Good interview, been following on LinkedIn for a little bit now, just coming back around to listening to Podcasts (as they have come and gone in popularity over the years).
As I said before very good interview and always great to hear from insiders, would have been interesting to hear more about the inner workings of the creating of DHS or legal issues facing emergency management/response today (but that might be a little too wonky for some, as I’m not a lawyer probably would not have understood most of it anyway).
What stuck most with me though, and what has inspired me to write my own response (not that it will be directed at Secretary Brown or this prearedex) is the concept of throwing out your emergency plan at the first sign of a disaster or “when the bullets start to fly” I look at this as a sign of failure on your part of not putting together a plan that wasn’t flexible enough to account for some of the commonalities that do occur when bullets start flying or occur during emergencies/disasters. Or you failed at obtaining true expectations of your jurisdictions response capabilities by either failing to bring in the right people to assist in determining those capabilities or not reaching out in the first place. Lastly and this was said correctly in the interview you have to test to fail during emergency exercises, without identifying your failure points within your plan you will have to through it out when that emergency or disaster happens because it will be useless, but that’s not the plans fault, it’s your for not working to make the plan better and stronger in the first place.
