Disaster Podcast

We asked Thomas Di Liberto, meteorologist, climatologist, and former NOAA employee on the show to discuss recent changes in National Weather Service staffing. Do the changes made in the name of government efficiency lead to risks in accurate weather prediction and disaster weather alerts? We discuss this on the show this week with the team.

David DiPietro was a former Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer and eventually an instructor for community operations and personnel. He later founded DiPietro and Associates, a medical equipment business, including the distribution of AEDs. Kelsey Treat, David's daughter, now runs the company's sales and operations while Dave focuses on new business opportunities.

We are joined this week by former FDNY firefighter/paramedic Vincent Johnson. Vinnie comes to us from Disaster Medical Solutions and a former FEMA USAR team in New York. He and Dr. Joe Holley share information about USAR medical specialist operations training for USAR docs and paramedics.

In this episode we talk about a conference a few months back that was attended by both Becky DePodwin and Kyle Nelson. Becky is our Emergency Management disaster expert and Kyle has experience in meteorological issues and is also an educator for emergency managers on social media use and information management during disasters and major events.

This week we take a look at what it takes to train and deploy with USAR dogs during disasters. Dr. Joe Holley's better half, Kimberly comes by to talk about her work with the FEMA team from Memphis, Tennessee. She currently had two trained dogs (one live find dog and a human remains detection dog), Kimberly is currently training a third for live search and rescue. 

Our resident meteorologist and disaster emergency management expert, Becky DePodwin, shares her take on the preparedness challenges when a broad weather front crosses the nation. Many states are dealing with severe rain, winds, and flooding that have caused more than a dozen deaths. In fact, the month of March was the windiest on record.

Gavin Blair, COO of Bright Harbor, joins the rest of the podcast team tonight. He discusses the unique challenges people face in the aftermath of disaster. Whether it's knowing the best way to file with your insurance company, or how to navigate the FEMA bureaucracy, having an advocate in your corner can be a game-changer.

Edward Coulson from Ready Northwest returns to the Disaster Podcast to share ways businesses can build resiliency plans for disasters and major adverse events. Often overlooked in the community resilience discussion, local and regional businesses are anchors for the financial well being of a community. Including them while planning drills and events can improve the overall community response to a disaster.

Author Beth Livingston joins the team in this episode to share her accounts of two past disasters here in the United States. First she recounts the personal stories of resilience in The Dayton Flood of 1913. Then she tells the stories of the survivors of The Charleston Earthquake of 1886.

In this episode we look at the variable patient presentations USAR docs and paramedics encounter when rescuing individuals from a collapsed structure. Joe points out that these patients vary based on the amount of time that has passed since the initial disaster situation. If you're responding to the early hours after a collapse, your approach is more immediate life threats such as hemorrhage management or opening and maintaining an airway.

Dr. Joe Holley comes back after being off the show for a few months due to extensive travel for training and conference attendance. We discuss the inflow of respiratory illness to our nation's hospitals and the difficulties finding rooms and beds for patients who need them.

Kyle Nelson, our disaster meteorologist and ski patroller, joins us this week in his role as Planning Section Chief with the Winter XGames Aspen Incident Management Team. He shares his experiences planning and helping with operations for medical and response management during the games this year.

This week on the Disaster Podcast we look at some of the root causes of airline crash disasters and what kinds of things pilots do to avoid midair collisions. Becky DePodwin helped us bring in an Emergency Management colleague, Edward Colson. He's a former commercial helicopter pilot, currently and emergency manager and owner of a consulting firm, Ready Northwest.

Welcome back to the Disaster Podcast, your go-to resource for medical professionals, first responders, and disaster rescue experts. This week's episode features a returning guest, Dan Zehner, from the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI), alongside our cohosts Sam Bradley (retired firefighter and paramedic) and Jamie Davis (nurse and retired paramedic).

On this week's episode, Dan DePodwin joins us to discuss the unique weather implications surrounding the widespread wildfires hitting the Los Angeles area this week. We discuss Santa Ana winds and the source in the mountain deserts around the Four Corners region of the Southwest.

Our amazing Disaster Podcast team got together this week to share their favorite episodes from 2024. We covered a lot of topics and disaster responses over the previous year but there were a few standouts for each of us.

With the approaching holidays here at the end of December, along with the accompanying winter storms tracking across the midwest and into the northeast, it's important to review preparedness and travel warnings for your region. Becky DePodwin, our disaster emergency management expert, joins us to cover some of the weather and preparedness concerns.

Our ski patrol and disaster meteorology expert, Kyle Nelson, comes by the episode tonight with fellow snow and mountain rescue expert Carl Kishbaugh. Karl is a ski-patroller with years of experience in mountain and ski-lift rescue as well as avalanche dog handling. Ruby, his avalanche search and rescue dog, recently trained with he and Kyle on helicopter acclimation and landing zone handling.

Henry Mitchell joined the show and we switched gears to discuss emergency planning and management of diverse community resources to prepare to respond to emergencies and disaster situations. Henry is Deputy Director Office of Emergency Preparedness Response in the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. He holds an MS Emergency Response and Biosecurity and specialized for a time in Disaster Behavioral Health.

Tom Cotter, MPH, serves as executive director of Healthcare Ready, bringing more than a decade of global health readiness and response expertise to expand nonprofit's mission-driven work addressing health equity. Healthcare Ready is a nonprofit organization established in 2007 to help strengthen the US healthcare system and assist all communities in planning for, responding to, and recovering from disasters and disease pandemics.

The National Science Foundation NHERI (Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure) organization had teams out in advance of the recent hurricanes to strike Florida. They set up for the Sentinel Program from the University of Florida to use sensor platforms to detect all the various forces from incoming storms. This was the first full deployment of the Sentinel system.

ZeroEyes technology delivers a proactive, human-verified visual gun detection and situational awareness solution. It integrates into existing digital security cameras on a site to stop mass shootings and gun-related violence. Jonathan Norton, VP of Commercial Sales for ZeroEyes comes on the show to talk about their ground-breaking software and human verification service that completes the process to eliminate false positives causing needless lockdowns.

Former San Ramon Valley Fire Chief Richard Price was having lunch one day when he saw one of his engines stopping in front of the restaurant. Someone in an adjacent business had suffered a cardiac arrest. What really bothered him was that he, a trained responder was only yards away and he had an AED in his vehicle. Had he been alerted, he could have provided care much sooner than waiting for the responding professionals.

Tim Conley and Dr. Kateryna Riabko from Med Global to talk about the training mission they worked on together in Ukraine. Med Global provides surgical and nursing training along with equipment training with things like ultrasound devices. They also work to train medical staff on chemical weapons that might be released during the war there.

Disaster Podcast host Sam Bradley reached out and connected with Dr. Joe Holley while deployed in the field. Joe has been hard at work with the FEMA IST (Federal Emergency Management Agency Incident Support Team) while they supported teams in the field for Hurricane Helene. He and his wife Kimberly are currently in North Carolina finishing up the immediate search and rescue support for that region.

On this episode of the Disaster Podcast, host Sam Bradley takes the helm to lead a discussion with our team about the impending impacts of Hurricane Milton on the central Florida Gulf Coast. Disaster Meteorologists Dan DePodwin and Kyle Nelson jump in with their expertise on the current track predictions. Disaster emergency management expert Becky DePowin shares her takes on preparedness messaging leading up to the storm as well.

This week we look at the needs of first responders who have fallen on hard times. The Primum Non Nocere Foundation (pnnf.net) provides short term resources to help out our brothers and sisters who need a bit of help in a time of need. Founder Louis Cazzetta comes on the show with co-hosts Sam Bradley and Jamie Davis to discuss the important work he's doing.

The Disaster Podcast team assembled to look at the impacts of Hurricane Helene on the Florida gulf coast at the big bend region. It will also have significant impacts on inland areas in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and even southern Indiana and Illinois.

Disaster Meteorologist Dan DePodwin joins our podcast this week to review the impacts of Hurricane Francine. This storm struck the Louisiana coast and moved inland over Mississippi, Tennessee and surrounding areas. Dan and the co-hosts also discuss the impacts of wildfires in the west. California, Oregon, and Washington states bear the brunt of the recent spate of serious wildfires. Dan shares how these large areas of fire create their own weather patterns.

Dan Harris, Battalion Chief with Memphis, Tennessee Fire Department joins us in his other role as one of the Paragon Medical Group disaster educators. He shares key memories of training evolutions and how he learns from the jurisdictional differences he encounters with his students. Dr. Joe Holley joins the discussion as well and shares several anecdotes about Dan's contribution to the training team.

In this episode, we chat with Jameson Morgan, Director of Partnerships for goTenna. GoTenna is a company that provides critical network communications solutions for military, government, and emergency services personnel. It enables them to maintain contact in rough environments where standard communications methods experience difficulties.

Our disaster meteorologist, Dan DePodwin, joins us this week to talk about Hurricanes Debby and Ernesto. Debby caused widespread flooding from Florida to upstate New York. Dan and Becky DePodwin share an experience driving during the passage of Debby's remnants in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

In this episode of the Disaster Podcast we talk with nurse Alicia Bean who is preparing for a return trip with IDMC to Ukraine where she works educating medical personnel on trauma and other best practices. Interstate Disaster Medical Collaborative (IDMC) provides a forum for collaboration, cooperation and coordination of disaster medical experts, assets and systems. The teams are comprised of state and regional providers of mass gathering and disaster medical care.

Dan Zehner from NHERI rejoins us for today's episode. The Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure, NHERI, is a shared-use network funded by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation. They conduct studies of natural hazards and their effects on manmade infrastructure elements to determine safer and more resilient construction methods and materials.

Our Meteorologist Dan Depodwin joins Dr. Joe Holley and our cohosts Sam Bradley and Jamie Davis on this episode. The team looks at the early major hurricane named Beryl that caused a revision of the current seasonal hurricane forecast to reflect an even more active season this year.

This episode Dr. Genie Burnett joins us to discuss mental health for first responders dealing with trauma. Genie has had the dream that one day, everyone would have access to resources that would help improve your mental health. This program has been in development since 2018. Because of her RIM technology partners, it has become a reality.

In this episode Dr. Joe returns from several weeks of travel for education and conferences around disaster and emergency medical care. We also discussed the increased activity in the tropics with the first tropical storm of the year on the Atlantic side and two more systems under scrutiny for possible development. There's also a look at the extreme heat affecting much of the nation and the severe fire hazards in the New Mexico region.

Disaster Emergency Management expert Becky DePodwin goes through the necessary steps for a family prepping for hurricane season. The U.S. National Weather Service has a collection of preparedness pages for hurricanes including before, during, and after the weather event hits. Below are a few great resources to use when creating your family plan.

In this week's episode, we touch on several tornado outbreaks in sections of the U.S. The alerts included a Tornado Warning in co-host Jamie Davis' home location. Emergency Disaster Management expert Becky DePodwin shares with us how the FEMA wireless emergency alert system is activated and who is in charge of it.

When weather attacks or seems to do so, it can be difficult to gather response in a timely fashion. In this episode of the Disaster Podcast, we chat with meteorologist Dan DePodwin and disaster emergency management expert Becky DePodwin about recent severe weather impacts that caused more than two dozen deaths in the U.S.

In April, Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority conducted a mandatory mass casualty disaster drill. The location was Dulles International Airport in Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C. These exercises are supposed to be held every three years.

we bring in Kyle Nelson to talk about responder education and our needs to continue to increase and bolster our skill sets through training opportunities. Local and state responders are increasingly called on to be proficient in communications and collaboration with other teams including Federal or even international teams who respond to local needs.

Dr. Matthew Smith joins the show tonight to talk about WMD response and the management of pediatric patients exposed to chemical, biological, or radiological agents. Matt is a former US Navy Medical Corps Lieutenant Commander, and served with the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force, where he qualified as a weapons of mass destruction medical specialist.

we jump into an in depth look at what goes into a long range hurricane forecast. With such a distant outlook, how do forecasters make their decisions about the whole season this far ahead of time. Our meteorologist, Dan DePodwin, joins us to share his expertise about distant forecasting.

On the Disaster Podcast this week, co-hosts Sam Bradley and Jamie Davis are joined by disaster emergency management expert Becky DePodwin to look at the upcoming Hurricane Season Forecast. Accuweather released their predictions for the 2024 hurricane season, set to officially begin on June first.

We welcome meteorologist and disaster incident command system expert Kyle Nelson on the show. He checks in from Florida where he's traveling to a training event to help him in his roles with his county incident command system, especially when they deploy to other states during distant events.

Dr. Joe Holley examines some of the key take aways from the verdict against two EMS providers in the Elijah McClain homicide trial. The team goes over lessons that can be learned from this case.

This week features a rare follow-up episode where we looked back at last week's episode on Geohazard Mitigation with Colby Barrett from GeoStabilization International. This week we brought back Dan Zehner from The Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI).

Colby Barrett is our guest this week on the Disaster Podcast. He is the son of the one of the founders of GeoStabilization International and currently is the vice chair of the Board of Directors for the company. He's a Marine Corps veteran, lawyer, engineer, and describes himself as a philanthro-capitalist.

This week on the Disaster Podcast it's time to discuss recent wintery weather trends. That also means it's time to stump our meteorologist, Dan DePodwin. The wintery weather terms we try out on him include freezing fog, polar vortex, graupel, hoar frost, frost flower (ice ribbons or frost beards), and rime ice.

This week Dr. Joe Holley drops in after attending the NAEMSP (National Association of EMS Physicians) annual meeting in Austin, Texas. The leadership of our EMS docs discussed a multitude of important topics for the prehospital care environment. Here is one of the topics Dr. Joe shared on this week's Disaster Podcast.