Small businesses play an enormous role in U.S. success and we know that disasters threaten the already fragile existence of many. In this episode, I speak with Lucien Canton, a long-time leader and author in emergency management about the effects of disaster on business and how continuity planning can better ensure business survival.

How important is what you wear as an Emergency Manager and how do you know when to wear what? In this episode of the Complete EM Podcast, contributor Jeb Lacey of RS Network Consulting, and George Whitney, founder of Complete EM, have a little fun and get serious with this important topic.

Do you drive a government or company vehicle in the course of your duty as an Emergency Manager?  Do you take it home? Is it equipped with emergency lights and sirens? In this episode of the Complete EM Podcast, contributor Jeb Lacey of RS Network Consulting, and George Whitney, founder of Complete EM, have a little fun and get serious about the importance of knowing the responsibility and risk associated with take-home vehicle use.

The tougher part of natural disasters and the better part of human nature will mean we will probably always have unaffiliated volunteer organizations helping emergency managers with disaster response and recovery. In this episode, we explore what Humanity Road has been doing for almost 10 years to help when disasters strike, and how partnerships with emergency management agencies can make response and recovery a little easier.

What could you do if you had 5-seconds notice of a large, impending earthquake? A new technology called ShakeAlert now makes some advance warning of earthquakes possible. So, as emergency managers, we have to ask a few questions. What responsibility do we have to help a community leverage such a technology? What can we expect our community members to accomplish with some advance warning? What's the best way to communicate potentially life-saving messages?

Most emergency managers think of drought as a slow-onset, slow-burn type of disaster that jurisdictions simply need to ride-out with conservation. Some jurisdictions haven't been so lucky. In this episode, an emergency manager who directed critical response operations for several consecutive years walks us through the process he used from official recognition of the emergency to maintaining long-term response and recovery operations, something he calls "responsicovery."

Public alert and warning has again become an area of priority for emergency managers. Getting advance notice of imminent danger and valuable instructions to the public when they need it most - before a disaster can do irreparable harm - is arguably one of the most important things an emergency manager can accomplish.  In this episode, we speak with one of the people at FEMA charged with engineering adequate capability for local, state and federal government officials to do just that. Photo credit/FEMA

What does emergency messaging have to do with Y2K, social science, communications interoperability and a free market economy? In this second of two episodes with a pioneer in emergency messaging, we drive closer to defining the current problem with emergency messaging and some probable solutions.   

In light of recent emergency messaging failures, it's time to ask...what's happening? Do local and state jurisdictions indeed have a duty to warn the public of emergency? If so, how are emergency managers impacted or otherwise bound to this duty? What can they do to make alert and warning more effective? In this and a subsequent episode, we explore these and other questions with a world-renowned expert in emergency messaging.

Emergency managers have a lot to think about and, fortunately, have a large network of partners with which to consider risk, disaster needs and effective means of service delivery. One of those partners is the local food bank and their associated food pantries. Each day they're working to reduce hunger and food insecurity in communities across the US. In this episode, we speak with the director of disaster services for a nationwide network of food banks to hear more about what they do and how emergency managers can foster better partnerships in response and recovery.