting and messaging? And what did a good message look like back then?

SPEAKER_02 14:19

I think like what I think one of the very first messages I sent out, um, and I think this probably holds true for anyone that's done alerting, is it was the wrong message. Um and it's I'm gonna say unrelated to everything I've just described, but um, at the time we were just using Nixil as a like a community alerting platform, I guess if you will. Like we didn't have um the full-blown package of uh like Everbridge or any, it was a different provider at the time. Um and I sent out this message, I got a call and they said, we're doing a controlled burn or prescribed burn in this area, and we're getting a lot of calls to 911. Can you put out a message to let them know that it's just a prescribed burn and you know they don't need to call 911 just because they smelled smoke? And, you know, interesting, like Bernalio County is a pretty like diverse, you know, we have our metro area, we've got the Mesa, and then we've got the Sandia mountain range, and that's like you know, a big massive forest. And so they said it's it's in the the Milky Way neighborhood. Um, can you just send a message out? And so I actually made the newspaper with this one because there's no such thing as the Milky Way neighborhood. Um, it's just what the the guys at the fire department call it. Um and so I think that was like a good lesson learned for me of making sure like that that common terminology or that clear terminology. So, you know, I sent out this message, hey, there's a prescriber in the area, the Milky Way neighborhood. I didn't say don't call 911, right? And that's like we could talk about that later, like other examples of how that's happened, but um, it it caused more confusion with the public because they had no idea where that was. And so that was, I think, my first experience of like I really need to spend a lot more time like researching, messaging, making sure that we're clear with what we're saying, making sure that people understand, like, if I'm a resident, does that make sense to me?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, so you you learned the hard way. Yes. Did you have a vision of what a good message looked like back then? Are you just kind of winging it, hoping that you got it right? Or like how did you figure that out?

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Um, I mean, I think at that time, and this was probably back in like 2016 or 2017. No, not at all. You know, just kind of sit down, like, hey, this this sounds like kind of what they're saying. They're gonna tell me what to say. And I think was the approach, like at the time. And like, you know, I had this discussion with my boss at one point of like, do we create these message templates in the system? And he said, no, like our communications person will tell us what we need to say. And, you know, I think that was kind of like a a big moment for us is you know, alerting whether it's just sending out, you know, like an internal message to like our county employees or if it's sending something to the public, like it's a high stress event. And like we've definitely sent messages out with typos in it, and maybe not not super clear, like why would we not use a template? I think was, you know, where we started to shift that mentality back in that like 2018, you know, kind of I don't want to say that that Milky Way neighborhood was like a pivotal moment, but it was definitely a learning moment for me.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Mm-hmm. Well, I it's really interesting the the idea that you can rely on someone else to tell you what should go in the message. Also, especially, I mean I think about how many people who might be out on the front lines who are trained in how to communicate. And it's probably fairly few. Yes. So that training and knowledge about how to do it effectively becomes really important, an important skill for the person who's actually issuing the message.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Um, you know, I I'd say in the the time between that and now, we've done a really good job of incorporating the two of us together. And last year, as we were going into wildfire season, and this is something I would I it's a it's a great conversation. So we adopted the the ready set go as our evacuation messaging. And you know, I think when I first got into emergency management, we had this discussion or fight between voluntary and mandatory evacuations. And people would get really hung up on, well, what's the difference between the two? And like a mandatory evacuation. Well, you need a warrant to remove me from my house. And, you know, I think there was just a lot, like it was, it was never clear. And so, you know, throughout the state, we started seeing ready set go as the messaging that we're sending out, the descriptions of areas. And, you know, I spent a lot of time looking through your research and building out message templates. And so we had a whole set of ready set go, you know, evacuations have been lifted. Um, but I wrote them, right? And I wrote them again, based on a lot of research, a lot of best practices that existed across the country. Um, and what we ended up doing is running a workshop, and it was about a two or three hour workshop that I brought in everyone related to messaging. And so it was our entire communication services team, it was the public information officers that are in, you know, our different public safety, you know, fire department, sheriff's department. We brought in our dispatch center, and I presented first a lot of research and again a lot of your information behind like the psychology of alerting, and then also how like the technical side of alerting works, you know, the difference between OEA and what is IPAUS and what is a mass notification, so that they had a clear understanding of it. And then we we spent a lot of time dissecting those templates to make sure that just because I thought this was a good idea doesn't mean everyone does. And, you know, if I'm a communication specialist, is this the right message? Am I saying the right things? And then we took it a one step further because I think there's this tendency to like, I need to validate this, right? They sent this alert out. I'm not gonna go grab my stuff and leave. I'm gonna get on social media and see what that's saying. And so we developed, we spent a lot of time developing scripted um social media templates, graphics that aligned with it. And so like we had that instant like, oh, I don't believe this is happening. I have to look somewhere else. Oh, wait, the the sheriff's office social media is saying the same exact thing that we're we're sending out there. And so I think that was, you know, a huge shift for us.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

It it's incredibly reinforcing when everyone's speaking the same language and singing that that same song. Um so and we can talk more about standards as we get further into our conversation today. Um, I'm gonna turn it back over to Eddie for the next question.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Oh, I know it's it's one of those I'm listening, going like, yeah, yeah. Or I'm I'm in my mind, I'm going, amen, preach on, you know. Um and thank you for like being up front. I have said it on this show many times. I have absolutely made mistakes in the way that I've sent out messages. And it's not that I've done it on purpose or ever, it's it's it's that learning process sometimes, or it's what you said perfectly was well, they gave me what to say. So I'm literally just sending out the message. Um, but as Jeanette said, who actually has the trend? And so my question to you is as you're looking back, and you mentioned that one incident with the Milky Way, um, are was there a moment or anything else where it really was the catalyst to say, okay, guys, we've got to look at this differently. Like, okay, we we can't experience this again. So was there a moment or an incident, or was it more gradual? And then did you face any challenges within your county um with people saying, like, what are you doing? Like, you're doing something that's that's different.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Um, yes. So one of the, you know, Albuquerque is known for a couple things. A lot of people have seen the movie Breaking Bad, right? And so they think of Breaking Bad, Albuquerque.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

That's not real.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

What I love Well, okay, we won't go there. I'm kidding. It was filmed here, I'll give it that. Um, but one of the things that I love about living here is hot air balloons. And that seems like a little bit interesting to say, like, wow, you like balloons. Um, we host the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta here, and it is like the the largest balloon festival, I guess, in the country, the world. I'd say it's the best. Maybe we'll just leave it at that. Um, but the first week of October every year, um, we have a nine-day festival, 14 operational periods, where we bring in balloonists from not only all over the United States, but all over the world. Uh, and on a given day, we could have three, four hundred hot air balloons launching off of this field. Um, and it's just amazing, right? It's just so cool to get up in the morning. Well, for me, I'm up already, but on a given day we have balloons up in the air. But that day, that that week, it's it's exciting. Hot like the the you know, the number of people that come in for that event. On a slow day, we could have 20 to 30,000 people out on the field. And on some of our biggest days, I think it was when we had the eclipse a few years ago, we had an in excess of like 115,000 people. Um, and it's just like it's amazing, right? And it's just a big, giant open field. Um, there's very few structures on there, and um, you know, people are either parking, they're doing shuttles, they're walking in, and it's it's a lot of folks that come in there. And so, you know, we established this really strong presence through our unified command and we run through exercises every year. And I think it was in 2022, we did an exercise on a severe weather event. And, you know, that time of year, we'll get some storms that come in. Like I mentioned, it's a it's a big giant field. Um and, you know, through that exercise, we identified the need of like, okay, if we need to evacuate or clear the field, you know, we we've got to have like some systems in place. And so, you know, I went in and developed a message template. And at the time, I think I was not as like smart with messaging, and we were stuck on that like 90 character, you know, very short message only. Uh, and again, for me, that was the learning moment of like the percentage of phones that that can take a 360-character message is way higher than I think what we had we had realized at the time. Um, but I put together a message, we worked with their communications team to make sure this is the correct message. And, you know, it was a decent week. Um, and I remember it was a Thursday night, and I was actually off that night. My parents had come in to to visit Albuquerque, Sea Balloon Fiesta, and I got a call from Unified Command and they said, Hey, there is a storm coming in. There's a cell. Um, we're gonna look to evacuate the field in about the next 10 minutes. And I took about three steps and it started raining. Um and they called back and they said, Can you push this message right now? And I was like, Got it. And I on my phone was able to send out an iPause message. And it's it's one thing to sit in an office and and hit the button and then throw open the trash can. But to be surrounded by, you know, 50,000, 60,000 people and hear those devices go off is just like it's scary. Um we learned a lot that night. Um, you know, this alert goes off, it's pouring down rain, and then the fireworks went off. Uh and if you ever get a chance, you can go to Reddit and just Google like Balloon Fiesta Storm 2022. And it was like this storm just rained there. And so you see this massive cell dumping down, fireworks going off. And we caught a lot of flack for the message. You know, why did you guys send this message out? This isn't the message that we wanted. And it kind of went back to, well, like we we talked about this, we had an approval to send this. And I can't remember the exact terminology that we had in there, and if it was, you know, evacuate now or shelter in place. Well, there's nowhere to shelter, right? It's this big giant field. And, you know, people are just going kind of all over the place. And it was like, you know, inches and inches of rain in like 10 minutes, and then it was fine. Um, and so kind of our lesson learned out of that was when it comes to something like special event planning, um, having this phased approach to it, sending out what we found out of that was sending out an emergency alert, sending out an IPAUS message should be the very last thing you do. You know, and so over the past several years, we've like refocused that severe weather plan as it relates to evacuation and warning. And, you know, we have triggers now that say if a storm is X miles out, we're doing this. When it gets to here, we're doing this. And what we really, really need is the support from the venue to be able to do this alerting, right? And it's not just, you know, for them using their public address system to notify the public, hey, there's a storm inbound, we're going to be clearing the field. It is the coordination with every vendor to make sure that they're not still selling stuff, right? It is moving the transportation resources in place, it's you know, setting up our counterflows. And then if all of that fails, or we we we haven't gotten to that point, then we do the alerting. Um, so this past year at Balloon Fiesta, um kind of the the same scenario week was a good week. And I believe it was on Friday night this year. Um, we have the National Weather Service embedded with us. And our head meteorologist for the area like turns to us and said, Hey guys, there's a storm that just popped up. Um I'm not sure if it's gonna hit the park. And then I think it takes like four minutes for the radar to loop. And it went from like this like light green, like it might rain a little bit, to like the purple I hate you color. Uh and he was like, it's coming. Um, and you know, for our planning purposes, we had to go from, I think we called it like stage one to five. And stage five was the okay, we're sending the alert out. Um, and I remember our our incident commander who pulled out the plan as soon as it started raining and read through the checklist, right? That's like an anomaly. We talk about that in class that we follow the plan. He actually followed it. And he was like boom, boom, boom. And he turned and he said to the um, like our designated alerter for the incident and said, Hey, send the message now. Right. And we had vetted this message through everyone. We had improved the messaging behind it, and that message was able to go out. And so um on the last day, we got her one of those easy buttons, you know, the big red easy button, because it was like that was her first time actually pushing an alert out. And it's, you know, it's always scary the the first time you do it. But I think looking at the lesson we learned from, you know, a few years back to what we were able to implement on on this event here was was huge for us. Um, I'd say like the public sentiment was good behind it. People understood the messaging, and you know, we'll just continue to improve it.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

I love it. Uh and speaking of, because this is where we're gonna again mention Everbridge here um as our sponsor, because they talk about severe weather. But when it comes to alerting and resilience, it is not just about sending a message, which is exactly what you said. It's about making sure the right people get the right information at the right time. And that's why Everbridge has more than 6,500 organizations around the world that trust them. And from global enterprises to government agencies, Everbridge helps teams stay ahead of disruption and protect what matters most. Whether it's severe weather, at a balloon festival or anywhere else, operational disruption or a major incident, Everbridge gives leaders the confidence to act quickly and decisively.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

You know, and Eddie, I don't normally like I'm not a like a product plugger, but like if I if there's a tool that I'm using that I like, I I have no problem sharing that with folks. We were on a different platform prior to that. And I I think the thing that really sold it with me for Everbridge was not just the the templating, but the the variable variable piece of templates. Um with our older platform, we also use the alerting platform internally for you know snow delays and things like that. And I think we had like 14 or 15 different templates that said like two-hour delay tomorrow, two hour lay today. It was, you know, like there was no, I'm gonna say, customization. And when we, you know, did the implementation with Everbridge and was like, wait, they've used these variables. I can have like one or two templates and then just change the time or change the date on this and push it out. Like that was, I don't know, say that's what sold it for me, but that was like uh just such a simple piece of technology for us to be able to use and you know, have these consistent messages go out when they need to go out.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

I think that's fantastic. I love hearing about technology that's easy to use. And that is so important when you're in these situations where time really matters. Um, and thank you for sharing the story about not just the the importance of messaging in the air balloon festival, but of coordinating across so many different pieces to make your messaging the most effective. And that collaboration and coordination is such a significant piece because our alerting tools, especially WIA, as we know, is it is the most powerful tool to light up everyone's siren in their pocket at the same time. And you only use it when it's a condition where it really warrants it. Um, and that coordination ahead of time um is so important, especially if you have 50,000 people who are all going to be alerted at the same time that like somebody has to know where everybody's supposed to go. Having that coordination ahead of time to direct people and help them to understand what's happening becomes a really important part of the milling process that people engage in. Yes. You know?

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Um it's and you know, I think we've learned things like over time. Um, and again, a lot of it's going back and looking at like research or case studies. Um, you know, I I think I can't remember the nightclub that caught on fire. I think it's it's I think that's a like a real big example of people will go out the door they came in.

unknown 33:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

That was something they learned. There was like, you know, multiple exits people could have left that nightclub fire and they chose to go back to the the entrance that came in. It's no different for us. Like we could set up these different evacuation points, but that like natural human instinct is I entered through this gate, I have to leave through this gate. And I think using that kind of you know, research and experience into like how do we design our evacuation for an event like this was important.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

And the science that you're using as you think about evacuation processing, planning, and messaging, it it just it it sounds like it's so foundational. I mean, when did you start getting exposed to the science part of this? And how did that change the way that you write alerts?

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Um you know, I I think it was, you know, I like I said, I don't have a lot of hobbies, so it might just be like um, you know, diving into like, okay, I think after that, you know, ad experience or learning experience, maybe I'll call it. Um, getting on Google and looking at like, okay, like where can the people have got to have done alerts before, right? Like there's gotta be like things out there. And so it was finding sources like the Warn Room and then looking at like the research you've done. And like how do we incorporate that into our alerting? I would say I was kind of a like an early adopter of like some of the different AI platforms. And one of the first like GPTs that I created in Chat GPT was taking like research, taking templates, taking like doctrine and building that into a platform or into like a quick GPT that like I wouldn't say I use that like if someone called and said, send this alert out. But that was the beginning of our template development, right? And it was saying, what words need to be in all caps? What is the, you know, the instruction that we need to have with this? And that helped us kind of refine like this is what I want to say. How do I say this in a way that's meeting like a I don't want to say a national standard, but like national best practices when it comes to alert? So it was pulling in, you know, mistakes like I've made and others have made, or maybe just not perfect things they've done and improving that.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

That's fascinating. And we could have a whole podcast just on the use of AI and emergency management. Since there's people have strong opinions on it. Um, but it sounds like you you pulled the research and you just didn't rely on like some Gemini to pump out whatever it thinks is important. And and you knew enough about the what needs to be in a good, effective message that you could also stress test pieces of the information that was coming back to you from that AI model.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

Yeah. You know, you can ask it like, hey, like I'm a visitor from out of town. Does this make sense to me? Well, you know, so there's there's some real strong benefits to it. And I think I I clearly understand the limitations of it, right? You know, there it it can never factor in all that that human thought or you know, opinion behind it, but understanding that it's a tool. And when you can take your experience, you can take doctrine, you can take research and tie all that together, it's gonna give you a better product or at least a good place to start.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

And you have to have the skill and the hobby of working with AI systems to even know how to start building those, those chat bots and creating those mechanisms to start doing that. But I do love that you used a system that worked for you and it helped you to build out templates in a way that was probably a lot faster than doing it by hand, which may be one of the things that sets people back. Like, you want me to make how many templates I have? How do I do all that into by by writing it out? Like your process sounds like it was faster and more efficient given um how limited our resources are these days.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Um and I I think where we really learn from that was like in the in our exercise program. You know, it's one thing to sit behind a computer in a, you know, on a Tuesday afternoon and and look at these templates. And I require everyone on my team to do a monthly test of exercise or of evacuations. Um, but I you know, remember I was going out of town last summer and I came in and I called a staff meeting and I said, all right, hey, we're gonna talk about this, you know, at two o'clock today. And I did a no-notice drill. And I know I'm not a huge fan of those, but I was like, hey, fire just started here. What are we doing? Right. And I said, okay, I want everyone to log in to Everbridge and get to submit with an evacuation message based on this scenario right here. Um, and seeing, like, I don't want to say the struggle, but like one person was good. One person kind of locked themselves out of the system, right? Like there was a lot of challenges that we ran into with that. And so it was taking that as an opportunity to like, okay, we need to work on a better training program. We need to have more proficiency with this. We did a full uh a functional exercise a few months ago related to wildfire. And, you know, seeing in that exercise, how do we take the information from the field? Right. It's one thing for me to put a message up on a PowerPoint on a screen and say, this is what's happening, do this. But in that real-time environment of having, you know, our deputy chief come over and say, okay, here's the neighborhood, the sheriff's saying, here's where I want these things, now put that message in, right? That allowed us to even go back and refine what that process looks like and how can we get an evacuation message out faster? And, you know, meeting those same exact standards and accuracy behind it. And so, you know, we've continued to improve that process of, you know, how can we streamline the information that comes in so that it's not 15 or 20 minutes to push an alert out? It's a very short time. I know you had uh Craig Fugate on a uh a few episodes back, and we had Craig come speak at our conference this past year, the New Mexico Emergency Management Conference, best emergency management conference in New Mexico. And, you know, one of the things that Craig talks about is like, what are the core functions of emergency management? And the very first thing is we warn people, right? We warn people and we evacuate people. And I think taking that thought process is in emergency management, I think there's we do a lot of coordination, we do a lot of support, we do a lot of collaboration. There's not a lot of like life safety things that we do, but warning people is one of those things. And I think that that emphasis and priority on we warn people, right? Do we have the platforms? Can we do this on any given day? That's you know, I think really I don't say shifted my mentality, but that's part of my growth in this profession is like our emphasis on being able to do this on any given day as fast as we can, as accurate as we can.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

No, absolutely. And I it's fun. I love just listening to this. Um the training piece, thank you for talking about scenarios in that way. Because I have gotten flack from some people who are like, Well, you're just telling me a scenario. Can you put it on the board? Can you put it on a PowerPoint? And oftentimes I do, and Jeanette and I do that in our training where we're gonna put it on there so people can reference. But there are other times when I do a scenario and I'm like, get out your pen and paper. I'm going to just talk you through this scenario and then say, go. If you have a question, you can ask, but I'm not just leaving it on the board. Because when someone calls in and says we need X, Y, or Z, they're not giving you a slide. I mean, it'd be great if they sent an email that had all of the information. If you have a computer-aided dispatch that can send you that, but oftentimes it's that phone call from someone on scene that says, This is what I need, this is what I have. Go. And so, as uncomfortable as they are, and I've sat through them, they are not fun. But I promise you, that test environment will prepare you for the real thing so much more. So, bravo for doing it. And for your staff who may be listening to this, I'm sorry if I'm endorsing that he does more of these. Um but remember in a test environment, nobody dies, right? That that's the time to learn and get through all those challenges. Um, so specific changes that you have made over time, and this is kind of my question. What as you look at messaging, what was there anything in particular? Because I mean, whether it's clarity, uh specificity, protective actions, uh, whether the tone of what you're saying, what are things, or is there anything you're like we've really beefed up this portion of the message?

SPEAKER_02 43:02

Um, you know, we get a question a lot in like a lot of our community engagement is like, what is my evacuation route? Um, and whether that is in like some of our industrial areas, like in the South Valley, or it's out in the East Mountains, um, what's my evacuation route? And I give them the worst answer in the world. Well, it depends, right? Like I hate saying that. Like it depends. Um, but it does, right? It it matters in a lot of our evacuation things that drive evacuation is weather. You know, if I told everyone, I'm telling you right now, if there's a fire, you're gonna go east. Well, if the wind's blowing in a certain direction or the fire started over there, like you can't go in that direction. Um, and so I think for us, we have put a big emphasis on when we evacuate, we are going to provide that direction that you're gonna go. And it's not gonna be, you know, take, you know, Oak Street to Main Street to this street is Going to be what are your primary corridors? You're going to evacuate east and head south on this major corridor. Um, I think that's that's a challenge that we've run into. It's something we're still kind of continuing to work on. Do we generally know the direction of wind and where things will go? But you know, I think like we saw in in Hawaii with the fires, right? They use their tsunami system and it was like, well, go this way, right? Like, oh, you're gonna go right into the the fire, right? That is the I think one of the biggest challenges is how do you take that natural component to evacuations, like the the wind, those elements and things like that, and incorporate in then your planning process? Um I don't know. I I I don't know if I have a great answer for it, but I think that's something we put a lot of emphasis on over the last year or two years.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

Well, I can tell you, you're not the only one who has thought that through. And especially when it comes to evacuations, there are many messages. And anybody, I would invite you, go look online because you can see these messages in real time as they come out, or you can look them up from past episodes. And as whether it's the fire that was just referenced, there's Los Angeles County, there are many other complex fires, as an example throughout California and other parts of the country, where you can look at the messages and exactly what he's referencing of the clarity of evacuation routes. Um, I definitely think it's something that needs to be addressed. And the it depends is very real. Um, fires are dynamic, evacuation routes are dynamic, and it's really up to emergency management and those that are um in that unified command to determine the routes to get the information out, and it may change. So I think I think your answer is a really good answer, and it's one that is definitely felt throughout our industry.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

You know, something that we we've really pushed on the last year too is like I mentioned I'm a data nerd. Um, I'm like a big GIS, like nerdy, nerdy guy. And using like understanding like the demographics of that impacted area has also been important for us. And so like through Esri, we're able to pull, you know, you can geotag or georeference an area and get that understanding of, you know, again, it's data in, data out, but like what percentage of that population, you know, is English as the second language, what percentage of that population, you know, maybe has, you know, age, um, age considerations to that, how many people don't have a vehicle? We not only are evacuating, right? But like we can use some of that data to drive what resources we need to pull into that scenario. You know, if we have a high percentage of people that don't have access to a vehicle, does that mean that we need to request additional transportation resources into it so that we can, I don't know that we can factor all that into our message, but having that available for us, um, you know, having like we're a it's the word uh majority minority state as a, you know, as New Mexico. I think it's something like in the 54% Hispanic population, you know, so we have a relatively high Spanish-speaking population. And so for us, it's important to ensure that the messages are not only going out in English, but they're going out in Spanish. And I think a big challenge for us is we're hitting the character count on an English message. Well, that is instantly like 400 more characters in in Spanish. And ensuring that, you know, we're we're adjusting those messages, that it's saying the same thing in English as it is in Spanish, meeting that character count. And it's not me dropping that into Google Translate, but that's working with like our certified Spanish speakers to ensure, hey, this is the correct language and you know, the the the correct, you know, kind of intent. It's still meeting the the intent of the message.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Those are really important insights, and I love hearing about being more specific with location information and also languages. And I I'm glad you brought up those insights. I want to ask you one last question. This is related to your article that you posted on LinkedIn in November of 2025, because yes, in preparation for our conversation today, I did go back and read something that you wrote. And I really enjoyed hearing and thinking about your thoughts around standards. And that we've had this conversation with a few other people that have come on our podcast about standards. Do you have thoughts about standards for alerts and warnings? Uh, you talked about NFPA and Emap and FEMA, and presently we don't have standards. But what what are your thoughts? Like if there was a way forward with that, what would it look like?

SPEAKER_02 48:58

Oh man, wish I had time to prep for this one to that. You know, I think in reference to the the article that I that I wrote on LinkedIn, which was like my first time ever doing that, um I walked out of the IAM conference this past year really having a greater appreciation for the emergency management accreditation program. I'd always kind of looked at that as that's something that only big jurisdictions can do that have this massive staff, and it's just to check the box. And I think the way it was described to me was you know, these are national standards. These are things, regardless if you, you know, go through the accreditation process or not, that as a program you you must do, right? And it creates almost to that extent of like a piece of a liability on us. Like if we published and said this is what an emergency management program is supposed to do, like we should be working on that. And I think a lot of emergency managers are like, they come from, you know, this type of background. So yeah, they're the emergency manager, but they've got this background in X. So they they kind of lean towards that. And I've always said, like a fire department's a fire department's a fire department, right? They go anywhere in the country and they're generally organized the same way, they have the same rank structure, similar rank structure, and they do the same thing. Like emergency management programs are not even close to that, right? You go from city to county, state to state, like they're we're not there. And I think that as a community, as a profession, us moving towards like this standards-based approach of this is what we need. I had a meeting with like our budget person yesterday, and I said, I need more people, but I really need to focus on the people I need to meet the standard of what the job is. You know, it'd be great to like hire, give me more 10 more people, I'll find work for them. But I need to really take the time to understand like what is a program like we need to do beating these standards. So, to your question about alerts and warnings, I get there. Sometimes I'm long-winded. Um, I would love to see it. Right. Like, I think there's now like cases of getting, you know, lawsuits filed for failing to alert. Uh, we have that here in our state right now. Um that is a massive thing that we need to have a a this is how it's done, whether it's like you are required. I there's not even a requirement to do alerts. Right? Like we as a state, half of our counties are not alerting authorities. Like we really need to, I don't know if that's at a you know, a state level, local level, federal level, push that that we're doing this and we're doing this in a manner that's consistent across the country. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

I think that's great. So starting with getting everyone the same tools so they can actually reach the populations that are at risk. That's like the leveling that playing field. I would add one more thing. Well, I'd add a lot more things. But um, like NFPA is currently working on standards around language for um evacuation and um and it's specifically related to wireless alerts. So hopefully that's going to lead to some new um well, not new, because they're actually going to be incorporating in the research that you're already applying. Um but hopefully it'll be something that organizations across the country can look to as something that they can aspire to once they have those tools in place.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

I would also love just like a quick plug on the the the iPause lab. Those people are amazing. You know, going into one of our big exercises, we you know, spent like an hour on the phone with them. How do we how do we do this? Like, how do we do this in the test environment? How do I ensure that I'm I'm practicing and proficient in this? I think they're an under underutilized resource by you know alerting authorities across the country. And I would love to see like more engagement at our end on that, more training opportunities to do that. Yes, you can take an independent study course on on alert warning, but um a bigger emphasis on the the training side of like how do we do X or how do we do alerting and how do we do it really, really well?

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Yeah, I tell you, I have been at multiple conferences, and I I would 100% agree people will ask that. FYI, the phone number is 1-800 iPause Lab, and it's you you can call, and you know, I'm not saying anything that's not public. They they put it out there, um, and I agree it's it's fairly underutilized. Um, and there are some pretty amazing people in there. And you can call, ask questions, ask them about your next test you're doing, um, use the lab itself to send messages in a secure environment where it will it will make sounds and do all those cool things, and you can see what it would actually look like in the real side without you know putting it out there. Um, so thank you for putting that plug. Um to finish off, I want to give you just a chance here to kind of give give some feeling or some thoughts because there are agencies across the nation that are in different stages of improvement. And I would say it starts on one end of the spectrum to those that don't even know they need it and they're not interested in help. There's that side toward maybe we're the other side where you are, where not only have you made amazing improvements, but you're continuing to see you're a student in this. Um, and I think the vast majority are in between. And some of them get discouraged because they're not sure what the next step is or they're meeting challenges. One of the cool parts of the program is we're helping them understand the reality of change, of adjusting your program. And it takes time and it and it takes investment and not just financial, but in being that data nerd, applying the research, all those things. So what advice do you have for people in that process and motivation to keep going to get where you need to be?

SPEAKER_02 55:19

Um, I think my advice or what's been like really, really helpful for me, is building that network of other alerting authorities or other folks that are interested in alerting. I have a really strong partnership with the city of Albuquerque, who is also an alerting authority. Uh, we have an agreement in place that if Ike for some reason cannot do an alert, they can do it on my behalf. We share templates back and forth on a on a regular basis. And so whether it's something we're developing, we have a special event, we're doing something. Um, I think it's important to have that network of folks. Like I've met a lot of really smart people uh out in California. Um, when I'm struggling with an alert, I have that network of folks to say, hey, like you're, you know, I consider you an expert in this. Like, what do you think about this? And I think as someone that's maybe getting into alert and warning, like finding those other experts in the field or other people, I don't want to say we're experts other than than the two of you, but um experienced folks in the field and and taking those lessons learned of like what mistakes did you make or how I'm gonna say mistakes, how could you have done this better? And and learning from that. I think like people are afraid, don't say to grow, but to like where do you start with that is um Google, LinkedIn, um, doing the research, reading, reading things that are out there, going to sites like the Warner Room and seeing like what are the best practices, how can I do that? That would be you know my advice to anyone.

SPEAKER_01 56:46

I love it. And to explain crop jurisdictional support for those that are hearing, um, is a process so that you can go through where you'll actually get an MOU with another jurisdiction and it has to be codified or approved through IPAUS. Um, it's not a difficult process, but just as he said, it acts as that second door to secondary or even tertiary method that if you cannot send out an alert, you have a pre-established agreement where someone else can do that on your behalf. And that is advanced stuff right there. And that's just a great example of what they are doing in New Mexico. What do we call pace planning, right?

SPEAKER_02 57:27

Like primary, alternate, contingency, and and we've worked through that. You know, like we have it where I've definitely had to send an alert out, ran into a problem, and was on the phone with the iPods lab, you know, getting that support. And I think that is, you know, another component to like how we build out our alerting plans.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

Yeah, getting that support is so important as you are building out your alert and warning capabilities. And whether you're starting from from just building it from scratch and putting in new a system that can connect to IPAUS to actually starting to implement uh IPAUS and WIA, uh having those connections are so, so important. And so I appreciate all of the experts that listen to this podcast because you are the practitioners who are implementing these things on a daily basis. And if we at the Alerting Authority can help, we uh want to be available to you. So please uh know that we provide training, um, we conduct message audits, template reviews for those things that you're generating, and you just want to know am I hitting the mark? Where can I get some additional assistance? Um, policy assistance, which Thomas talked about throughout our call today, all of the important pieces that go together around collaboration and cross-jurisdictional planning, and that's all policy. Um, and I also want to mention that we have a warning boot camp coming up in July, July 20th through 24th. And this is a great opportunity for you to represent your organization and focus on the most critical alerts you need to have ready to go in those severe storm situations, um, unexpected events, and other things that you deal with on a regular basis. Get your templates in order so that you're ready to go when time is of the essence. So please um take a look at thewarnroom.com if you're interested in the warning boot camp and reach out to me. We have a few spots left. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a fun conversation. I've learned a lot. Um, and I've really enjoyed um thinking through some of these different topics with you.

SPEAKER_01 59:49

Thank you guys so much for having me. No, as always, thank you. Um, the Alerting Authority, I mean, we're here for you, right? We're here because we know that every second has a story, and we will always be here to help share yours. Thank you.