Right Message, Right Time: Martin Ritchey on Emergency Alerts, Texas Floods, IPAWS and Everbridge

How do emergency managers make sure the right people get the right message at the right time? In this episode of The Alerting Authority, Jeannette Sutton and Eddie Bertola sit down with Martin Ritchey, Director of Homeland Security at the Capital Area Council of Governments (CAPCOG), to discuss emergency notification systems, IPAWS, Everbridge, warning fatigue, emergency preparedness, flash flood response, and lessons learned from major disasters across Texas.

Martin shares how CAPCOG built one of the most successful regional alerting programs in the country through WarnCentralTexas.org, achieving exceptional community participation and improving emergency communication capabilities across a 10-county region. The conversation explores the importance of emergency alerts, public warning systems, crisis communication, emergency management training, disaster response, resilience planning, and how technology can help save lives during critical incidents.

From devastating Texas floods and Winter Storm Uri to aviation disasters and emergency notification best practices, this episode offers valuable insights for emergency managers, public safety officials, alerting authorities, and anyone interested in disaster preparedness and community resilience.

This episode of The Alerting Authority is proudly sponsored by Everbridge.

When emergencies happen, every second matters. Everbridge helps organizations ensure the right people receive the right information at the right time. Trusted by more than 6,500 organizations worldwide, Everbridge's High Velocity Critical Event Management (CEM) platform combines advanced technology and purpose-built AI to help organizations anticipate risks, communicate during crises, and recover faster from critical events.

Whether facing severe weather, operational disruptions, cybersecurity incidents, or large-scale emergencies, Everbridge provides leaders with the tools and confidence needed to make informed decisions when it matters most. From government agencies and public safety organizations to businesses and healthcare systems, Everbridge helps protect people, assets, and operations through industry-leading emergency communication and resilience solutions.

Learn how Everbridge is helping organizations build safer, more resilient communities by delivering the right message at the right time at www.everbridge.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

All right.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Very good. All right. This is our this is our be I always do that. It's ridiculous, but whatever. Okay. Okay. Hi, I'm Jeanette Sutton.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

And I'm Eddie Bertola.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

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 community safer.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

That's right. And we again can't do this without amazing sponsors. And we want to thank Everbridge for sponsoring this episode. Um, and our guest has some special ties with that, and we'll go into that. But when it comes to alerting and resist and right there, that's resistance. That's that's a mess up.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

So I'll start again. See, I got I got three minutes in this time.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

That's that's improvement.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Oh, it's only been one.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Oh, never mind. Then it's standard.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Is this like the clapper?

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Yes. Trust me, there could be a whole podcast on my outtakes.

unknown 1:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Jeanette has yet to ever mess up. Once.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Ever. So. And we can't do this without our amazing sponsors, and this episode is sponsored by Everbridge. And when it comes to alerting and resilience, it's not just about sending a message, it's about making sure the right people get the right information at the right time. That's why more than 6,500 organizations around the world trust Everbridge. From global enterprises to government agencies, Everbridge helps teams stay ahead of disruption and protect what matters most. Their high-velocity CEM platform, powered by purpose-built AI, helps organizations anticipate risk, communicate clearly during crisis, and recover faster when critical events occur. Whether it's severe weather, operational disruption, or a major incident, Everbridge will give leaders the confidence to act quickly and decisively. So thank you, Everbridge.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yes, thank you. And um, I am really excited to welcome to the show our guest today, who we met last fall. I think it was in the fall.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

It seems like not that long ago. He's just the person that just stays with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

August. That's right. Um, because we are coming up on an anniversary of an event that was precipitating the call from our guest, and um which we will talk about a little bit um on the show today. But when this guest reached out, I was delighted to learn about what he does in the great state of Texas and how he helps that the communities there to be safe. And so I would like to introduce today Martin Ritchie. He has spent more than 10 years as the fire commissioner for Caldwell County, Texas, is the vice president of the Emergency Management Association of Texas, and currently the Director of Homeland Security at the Capital Area Council of Governments, which serves the Capital of Texas 10 County Region and supports urban and rural local governments through coordination, collaboration, and sharing of ideas and resources. Just a huge population, really important area of Texas. I mean, all areas of Texas are important, but you know, where we're marketing.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

Governments are going to start being put right there.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

What did she say? All areas of Texas are important. We love visiting Austin. Um, but the Homeland Security Division in Cap Cog manages a regional notification system called warncentraltexas.org, which is used by local governments to alert residents and visitors of the region through phone call, email, and SMS. So we are excited to hear more about that today, too. But last fall, with the goal of improving local capabilities for alert and warning messages, the Homeland Security Division of Capcog invited us to present a day-long training. And we had close to 200 people attend. And it was an amazing, amazing day. And um just really appreciated the opportunity to learn more about Texas and to be part of that community for a short period of time. So we are so happy to welcome you to our show today, Martin.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Well, thank you very much for inviting me to participate. Um, just so you know that you know, we didn't begin working on things that had deal with uh you, Dr. Sutton. Uh I've been using your materials going back probably five years of making presentations at our state uh association meetings as well as the Texas Emergency Management uh division's uh annual meeting. And there'd be the little asterisk with your name. And uh so I felt it only best practice to bring in the experts that have written so well about emergency notifications.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Well, thank you. I'm always glad to hear that the research is being used to inform practice, which is exactly why we love bringing practitioners like yourself onto the show to share how it can be so useful in improving and just making our community safer.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Well, and I'll be the first to say, oh, go ahead. Oh, was that just absolutely I was gonna say I'll I will be the first one to say Texas is unique, right? Yes. And and I will, you know, Capcog is no different. Um Cap Capcog, you heard that's that's the reference that Jeanette was talking about with all the different counties. I have been around the country, I think, a few times now, and there are not many um areas that are structured like you and the and the way Capcog is. Can you go into a little bit more about your role as the director of Homeland Security for Cap for Capcog, kind of how it works, and a little bit more about the Warren Central Texas.org and the regional coordination with the different division facilities?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Yes. Well, first off, I should tell folks that in the great state of Texas, there are 24 councils of government, and that's what a COG is. CAP COG is the Capital Area Council of Governments. And um, you know, being a metropolitan area, which includes the city of Austin, we have a lot of uh large cities in our community and universities across the 10 County region. Uh, but a COG has a lot of different um you know divisions. Homeland Security, uh, we do the emergency notifications bit. We operate uh a lot of of the uh regional elements for planning, uh, whether it be mass casualty, mass fatality, thyra, SPR, IP. I'll use the lingo, figuring that the people on this call understand most of these acronyms. If they're not, they can do like I did, think that a Thyra had something to do with Suzanne Summers, the Thymaster. Um yes. Uh but but the COG is a uh organization created by Texas State government. And our role is to help with facilitating these plant planning and kind of uh bring together uh communities so that we we can facilitate and save money on uh cooperative purchasing and operations. So uh it just so happens to be a coincidence that Everbridge is one of your sponsors today. Uh, they happen to be our our current provider for um emergency notifications under our label called Warren Central Texas. Um Capcog has always maintained ownership of all of the contacts when people sign up for emergency alerts. Um, in our region, we ask people to sign up for emergency alerts at Warrencentratexas.org. Um, we've done this with previous providers as well. Um, Everbridge has provided excellent service, and we uh have a really good database of contacts, and we curate that on a regular basis. We also augment our curated database with information that comes from outside sources. So when it comes to landline and VoIP, we have everybody's landline number, we have all the VoIP numbers in our region. Cell phone numbers have always been the hardest to get. And anybody that knows that when you have an adopt-in system, it's a big challenge, and there are huge, could be huge gaps. We estimate with our complete curated list, including some of the items from Resident Connect, a product of Everbridge, uh, we're past 85% adoption for cell phone numbers, and they're geolocated to the person's address. Um, about 10% or so, roughly, uh, we we have email addresses and other data for those individuals as well. Uh, but overall, we feel our database is one of our biggest strengths. And um, like William Wrigley, the founder of the Wrigley Chewing Gun Company, you know, at one time, a lot of people probably don't remember all this, but one time it was like the gum, biggest gum company in the world. And someone asked him why they spent so much money on advertising. And he said, you never disconnect the engine from the rest of the train. And, you know, I when I learned that a long time ago, not from William Wrigley, he's long gone, right? Uh, but being a Cubs fan, so I have to bring up William Wrigley. So we feel the same way. We continue to promote uh for folks to sign up on everything that we do. It's on the back of my business card. Uh, whenever we're having meetings uh with our stakeholder groups, uh, we constantly are promoting it. So we just in the last few weeks, we've added, because of bad weather, uh, probably 15 or 20,000 people to our database. Now, of course, people are coming off too uh for a variety of reasons, uh, you know, mostly because they move or something, but that constantly, you know, is being updated. So we're really thrilled about the fact that we have that database. We also have within our Everbridge system, Capcog can note can send out a 10-county or one county uh iPause message. And all of our stakeholder counties have iPause authority as well as the city of Austin. So not only do we have you know a hammer that can tap in finishing nails, which is our database, we have a sledgehammer, you know, with iPaws where we can hit everybody uh that's out there. Um so we like to use both of those tools. Um, and we could talk about how that how we do do that and what switches this you know from one to the other.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I like that analogy that you just use, the sledgehammer versus the the little hammer that's tapping in the finishing nails. And I'm not a carpenter, but I get the analogy. Um and it makes sense, you know, the the real precise work of being able to identify the the people on a on one street in one neighborhood versus hitting that whole uh whole uh broader area around that street through a WIA. Um, even though WIA is getting much more precise, but having the individual phone numbers that you know you're getting directly to them. I mean that's that's a great analogy. I like that very much.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Just just last week we had a wildfire and uh a notification was sent out to 12 homes. So, you know, you can't get more finishing nail um, you know, targeting than that.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Right. Yeah. Well, and the effort that you you and your organization have gone to to collect all of those phone numbers, it sounds uh very extensive, especially when I hear from other places that they're at like 20% adoption or opting in. And so 85%, that's that's really, really impressive.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Well, uh 20% if it's just pure adoption, you're talking about you know, their Hank Aaron, you know, uh Babe Ruth uh style sluggers. That's amazing uh capability. Um, you know, when we when we're talking 85% penetration, it's a combination of people volunteering and us being able to vacuum up uh cell phone numbers that are properly uh you know targeted to uh uh a single address, which is really the most important piece.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

So there are multiple strategies. I think that that is that's really important information for um organizations that listen to our podcast to know that there are other strategies to get those phone numbers beyond asking people to opt in by giving their personal information to a government website and choosing to be notified. Um it yeah, a really important distinction there. Um, can you tell us what are some of the biggest challenges that you faced with alerts and warnings in Texas and what have been your strategies to address them?

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Well, you know, one of the biggest is that Texas is such a large state. So when you have a political area um such as Texas, there are going to be some messages that go out not just on a local level, they may go out on a state level. So uh, and this is no finding fault with any organization within the state of Texas uh because they've done so many things to try to mitigate this issue. But the state of Texas uh is not the state of Rhode Island, let's say, you know, where you can drive across in, you know, 30 minutes. I've been up, I used to live up on the East Coast for a short period of time and drive through Connecticut and Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and it was just minutes. Uh Texas could, you know, 12, 14 hours to drive across different parts of the state. So when a message goes out that's statewide, if you don't, uh if it doesn't have a delta to you or any meaning, you're not going to be very happy. You know, you know how this goes. You get a lot of opt-outs at that point. People that turn off the emergency alerts on their cell phones uh so they don't get the IPOS messages, not just amber alerts. I would bet you that amber alert, you know, switching that off on cell phones has to be pretty high. Um, I don't know the number of that one, but for the emergency alert side, I know that we've got to be number one uh for people of turning them off, and that's not a good place to be. So um, you know, recently we did a statewide test. You might want to dive deeper into that, but it was a big concern about hey, you know, we we need to make sure that we're testing our systems and coordinating. But on the other hand, you know, are people gonna get upset and turn this capability off? I would love to see that that switch being taken out of cell phones, quite frankly. Um, you know, that uh this is not an option to know that there's an emergency out there. It's it's a vital requirement of government to communicate during emergencies to the citizenry and to the community. And, you know, Craig Fugate, my goodness, when I watched your podcast with him and how he spoke about uh, you know, emergency management, and you can forget about all your plans and all those other things if you're not doing the most basic uh emergency management requirement, which is notifying the public about the emergency. And uh I just I I just ate that up because you have to we have to inculcate that into every being part of our being and communicate that out to all of our stakeholders in this enterprise so that when we are talking to the public, using a lot of the guidelines, using the research that you guys have put forward, it's just going to make it that much better. Um, so I'm a big proponent. Uh CapCog does not remove people from our database by board of directors, which is made up of county judges and mayors and elected officials. When we spent the money we did to put put these lists together, uh, I asked them the question what do we do if someone wants to opt out? They said, We paid for it. The answer is no. Um, we're we we fall into all of the requirements of the Federal Trade Commission and the FCC, that these are only emergency alerts. We're not talking about closing a road down on one side for street sweeping or the garbage collection days changing. Our systems used only for emergency alerts. So you can opt in, and those people that opt in can go back in and delete their profile and opt out. But if you are in our database and we paid to put you in our database, we'll only take people out if they've moved or are no longer in our area.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

I I just appreciate the emphasis on work because that's one thing that I don't think people understand sometimes is to build the database to set the policies, to go through the process of doing what you're doing. It takes work. It takes effort and time, frankly. And everything that you're outlining just reinforces that principle. Um, so if you're just starting out there, I I wish there was this, you know, wonderful one pill that you could take, and boom, everything's all done. But it's really going to take a lot of effort, a lot of different strategies in order to reach that goal. Um, oftentimes, uh I know for me personally, I've seen big upticks and opt-in or other things. You mentioned severe weather. When when there's something that's that's a big hazard, people are they usually tune in and they're like, I didn't get something, so let me let me find what I need to do to opt in. Um hazards can bring that type of exposure to us and to our what we do. And if we can bring up uh Kerr County, so and again, we're not gonna go into the things that are still being litigated, still being talked about with all the different types of alerts, but I want to talk about one thing that has happened that I think we've felt um nationwide is the uptick in interest in preparing and developing your skills and competencies so that you can better represent your community. Have you, and in Capcog, have you guys seen that and felt that as well?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Absolutely. Um first off, I I want to express you know my deepest sympathy to all the families of those that were affected in Kerrville and Kerr County. Um I had a parent of um of an eight-year-old um who was uh killed at Camp Mystic, who drowned because of the flood. And uh he came to my office recently and we were having a conversation about how to better coordinate uh emergency response. As everybody knows, you know, at the beginning of an emergency and different points of an emergency, there's either way too many of something or way too little of something, and sorting out those details is always a huge challenge. Um but definitely, you know, when you have something that is uh that causes a major loss of life, it gets everybody's attention. Um, whether it be an you know an airplane falling from the sky, and we having had multiple issues with aviation across the country the past uh year or so, that's a focus of everybody's attention. Um when we have an event, California fires. I mean, I'm sure everybody in California, you know, are so fine-tuned into what they should be doing um and you know how they're going to respond to um a message. So uh that that definitely had a big impact on our region. Um, even though Purville and Kirk County is not part of our region, uh they're still uh you know in the Texas family. And you know, Texas has a long tradition of Texas Texans helping Texans. And so we had boat crews and emergency response crews. Um That had responded out into that area to help support the activities in the aftermath of the flood. And our whole region happens to be in what's referred to as Flash Flood Alley. You know, not a good name for an area. You know, that's telling you that when the National Weather Service calls your community that you're on top of, you know, this geological formation which causes flash flooding, that you have to be prepared all the time. Now, um, without going into Kirk Kerr County and Kerrville, I can talk about my own community. Uh back in uh 2013, we had a uh a river flood uh that occurred in our community. And uh there was uh two people lost their lives. Uh one was a malicious action where a gentleman drove his truck purposely into a low water crossing and his girlfriend was killed. He was charged and convicted of a crime because he did it to scare her, and uh took us two weeks to find the truck and her body. Um so that was uh a horrendous situation. But at that time, and the another one was a gentleman who was just driving to work and hydroplane, went off the road, but just so happened to go off this highway right at a culvert, and he was sucked out of his car underneath the highway and drowned. Um, so horrific for our community. Um, and I thought to myself at the time, I don't want to go through anything like that again. Uh a taking so long to find the remains of someone who was lost, and you know, just the whole response activity. So this is a small rural county uh of about 45,000 at the time. Um now it's the number six growing county in the country. So lots going on. But we created a team of 50 uh volunteers uh that would take Swiftwater Rese. Uh we purchased multiple boats, so we went from having one boat to five boats in our county, and lo and behold, 2015, on Memorial Day weekend, a massive uh flood occurred. Now, the setup wasn't, hey, you're gonna get you know a foot and a half of rain in a uh in a catchment basin that's gonna feed right into a river that's gonna go right into your community. Um, you know, the National Weather Service can't give you that level of granular detail. They can say conditions are ripe for flooding, you know, you can have a flash flood uh watch, you know, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, we're in flash flood alley. So flash flood watch is not like, oh yeah, it might rain today, might get bad. You know, if you have a flash flood watch and you're anywhere near an area like a river, a creek, you have to be on battle stations right then and there. Okay. And so we we we took that particular situation in 2015 very seriously. So we watched what was happening in the nearby communities, and by 7 p.m. on uh the Saturday before the uh Memorial Day weekend with the Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend, we had our EOC staffed up with the the basic staff, the the folks that are going to be opening and closing roads, things of that nature. Uh by 11:30, we were watching the storm gauges around the region to see how much flow there was. We didn't have any rain, you know, where we were, um, maybe a sprinkle or two. But we noticed that one of the flood gauges had given us a return at 11 and it looked like it was going up and didn't give us any other return. So we got on the phone and we tried to determine what was going to happen next. You know, was there was it increasing? You know, you we don't have a crystal ball for these things, and was able to get a hold of someone in a fire department in that community, and they said, it's it's hell up here. Um so by midnight, our county judge in the state of Texas, mayors and judges under uh, you know, our code 418 are the ones that can order evacuations. County judge ordered an evacuation, mandatory evacuation along the riverway. Um we immediately toned out all 11 fire departments in our county. Only three of those departments were located along the river. Some had to come, you know, 30, 40 miles to come to the riverway. Now they didn't send their whole department, but they sent enough apparatus that we could go door to door, go to the places where people were camping with lots of camping facilities. And of course it was a holiday weekend. So all those folks are there. We know they're not in our system. You know, anybody just transient, so we know IPAWAS is gonna have to hit them. But even then, you know, where do I go? Where, how bad is bad? Most people don't know. Even if you send them a notice of evacuation, you got to be ready. So we we started hitting them with mandatory evacuations. Now, it just so happened since the 2013 flood, I made really good friends with the people that ran all those camping operations. And, you know, they did tell people to register their cell phones, but I could call them as well and say, hey, flood coming. They were all evacuated. There was no loss of life. There were about 800 homes in my community that were destroyed. Um, but there was no loss of life at all. And it it comes from what Craig Fugate was talking about. You know, we just have to knuckle down and just do our job. Know where those vulnerabilities exist. You know, I live at the top of a hill, all right? I'm in a very rural area. Um and so if if the water ever got up to here, I mean, it's it's it's NOAA territory, you know, it would be the greatest flood to hit anywhere. But, you know, I couldn't leave my house because there are enough low water crossings that would prevent me from leaving. But understanding what's safe and what's not safe is great for the person that lives here. But for any of our guests, especially young children, they're not going to know that. And in many cases, for uh this kind of event, you might only have to walk, you know, half a football field. You just might have to walk a short distance to be safe. So it's incumbent on us to do our jobs and to be focused on it, to be paranoid almost, like so committed to taking care of the community that nothing else gets in your way. I don't care if it's the Memorial Day, the 4th of July. Uh, you know, we had Labor Day, we've had floods on Halloween. In fact, the flood in 2013 was a Halloween flood. And then because we had it happen on the 30th, we called it All Saints Day flood. You know, every holiday's got a flood. We just haven't had a Christmas flood yet. Oh, what did I just do? Knock on wood.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Knock on wood. So that's sort of my, sorry about getting on my soapbox, but it's truthfully our most important job, especially when we know the vulnerabilities.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Well, you mentioned two specific things I want to reiterate. And the first one, which hopefully people hear on this podcast all the time, is it's not about statistics. Like we're not here to try to save a statistic. We're here to do things to save individuals and families. And even one person who loses their life is too many. And everybody is connected. And thank you for bringing up Kerrville and Kirk County in that way, because I think it's important for people to hear that, that there are connections and we're not trying to do just some mechanical thing that just, you know, impacts something else. We are very community um centered, and any loss in a community is felt well beyond. And there are unfortunately disasters that occur all over. And all of us in this, you know, um podcast, I mean, we we've all experienced our share. And the second thing that you mentioned, which again, I can hear other guests we've had on going like, yes, is when talking about the National Weather Service, how they cannot get that granule within your community. And it's up to local entities to provide that additional information on what you need to do at the local level to stay safe. They're gonna give you, yep, it looks like it's gonna be a bad storm, whatever it is, but they don't know the specific waterway or anything that's gonna impact the river in your community or whatever it may be. Um to help manage all of those things, though, this is where I want to do another quick plug for Everbridge in this, because Everbridge does have tools specifically designed to help. And as was mentioned before, Capcog is one of over 6,500 global organizations that already participate in this. And the focus is to reduce disruption to any operation. Emergencies can be crazy, and they generally are. You need a system that can keep you stable and keep everything organized within the entire uh ecosystem of a critical incident. And I think we'll get into a couple of those here shortly. Um, with Everbridge, they have their high-velocity CEM by using industrial industry-leading solutions. Um it's purpose-built AI, it sets the world standard for business real um resilience. Again, resilience is something else I think we're gonna talk about. But with Everbridge, customers can confidently anticipate, respond to, and recover from critical events. Um, so I want to bring up one event, and this is from 10 years ago. Um, this is Caldwell County, and I people listening probably saw this on the news. I mean, this is another type of tragedy, but if you look at emergency management and agencies, this is not one that that I think I would ever expect to see, and then it happens. And this is specifically talking about a commercial hot air balloon accident, and it claimed 16 lives. Now, you've noted in the past that the FAA didn't respond to the NTSB warnings about commercial hot air balloon pilots and their regulation. Do you mind kind of explaining that to us a little bit more and help us understand how it's all connected?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Oh, yes. Um, that uh that occurred uh right before Hurricane Harvey, um, a couple months before Hurricane Harvey. Uh and it was something that I I didn't expect. But uh for all the emergency managers and folks out there, um we're an all-hazards organization. So we have various plans that go down different pathways, and we bring those plans together. It just so happened uh that in 2013 I was uh uh given an opportunity to attend a two-day lecture given by the NTSB on responding to aviation uh accidents. Um they also dealt with uh railroad pipeline and some other types of incidents that NTSB covers, but a lot of it went into family assistance centers and other kinds of support, what what they're expecting from the locals, what they're gonna be doing, et cetera. And um so, you know, a few years later, I get a call um in the morning, just so happened to have been uh Saturday morning. I was stuffing my washing machine with all of my uniform stuff, you know, khaki pants, white shirts, all this stuff. And uh being the typical guy that I am, I don't like, you know, do a little bit at a time. I like, you know, I gotta really stuff it in there because it's got like all my clothes in there at one time. Um so I get a call from the EMS director saying there has been um an accident. And at the time uh they felt that there were 13 fatalities. Um so I immediately got dressed. Of course, all I had were black uniform pants and shirt, and it was 114 degrees here in Texas. Um, so uh just that's why I told the story about it being ready with my wash. Uh, I always had a pair of, you know, khaki and white shirt available since then. I will never make that mistake twice, uh, being out there in the hot sun. But I responded out to this incident, and on the way there, I I called my deputy uh on the phone and said, you know, uh go to the uh office, pick up the trailer and start heading out uh to this area on Jolly Road off of uh one of our highways. And um also instructed her to contact the FAA and shut down the airspace uh over the area. So the assessment was made. I got out there, followed the playbook that we would do for most any accident or incident, but also with a heightened awareness of all these other moving parts that are gonna happen uh that I wasn't going to be used to. Um, you know, I knew that this was gonna be um something of a great import, uh, meaning that there was gonna be a lot of press attention. And boy, there was. I mean, every language of reporter that you could think of, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, you know, Spanish, French, from all over the world. And then, of course, all the major networks, all of our local folks uh were there. And we had, we we had set up for where they were going to be before the announcement even went out that there had been an accident with loss of life. Uh, we had that narrow window of time. Even though there were people, you know, on social media, there was a pretty good coverage that it wasn't leaking out at that point. Um and we went through the playbook. We prepared a um family assistance center. It was open within an hour of the actual um incident. And so as things started to roll out, we started to gather the information on the response phase and the recovery phase, and we executed on each of those things. And then, as in anything, you you learn about all of these other moving parts that that were not part of your uh wheelhouse, such as you know, the the FAA inspectors came out, the NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt Jr. Um came out the next day. Uh, we were meeting with them every evening. We're going through the whole process. They include the locals. Um, keep in mind, you know, the NTSB doesn't come out and you know, remove the remains of the victims. That's still yours. Those are your victims, your, you know, in our case, our justice of the peace has to declare them. Um, you know, we have to take care of the remains. And then uh when it comes to the victim assistance center, then TSB moved into our victim assistance center and as we expected they would, and manage that in an unbelievable way, you know, with the briefings to the families. Uh they they are the they are the platinum, you know, guide on how to handle these kinds of things. And I have crew have long front relationships and friendships with their uh people that run those things. But we learned that the FAA, NTSP had told the FAA that there's an issue with the commercial balloon pilots, that you know, they had to have, they have to have a license, but they don't have to have a medical. See, anybody else that's flying in a commercial aircraft, you you have to go in for uh a medical, you have to see a flight uh surgeon or flight uh doctor, and you have to inform them if you have a DUI, you have to tell them if you're on certain types of medications, if you have certain diagnosis, you know, if you have heart disease and diabetes, you know, that's going to be something that's gonna prevent you from being probably viable to be a commercial pilot. Well, this guy had those, but he also had a lifelong um history of being incarcerated for drugs and alcohol. Um he had his license, had been suspended. I think it was gonna be for another five or 10 years at the time of the crash, and the uh toxicology screen came back and was reported at the uh at the uh NTSB hearing is that he had a witch's brew of uh things in his system. Some legal, some questionable, some for sure uh should not be in the system of someone flying. And uh it was pretty stunning to hear that because of the impact that had on the families of the victims, on my first responders. Um, I mentioned earlier that I contacted my deputy at the time. Uh at 51 years old, she died of a uh uh cerebral hemorrhage. And I think that her her health from the time of that accident going forward uh degraded and might have been a cause. Who knows? But she was a healthy former police officer, uh, you know, and I think we were all very affected by this particular incident. And um, you know, you take a look at that and you say there's gotta be rules, there have to be procedures. And here's a case where, you know, a known gap was identified and not filled. Now it took the family members, and we worked very closely with them, uh, to lobby elected officials, including two of our senators uh and multiple members of Congress here in Texas. And uh then the the there was legislation passed that ordered the FAA to do this, to make the rules. And they still didn't make the rules for several years. So, you know, their timeline isn't what you would figure uh the rest of us would do in a similar situation. And um, you know, it was kind of interesting when I went to the hearing, you know, all the balloon association people have got their hands up, like this the tobacco uh industry, you know, uh swearing, you know, in at this hearing. And I I literally, that's what what threw my mind. I would think, hey, if I'm like a balloon provider, that I would want the community to know how safe they are because that we put people through this requirement. You know, why wouldn't you want to have all of your pilots tested and that they have to be validated through the same scrutiny that a commercial airline pilot would have to? Um, after all, they're carrying, you know, by the way, you can have more than 16 people in a balloon. 21 people were killed in Luxor, uh, Egypt, in a balloon. Now, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that that ours wasn't the biggest that ever happened. But it had been the largest commercial aviation accident in the United States in 2016 since tw 2009 and until the crash in um Washington, D.C. It was still the largest loss of life in a commercial aviation accident in the United States. And it was a balloon. So, you know, it doesn't matter how how you transport, it's still you have a massive um impact on the community and on the families.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

The story is itself is really amazing. And to hear about all of the the details of it and the lack of regulation and the lack of how long it takes to implement um the findings and to create a safer environment um for passengers. And you know, it some of our listeners might wonder why you are talking about all Hot air balloon disaster. This was this is an alert and warning podcast. But I think for those who pay attention to the alert and warning sphere in the United States, they know that there are no standards for alerts and warnings. And in fact, in the disaster space, we don't even have something like an NTSB. Probably the closest thing we have, and it's not even disaster, it's the national construction safety team, which is part of NIST, and they study building failures, which is not the same as a wildfire ripping through your community. So we don't have an organization that investigates. People might say, well, the FCC, they have some rules, yeah, but not in the way that I think of the kinds of standards that might be useful for people who are responsible for pushing the button. And I know I've had a lot of conversations in the last couple of months about the importance of training, creating standards, setting policy around credentialing, helping to reinforce the need for emergency notification systems to have something embedded in their systems to help the alerting provider to write a good message. And all of those things will take a lot of time if we ever get to the point where there's some hunger to actually create those kinds of standards. But, you know, thinking about your experience with the air balloon disaster, the organizations involved, and looking at this field of alerts and warnings and seeing so many parallels. Like, are we learning the same things over and over again? And is it time to put regulations in place? Would we benefit from something like regulations or maybe even benefit from like an an NDSB, a national disaster safety board? I mean, what are what are some solutions?

SPEAKER_00 46:12

Well, I think you just asked uh the the biggest question, and that we need to be asking ourselves that question. You know, what can we do to always improve? And, you know, certainly the the FCC you know is is our gatekeeper uh to the rules and regulations for our airwaves. The airwaves are property of the people of the United States, and licenses are given out to various agent uh entities to utilize those airwaves. They don't own those airwaves, they're owned by us, the the people of the United States. And so the FCC works very closely with the large providers that operate. Uh, you know, we're gonna be talking ostensibly about cell phones right now. Um, you know, there's been legislation that requires certain activities with, you know, twisted pair copper that go back generations, and that they have power plants and all kinds of other redundancy. I don't know how solid those regulations are today, but I remember, you know, years ago they were pretty, pretty solid. We had winterstorm Uri uh hit uh Texas uh a few years ago. And for those of you that weren't familiar with Winterstorm Uri, the state of Texas is pretty much the almost all of the state of Texas is one uh electrical system separate from the rest of the the grid in the United States. And uh there was a cascading set of failures where uh people were drawing a lot of power because of super cold weather that came into the state of Texas. We normally don't have uh you know weeks of cold weather. Here we were in a situation where we had a lot of cold weather. Uh some systems went offline because of the cold weather, frozen pipes, whatever. But part of the cascading failures uh with electricity that was going to uh pumping stations for natural gas and for other kinds of uh materials that would continue to fuel the electrical infrastructure. Some of those things went down as well and didn't have redundant uh power capability. So if you have natural gas plant and the switches for natural gas and the pump for natural gas uh in the state start going a little haywire, now all of a sudden you're losing even more infrastructure. So they had to continually take homes and businesses off the grid. And um that included many, many, many um cell phone towers. And if you think about how reliant people are on cell phones, they're completely reliant. As emergency managers, we're reliant on cell phones, we're reliant on internet, and a lot of these capabilities were gone. Internet was lost, um, phone systems were down, communication systems in our region, we have the most up-to-date, advanced, P25 compliant radio systems. And yes, we have backup power, we got generators at every single station, but how many days worth of fuel do you have in those things? And then now all the fuel stations, they're all without power and can't pump. So these cascading failures then started affecting our fuel capability to refill um, you know, the the the uh the materials for our generators at critical infrastructures. Hospitals were closed, um, water systems across the state were left without power, and uh, you know, the water pressure dropped in so many areas that fire departments were contemplating going defensive only because an offensive attack was not possible because you didn't have enough water to go put your firefighters inside of a building. So, yes, there are things that we can do today with regulation as it relates to emergency alerts that have to do with making sure that the infrastructure is not going to go down on a given situation, like I just mentioned. Now, that's that might be extreme, but who would have thought? You know, Texas is an amazing state. Our emergency management group, uh, from the state level at T Dim to the local level, they're very well coordinated. But when you have a statewide incident that every jurisdiction, every hamlet is involved, you know, it's sort of like having, you know, a jar of uh mayonnaise that you have to uh put mayonnaise on a thousand sandwiches. I'm sorry, but like it's gonna be spread pretty thin by the time you get past the first, you know, loaf of bread. You know, so the capability is gonna be that much more impacted for emergency response if the tools that we use, communication tools, are knocked off, especially when we're talking about 911 systems, people calling, being able to get assistance. Oh, I could go on for an hour just about that.

unknown 51:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 51:45

So and again, I think we all agree, and uh Jeanette and I had the ability to, I mean, over the years we watch this stuff. Oftentimes we get to interact with those communities that are impacted, um, post-hazard. So this is one of those I call it, you know, king or queen, but in your case king for the day, you you are obviously really in tune with Capcog, with the needs, with goals, what you want to do in the future. If you had the ability to say, I I can pay for whatever training I need, I can demand people go to whatever training, um, whatever it may be, what do you see as the future? Like that's absolutely needed, removing all the other barriers that exist. Like, what would the plan look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Oh my goodness. Um, it's gonna be a long day. I better start drinking coffee early, that's for sure, because I'm gonna have a lot of edicts uh coming out of my kinghood. Um well I I think when we're we're gonna talk, we're gonna talk about things like uh redundancy for critical systems, maybe you know, uh tertiary capabilities as well, uh getting everybody on the same page, common operating picture within a law enforcement, uh Eddy, um, EMS and fire and emergency management. Um, but everybody's got to be on the same same wavelength. And that goes to the federal government too. It can't be just where we communicate up and then it goes up into this nebulous cloud and we don't get back something in return. Um, and not to say that that's what they set out to do, but like all of a sudden, you know, touches somebody that got has a classification, now all of a sudden they can't talk about anything. And what just happened? So I I guess that uh, you know, making sure that we have redundant systems and capabilities, and you mentioned training, but Capcom, we're huge on training. State of Texas, huge on training. Um and and not that they that I would force people to go to training, but uh make sure that there are investments in there that uh that people realize that there's a a large portion of an emergency manager's job is just going uh to training. That's it. They like, you know, at least 10 or 15 percent of their time should be uh attending training sessions. Uh our agency we put on thousands of hours of training uh each year. Um we run through all of the APS courses, the advanced professional series from FEMA. We uh we have put about 400 and in the last five years, about 400 uh people through the type three incident management training, the 0305 from the National Uh Fire Academy. We like their training uh the best. It's law enforcement included, everybody, health, everybody goes through this training. And then, of course, position-specific training. We load up on that. We've been on the forefront of drone training. Uh, we've got a group that started what we refer to as PCRT. I forget what the acronym stands for, but it's public safety, you know, uh unmanned aerial vehicle, I think something like that. Um but we spend a lot of time on preparing the training. Uh I think there was 250 or so people that actually came to your program. But there we had it in a pretty big room. We could have put more people in, you know, and that's our intention, because we're gonna have you back. Okay. We're gonna have you back. Um so that's a guarantee. Uh we we have to have you back. And we can't, again, talk about William Wrigley. You know, we got the engine connected to the train, and we've got to get that train up to speed, keep it at speed, and just add more cars as we need. Keep on going. And um, so as as the king, as your majesty, uh that would be that would be the biggest thing. And do a lot of listening, find out what these emergency managers, you know, are bubbling up and asking for. Most times it's really that they need more help. If you got a county, a small county or city, you might have somebody that is the floodplain manager, the 911 address assigner, and the emergency management coordinator. And, you know, there's there's no way they can't go to training. And then even if they did have a Capcog, you know, they're part of a region that has a lot of training going on. Um, you know, even our even within our COG, it takes an hour and a half to get to from City of Austin to one side or the other. Um, I'm not gonna go like, hey, our we our ranches are as big as the state of Rolado. Um maybe our COG is, who knows? Uh, but uh I'm it's just a joke, by the way. It's uh but anyway, um that would probably be the top of my top of my list. I probably would be pretty exhausted by the end of the 24th hour.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

That is great. And King Martin, we appreciate all of the ideas that you would implement if you had the power of the purse strings. And I think that your state would grow in its skill and knowledge if you could implement all of those things. I think we've had a really wide-ranging conversation today. I started to write down some of those, the uh acronyms or the anecdotes that you were using. We talked about chewing gum, we talked about mayonnaise, uh, we talked about sledgehammers and finishing hammers, hot air balloons, floods, and winter storms. And in each of those stories and analogies, you brought it back to the importance of alerts and warnings. And that could be the technology, it could be the training, it could be getting everybody on the same page. Um, but I I really appreciate you bringing your years of experience. Um, I can't believe that Harvey was 10 years ago. I had a grad student who wrote his master's thesis on that. It doesn't seem like, but you know, just thank you so much for sharing, you know, all of your your wisdom with us. It's been a really, uh, really enriching conversation.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

Well, I I appreciate being invited and uh uh thank you and Eddie for what you're doing, spreading the word, um, and keeping you know this conversation going because uh there's there's someone out there that might get an acorn, just a little nibble from what I've said. Um, and I've gotten a lot from what I've heard listening here. Um you know, it's just been a it's been a great exchange, and uh I can't wait till we have you back um in Austin again.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

I can't wait also because you guys have great barbecue.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

We do. We do.

SPEAKER_03 59:12

And there's another controversy that's gonna end up in comments.

SPEAKER_01 59:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 59:17

Hey.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Uh yeah, there's I always create controversy when I on this one.

SPEAKER_03 59:22

Who has the best barbecue in the nation? I don't know who, right?

SPEAKER_00 59:26

Well, yeah, it I I I'm uh I'm I'm someone that wants to bring everybody together, so I I will be talking, it's like how do you compare, you know, several different apple varieties or several different citrus varieties. Each one has their own personality based upon the the area, the region, and they do. There are a lot of people that have the best barbecue. Um, and I live in a by the way, the little town near where I live have four of the top five barbecue restaurants in the state of Texas. And it's also known as the barbecue capital of Texas.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

All right. That's where we're at. Now we really do need to go back.

unknown 1:00:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:07

Well, we look forward to to visiting with you again in Texas and enjoying some barbecue. And for those who are listening, um, please reach out to us because we love to bring training to your community as well. Um, in addition to doing custom training, working alongside of you and your colleagues to determine where your greatest pain points are and the places where you can experience the most growth. Um, we also do message audits, we review templates and provide policy assistance. And for anyone who attended the training last August in the capital region of Texas, you are well equipped to attend the warning boot camp that is happening this July. Um, and anyone else who's really interested in putting in that time and effort into getting your templates written so that you are ready to launch at the time that you need to push that button, um, please check out the warn room and uh read a little bit about the boot camp. Um, it was a really fulfilling activity on our first go-around um last month. And I'm excited to bring people together to work on their messages again in July. So again, thank you, Martin, for joining us. It's been a real pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

Thank you. And two thumbs up on your training. You guys are great.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:32

Perfect. Um, and again, uh just one more thank you for me. I really appreciate it. I also appreciate how we have that human feel. Because again, everybody who's out there struggling or thriving in their position as an alerting authority, someone in emergency management, emergency services, it's still people that are doing it. And we have our own strengths, our own weaknesses, our own challenges. Um, but there's that spirit of trying to do whatever we can do. And I'm putting this little nugget in there right at the end because I don't think he would have said it anyway. But as an example of Martin, Martin's power went out. Martin did not have the ability, but he showed up anyway with an iPad, a second little source, and and he is good to go when there's no other power. And it just shows that level of resilience.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:26

Um, and so I I this is this is light coming in through my uh through my uh uh flighting glass door. So that's that's how I've got my light. Although the power is is back on, I think, now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:40

Oh, perfect. He has his dog.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:42

Is it Denver? Yeah, Denver is uh stuck to me like glue because he's not a big fan of uh the lightning and thunder uh noises and the rain on the top of the the house. He's a big dog. You know, you you you'd see him and you'd be like, uh-oh, watch out for him. Australian Shepherd, beautiful dog, but does not like the sound of thunder.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:06

Well. We appreciate everybody being there. And thank you for sticking this out. Because at the Allergent Authority, we firmly believe that every second has a story, and we want to continue to be there to help share yours. And