Each January, Ready.gov promotes its national campaign, Resolve to be Ready, to educate and empower communities across the country to incorporate disaster preparedness into their plans for the new year. In recent years, disasters have continually increased in frequency, strength, and complexity, thus making it crucial to plan for the unexpected and be better equipped to protect yourself and others in the event of an emergency. Today, we are highlighting members of our Preparedness Team to discuss their career paths, professional experiences, and practical preparedness tips for the new year.
1. Tell us about yourself and how your career path led you to Hagerty.
Andrew Bohnert: At a young age, our family farm was hit by a devastating tornado, receiving a four out of five on the National Weather Service’s (NWS) original Fujita (F) Scale. Seeing the community-wide response and recovery efforts of that incident led me to become interested in emergency management. Before joining Hagerty, I served as the director for two different county emergency management agencies in Southeast Missouri. During my time there, I witnessed the incredible work that Hagerty was doing and heard amazing things about the company. When it was time to switch jobs, I sought employment with Hagerty to work for the best of the best.
Marina Conner: Prior to joining Hagerty, I worked in both state and federal roles, supporting the full cycle of emergency management activities. While I loved the work I supported in those roles, I found myself craving more complexity in my career. Hagerty piqued my interest because of the variety of clients we support. When I accepted the offer with Hagerty, I knew I was signing up to learn and grow at an incredible pace, and that really excited me.
Harrison Newton: After getting my Master of Public Health (MPH) degree, I often found myself in positions within the public sector, solving problems that intersected the mission of different government agencies and involved the private sector. Whether it was managing toxic exposures impacting children or managing emergency response programs for people who lost heat during the winter, I always gravitated towards jobs that brought different disciplines together. With emergency management becoming increasingly focused on resilience, I became a resilience officer in Washington, DC, and gained the skill of understanding how to help organizations develop plans and tactics relying on different teams working in concert. Hagerty gives me the opportunity to do that in multiple different contexts and for communities across the nation. This is my passion.
2. What do you see as the top disaster threats facing communities now, and what advice do you have on mitigating or preparing for those threats?
Andrew Bohnert: I see cyber incidents as one of the top threats currently. Whether it is intentional and ill-natured intrusions on networks or unplanned system breakdowns, our reliance on complex technology is immense, and there will be a time when redundant technology will be needed. Jurisdictions should consider integrating cyber professionals into all phases of emergency management. Having relationships established with those professionals will be appreciated in an emergency. Additionally, I recommend acquiring preparedness items such as an amplitude modulation (AM) or frequency modulation (FM) radio to receive news that doesn’t require electricity from the grid or alternative means of communications, such as satellite phones or analog point-to-point radios. These items would be beneficial for cyber incidents and many other hazards as well.
Marina Conner: Impacts on our electric grid and prolonged outages are major daily threats on my mind. While many communities and organizations are planning for power outages to some extent, prolonged outages of days or weeks are not being approached in as robust of a manner as they could be. To prepare for prolonged outages, communities can work with their electric utilities to predetermine shelter locations that can serve as priority restoration points for providers. Restoring power is not always accomplishable in just a few hours or days, and having locations for community members to shower, eat, escape the heat or cold, and charge their devices can support community resilience during a prolonged blackout.
Harrison Newton: The world is becoming increasingly complex – technology is merging with infrastructure in new ways, changing the types of impacts experienced in disaster. A gas station may have backup fuel, but without broadband access to make a sale and activate the pump, vehicles meant to assist in evacuation may be unusable. Supply chains have evolved and become more connected to individual and bulk orders made through the Internet. Disruptions to technology from power outages or cyberattacks now pose even more of a threat to the ability to procure critical services.
Putting the increasing complexity of human systems in the context of climate change and increasing pandemic risk, we can expect more costly and deadly disasters on the horizon. The top threat is not a particular type of disaster but the need to predict and prepare for more complex outcomes.
The COVID-19 pandemic should make it clear to everyone, regardless of their profession, that we are all emergency managers now! The way for society to mitigate this increasing risk is to make emergency management and planning cross-disciplinary skill sets, not an insular profession.
3. What practical steps can individuals and communities take before a disaster strikes to ensure they are equipped to respond efficiently post-disaster?
Andrew Bohnert: I encourage everyone to make connections and know where to seek help if it is ever needed. For emergency managers and community leaders, these vital connections mean knowing which organizations, businesses, and other jurisdictions can be leveraged for their assistance and resources during a disaster. For individual members of society, essential connections mean knowing other people in the neighborhood that you can partner with in times of crisis–having preexisting relationships with these people and organizations may be a great benefit one day. A single individual or jurisdiction can never be fully prepared or equipped to handle every disaster without taking proactive steps to prepare and identify their support network.
Marina Conner: When considering prolonged blackouts, communities should have pre-established relationships with the electric utilities that service their community and communicate with them regularly. There is nothing worse during a blackout than calling who you believed was your point of contact (POC) only to find out they vacated their role months ago, so now you do not know who your POC is and have a limited capacity to find out. Having routine conversations can seem mundane, but in the long run, it supports a community’s resilience for “the big one.”
This same lesson can be taken down to the individual level. Having a network of trusted individuals – particularly neighbors – who you know you can turn to during a disaster is important. Being able to contact someone who lives in your physical proximity during a disaster, whether to ask if they have power or to check on them and ensure they’re safe, helps build more resilient households and communities.
Harrison Newton: As emergency managers, we often think of disaster in terms of a period of response followed by short, medium, and long-term recovery. However, it is the connection points between these phases that often prevent communities from recovering effectively. Even as short-term recovery begins, an active effort will be needed to respond to the most vulnerable, who may have made it through the initial shock but will face a crisis due to reduced community services, economic impacts, or supply chain disruptions. Where are your seniors who have mobility challenges and may have been unable to evacuate? Where are your special populations that may have functional needs that cannot be adequately served long-term in an emergency shelter? Do you have emergency medical supplies placed in proximity to those who need them should local pharmacies be unable to open?
Engaging community members and organizations in planning and vulnerability mapping and understanding neighborhoods in an intimate fashion is STILL the best investment for community members, leaders, and planners. Once a disaster occurs, whether you are the mayor or a block captain, it is all about relationships.
4. What is one important lesson that you have learned while working as an emergency preparedness professional?
Andrew Bohnert: I learned that the value of relationships is immense and that some of the best knowledge that you could ever have as an emergency manager is who to call when you need something. As time allows, I would make intentional engagements with partners and foster my professional relationships. If I would come to the dispatch center in the evening to monitor severe weather, I would call ahead of time and ask for drink requests and pick up some fountain sodas on my way in. I would invite the leadership of various public safety and critical infrastructure entities out for lunch or to an evening watering hole. I would conduct ride-a-longs or sit with various stakeholders to understand their operations. If there was a long-duration emergency scene, I would occasionally bring snacks and some cases of water or electrolyte beverages.
It is difficult to appropriately and wholistically operate at the policy and strategic level without understanding how the organizations and individuals on the ground do their duty. While it took some extra time and a little bit of sacrifice, the camaraderie and trust I was able to build, along with a mutual understanding of roles and responsibilities, was incredible.
Marina Conner: From the individual to the organizational level, absolute failures can make you more resilient. Even the tabletop exercise where everyone argues, the plan that didn’t consider that ice storms and snowstorms have different implications, or the response effort where you find out that your vehicle does not have four-wheel drive (4WD) after all. Each of these is an opportunity to increase our resilience. By approaching these “failures” with the right mindset, organizations and individuals can take a bad day and turn it into actionable resilience measures.
Harrison Newton: Inter-connectedness – the way in which organizations work across sectors and silos – plays a huge role in shaping the impact of future disasters. I remember when a resilience team I served on discovered that even as risk and vulnerability experts in the local emergency management and environmental science agencies were identifying new areas of the city at increasing climate risk, local housing officials were busy developing new public housing in those very same areas. This city was spending tens of millions, potentially putting the most vulnerable residents in harm’s way.
It is not enough for government agencies to discuss risk at a high level or just in terms of response and recovery. The connections must be deep and durable and inform tactical decisions around budget and development.
5. What is the best concert you have ever attended?
Andrew Bohnert: While I initially attended the Taylor Swift Reputation Tour concert reluctantly, it ended up being one the best experiences of my life. The entire entertainment experience with the animatronics, lights, and other effects was unlike any other concert I have ever attended. I have seen the biggest names in country and classic rock, but that concert takes the laurels for the overall experience.
Marina Conner: After chasing them for a decade, I finally got to see The Postal Service with Jenny Lewis last fall for their joint 20th Anniversary tour with Death Cab for Cutie – and I am meant to see them all again in April!
Harrison Newton: Without a doubt, a living room set performance with Stone Temple Pilots. They are a very underrated band, indeed.
To learn more about Hagerty’s work supporting communities in capabilities assessments, organized exercises, and emergency preparedness plan development, visit our Preparedness page.
Andrew Bohnert is a Managing Associate with five years of holistic emergency management experience, serving in the past as the Emergency Management Director for two different counties in southeast Missouri. He has experience in writing plans and developing exercises with whole community stakeholders, coordinating large-scale emergency responses, completing FEMA Hazard Mitigation and Public Assistance (PA) projects, and implementing revolutionary technology initiatives across the southeast Missouri region.
Marina Conner is a Managing Associate with eight years of emergency preparedness experience specializing in incident command, accreditation, as well as planning, training, and exercises in both educational and practical settings. Currently, she is supporting clients with a range of state, local, and energy resiliency projects.
Harrison Newton is a Senior Managing Associate at Hagerty Consulting. Prior to joining Hagerty, he spent nearly a decade in public service with Washington, DC. There, he was responsible for establishing the District’s first Resilience Office, where he ultimately served as the Deputy Chief Resilience Officer responsible for promoting resiliency programs across various District departments and agencies.