Are You Prepared? Disaster Management Strategies for Homeowners with John Scardena

March 21, 2023

77. Are You Prepared? Disaster Management Strategies for Homeowners with John Scardena

Are you prepared for a disaster? Each year, communities around the country face major catastrophes, and the road to recovery is often long and difficult. In this episode, disaster management expert John Scardena shares crucial insights and tips on how you can better prepare for disasters.  From choosing where to live to shoring up your home, taking preventive measures can help reduce the impact of a disaster. Building to code and understanding your insurance policy are also key steps to protecting your home and your family.  Don't miss out on this informative episode and share your own disaster stories or become a subscriber to help spread the word.

Topics Discussed:

- Disaster preparedness

- Preventive measures for homeowners

- Building codes and safety measures

- Insurance policies

- Evacuation plans

- Defensible spaces and vegetation

- Water and wind-related disasters

- Human error in disasters

- High building codes and corruption

- Murphy's Law

- The importance of listening to experts

 Entities Mentioned:

- John Scardena

- Disaster Tough Podcast

- Readiness Lab

- The Salvation Army

- SBA loans

- Government grants

- Insurance policies

- Linemen

Here are some ways to follow and contact or follow John Scardena:

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/doberman-emergency-management-group/mycompany

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DobermanEMG

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dobermanemg/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Doberman_EMG 

Important information from Homeowners Be Aware:

Here are ways you can follow us on-line:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeownersbeaware/

Website: https://homeownersbeaware.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-siegal/

If you'd like to reach me for any reason, here's the link to my contact form:

https://homeownersbeaware.com/contact

Here's the link to the trailer for the documentary film I'm making: Built to Last: Buyer Beware.

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Thanks for listening!

Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

Hi everybody and welcome to the Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. Every year we see major disasters devastate communities around the country. After the disaster, first responders come in and people begin the process of rebuilding their lives, and sometimes the recovery is fast. Often it takes years and sometimes people never get back to where they were before the disaster. So how do we do a better job of preparing for the actual disaster? What can everyone be doing so when bad things happen, the road to recovery isn't as difficult. With advances in technology, we see examples of homes that survive because they were built the right way. So why aren't we doing more of this? Why do we continue to be reactive instead of proactive? John Scardina of Doberman Emergency Management is an expert in emergency and disaster management. As a former federal emergency response official, John has been a driving force in every aspect of the disaster life cycle. So as a guy that plans for handling the disaster, I thought it would be interesting to get his thoughts on what we can do to improve our chance to survive them. I'm George Siegal and this is The Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. Every week we introduce you to people who are working on real world problems and providing actual solutions. Tell Us How to Make. It Better is partnering with The Readiness Lab, the home for podcast webinars and training in the field of emergency and disaster services. John, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today.

John Scardena: 1:31

Hey, I'm really excited to be here with you, George. Thanks for having me on.. George Siegal: Now you and I that you brought me in on. The, Readiness, Lab. And there's some, some great podcasts on there that a lot of 'em deal with disaster preparation, disaster management. You're a disaster management expert. That's what you do in your in your real life. And so tell us a little bit about this group and what people find on there in terms of podcasts. Yeah, so when we set out to create The Readiness Lab, and I'm rocking some of the swag here. Nice swag. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. The The, Readiness Lab honestly, is supposed to cover all aspects from individuals through responders, through people who are looking to make career changes. It's really educational on anybody at any phase of the, what, what I, what I would call the disaster life cycle to get in and. Improvements in their life, whether it's, again, professional style or the the individual looking to make their life better. I e make it better through your podcast.

George Siegal: 2:33

Now through your guidance and suggestion, we've recently changed how I'm focusing my podcast more now aimed at warning signs and solutions for homeowners. And when I look at the world of disaster management, and this is the reason I wanted to have you on today, not that I don't just love talking to you normally. Anyway, , but it's, it's that I think so much is focused, at least from a a, the public's perception, not behind the scenes that you guys do so much is focused on, okay, we can come in and save you after a disaster. We can help you organize a plan for disaster. But as a homeowner, what's really focused on helping me so I don't end up having to have you come out and save me..

John Scardena: 3:11

Yeah, so funny enough, we have a podcast like that on there called disaster Class, another one called Preparedness Works, talking about that. But honestly, for homeowners like your show what's really frustrating is that there are so many things that people can do that are what I would call simple or straightforward that would make somebody like be irrelevant in their life. But the reason why I get called out is because people don't do those things. Sometimes the disaster is just so big, right? It's a major earthquake in Turkey, or it's a hurricane coming through. Things are gonna happen, but most of the time on smaller disasters are on that individual level. You can avoid a lot of the problems just by, you know, good consequence, management.

George Siegal: 3:57

So, gimme an example. So I'll, we can use me as an example. I live in Tampa, Florida. Yeah. And we kind of went through that whole hurricane thing again, last late, late in the season, last season. And we saw the damage that it did to an area pretty close to where I live. Yeah. And so my feeling is people here don't take it that seriously. It's like, phew, we missed another one. We're just lucky. Yeah. Tampa is never gonna get hit again., but that's really kind of misguided thinking and we're just kind of setting ourselves up for getting wiped out.

John Scardena: 4:27

Yeah. I like to use this thing in emergency management. Says there's no such thing as a boy who cried wolf in disasters. Like, we want to be wrong. I don't think people really understand that. Like when we get a, a. When all the, the, the algorithm is starting to line up, saying Tampa, for example, is gonna be under 20 feet of water. We don't want Tampa to be under 20 feet of water. And so we will do everything to start preventing that from scenario from happening. But if we can stop it from happening, what happens is like, people are like, well, there was no disaster. Meanwhile, there's this whole group behind the scene saying, you're welcome. And trying to prevent that. From that perspective, it's very difficult. And, and at this point I've come, I've come full circle, right? Even before the career of like, hey, maybe it isn't so much of like this culture of preparedness. Everybody talks about a culture of preparedness. But I don't think that in the United States, and I don't think in most cultures, people look at a problem until it's right in their face and so if we want to help people deal with something, I think we need to realize that talking about 72 hour kits talking about this stuff isn't going to get people excited about leaving their home if you know, a hurricane's headed towards their house.

George Siegal: 5:55

So on a, an a day-to-day basis just a, a planning basis. Yeah. What should I be doing? or what could I be doing? Obviously choosing where you live is a huge part of it. Yes. If, if you live in a flood zone or if you live right by the beach, you're making a choice where there might be c certain scenarios where there's nothing you can do. Absolutely. But in terms of, in terms of knowing what I can do for my house or how to check it to see how hurricane ready it might be, what, what should a homeowner be doing?

John Scardena: 6:23

So the, the age old phrase, right? The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The wise man built his house upon the rock. That's a pretty good engineering tool, by the way. But give an example. We had the worst flooding event in 178 years in St. Louis last year. I was in Philadelphia about an hour before my presentation, and my wife texts me saying there's flooding everywhere. And you know, this notice, well, I'd been prepping for this big d o d presentation and my mind was on that. My mind wasn't on my home and a rainstorm that was potentially coming in. And then I started getting message at her message, at her message after message after message. And thank goodness we had chose to even before we moved into this house, we didn't wanna live in a flood zone. We lived up on a hill. We knew where our power lines were, we knew where some of this stuff was gonna be, and so we had set it up where our house was fine. Unfortunately, some of our neighbors, some of the, some of our friends in our community were not so lucky, but it's, it's because they, they did that. Now I live in St. Louis, Missouri. There's tornadoe here, right. And so I think like this idea, a, again, to your point, Of, you know, if you, you choose to live in a flood zone, everywhere you live is gonna have a hazard everywhere you, you live, you, you need to know what the hazards you're willing to accept. A really easy way to figure that out is just your insurance policy. You know, your insurance is going to tell you pretty fast, Hey, you live in a flood zone. We're gonna ensure this. We're not gonna ensure that, and., you know, you're just rounding this out. This is kind of long. But you know, you ask, what can a homeowner do? Well, you have a great documentary talking about building codes, talking about shoring your, your house up. You, you talk about all these things. I really focus on insurance. So when I would go to my insurance company and then say, what do I need to do to reduce my policy for my home? They might say, Get extra two extra cameras on your house that will reduce your policy. These type of locks will reduce your policy. Doing this to your foundation will do the, to your policy, so you can, you don't have to guess. You can actually go to your insurance company and they can start telling you different things to make your house safer.

George Siegal: 8:52

It's time for emergency preparedness to go mainstream, smart, innovative, practical solutions that match your needs. Instinct ready, educates, prepares and equips the everyday person for disaster with promo code. Make it better. You can access comprehensive preparedness courses and premium go bags. Visit instinct ready.com with promo code "make it better" today. Preparedness starts at home. Yeah. You know, I, I hear that from you. I hear that from a lot of experts. Brock Long, when he was at FEMA told us, insurance is your first line of defense. Everybody needs to have insurance. And we've heard that from so many people. Yeah. But then I see disasters happen. and it's made me so, I guess, not a fan of the insurance industry, even though I know how important it is to me, insurance is almost like you throw your seatbelt on, but you say, okay, now I'm gonna drive into that wallet a hundred miles an hour and see if that seatbelt saves me. insurance isn't always your hero after a disaster here in Florida, if you had flood insurance and regular insurance, They fought over who was responsible for paying you, and the homeowner gets nothing while these guys are fighting it. In Malibu. I just had on Jefferson Wagner, the mayor who when the fire happened, his insurance company flat out said, we're not paying your claim. And he's been in litigation for five years. Yeah. So it's not a slam dunk. So not only do you have to have insurance, you have to understand your insurance and That's right. Know your policy inside and out.

John Scardena: 10:14

Well, to your, to your point there in California, . A lot of people don't realize that just because you have insurance, they don't cover wildfire insurance, for example. And so like the, the risk of the insurance company now, I'm not good to defend the insurance companies, but the risk of of, you know, living in a certain area is so high, everybody has that risk that insurance companies are like, we just can't pay out those claims. We don't have an endless pot of money. At the same time, just like every organization, again, not defending them, but they're gonna say, Hey, like, what, what do I actually have to pay for? So, yes knowing what's in your insurance policy, but I like the idea of defense. Using I think that's the appropriate word there, because when people hear, you know, insurance is your first line of defense., you forget. There's a lot of, there's a lot of things on the offense that you can do. I can do personal things that won't require my insurance. For example, when we had that rainstorm in St. Louis, I didn't make an insurance claim because I did a lot of things on the forefront to protect myself from needing an insurance claim.

George Siegal: 11:28

Yeah. When you make a claim. It's not like they just pay it and then you go on to the next thing. You really pay for that claim when they renew your policy, because I've had that happen to me before. You've make a small claim, maybe a few thousand dollars, and your policy goes up more than the amount of the claim. Yeah, so the thing I tell people is get an insurance agent that you trust, that will explain your policy to you in detail. I know in with Hurricane Michael, people wanted it categorized as a, a category five hurricane because some people had clauses in their policy that for a named category five storm, they had different coverage than they did. Yeah. Otherwise .So it's not just having that insurance. It, it all always reminds me of that Seinfeld episode when he goes down to get to rent a car and he goes, but I had a reservation. Yes. We don't have, your car isn't having the car the most important part of a reservation. So to me, insurance isn't getting your claim covered the most important part. Anybody can say they have insurance, but if it doesn't pay you, you've just wasted all that money and now you're screwed in a disaster and you have no recourse of action.

John Scardena: 12:28

The other problem is that people don't understand that insurance is first come first serve. So if you are not aware of what you should do, and you'd say, okay, like I evacuated my home. I'm overwhelmed. I'm in the hotel for three days. Okay, we're just gonna let the storm pass, then we're gonna go check on the home, and if there's damages, then I'm gonna file a claim. Now you've waited two weeks. Well, in those two weeks, literally 2 million other people have filed a claim, right? And so now you're 2 million down the list. How do you prove water damage? How do you prove all this stuff when it, when you know it, it takes people to go through those claims. The insurance process is a nightmare for sure. And you know, that's that's a difficult reality of a disaster. It is a disaster. But if you want money and if you want any hope of getting your stuff, that it's all been wiped out. There is, there's not another resource right now that can go in and say, Hey, you've categorized all the stuff in your house. This is what you're gonna get for that stuff in your house that was damaged. Right? Like, we don't have another system. There are nonprofits out there that that help. The Salvation Army helps out, for example, with replacing stuff. The government, if you have flood insurance, they can give you a grant. If you don't have flood insurance, you can get like the best loan of your life, a 1% loan.. But the, the reality is if your home is wiped out in a disaster, you have a couple different options. You have SBA loans or grants from the government, or you have insurance, or you have nothing, right? Your own personal finances. And so that's why we say, Hey, go to your insurance, because out of those three options, funny enough, your insurance is probably your, your best one out of the three, right? You don't wanna get a loan.

George Siegal: 14:24

But you have to make it easy for them. You, you have to do your work. Absolutely. It's easier for them to do their job, which I imagine as a disaster manager or a first responder, people go, okay, now they're gonna hang out at their house longer because they're afraid to not be there afterwards. Mm-hmm.. Or they're gonna try to get back there too quickly because they wanna move this along. So how do you fight that balance? And I'm that, that would be my fear that I would leave. I wouldn't be able to get back for a week, looting. You know, not having the proper documentation of how high the water was, what the actual damage was. Yeah. So how do you find that balance?

John Scardena: 14:55

So from, from a professional standpoint, you know, the, the looting stuff is more for TV than anything. Right? Like, there are cases where looting does happen. Sure. Like, I'm not gonna say it doesn't happen, but on a, a large scale, no. So the, the other problem is, or not the problem, the other resource you have is that the federal government is gonna be going in there, especially on a large scale disaster, and start doing modeling. The insurance company's gonna do that as well. So like, oh, hey, the water was at this high. Well, There's, there's a lot of data to back that up. And so the actually biggest problem that a lot of people have, myself included, is fraudulent claims. That's what's really slowing this down is like, oh, hey that side of the street had three feet of flood, but I'm a foot or two too higher up on elevation. I didn't really have that much damage. So I've seen people go in there with a water hose and start hosing down some of their stuff in their house saying, Hey, got damage., right? And so like the bigger problem isn't like staying there. We want people to get out, right? Like if people get out, it's easier to tell if they're looters there, right? Because we've now quarantined an area. So, you know, from, from a homeowner's perspective, going back to the original query here, what can you do to avoid somebody like me? Do all the offense stuff. Know your insurance policy is only one of them. Choosing where you live is another big part of that. Shoring up your house, you know, listening to when a professional gets on board and it's okay that they're wrong, right? You want them to be wrong. You don't want your house to be destroyed. But when they say sandbag your house or when they say, you know, block your windows, when they say that kind of stuff you should listen to them because if they're wrong and your house is fine, you had a couple days of inconvenience, but if they were right, then you just saved your home from a major disaster.

George Siegal: 16:57

That to me is one of the, it highlights one of the biggest problems of human nature, I think, is that if you tell me a storm is coming and I go out and get sandbags, put 'em in front of my garage and my front door, and then it doesn't flood, then the next time I go, oh, they were wrong. What'd I waste all my time doing that for? And it's that fault sense of confidence that it's not gonna happen twice or it's not gonna happen again. You know, I always think the worst thing that happens early in hurricane season is when there's a miss but they made you evacuate or they made you get on your defense because then people think, oh, this is, we're fine. And I don't know why people do that, because we see the video every year of people getting wiped out. The evidence is right in front of our face. Yeah. But it doesn't seem to be enough to change things on a mass level.

John Scardena: 17:39

I think there's a couple reasons. Like for like the psychology of that, right? Like it didn't happen to me. Right. Or I was just inconvenienced., I didn't go to work. You're blue collar, right? I didn't go to work. I didn't get a paycheck. How am I gonna make rent? My landlord's not very nice about it, right? So it's like, even though the evidence is right there, there's a little bit of narcissism and there's this idea that narcissism has always existed. Everybody has a little bit of it, right? If it doesn't happen to me, then why do I care about this? So I, from that perspective, I understand it. From a data perspective, it doesn't make sense. Again, we have to come to the realization that emergency managers, disaster responders don't want things to happen to you. We are telling you this, it's called a warning for a reason. These people are, are on a watch tower and they see bad things coming in, and if it doesn't happen to you, we're very happy. But the the reality is like people just like, oh, I got inconvenienced. I'm sorry. You got inconvenience and your house is totally fine and you're alive. Right? Like, but it's hard to say that, you know, to somebody who just missed a paycheck, for example.

. George Siegal: 18:52

And I come at it from another perspective. I used to be a, a weather forecaster and when we would be wrong with a forecast, People would be angry. Oh my gosh, yes. You know, and, and you know, how dare you make me sit in 10 hours of traffic evacuating to Houston and the storm missed us. You know? And you would say, look, this isn't an exact science, but based on the information available, that's what we're recommending that you do. This could be really bad. But then when it's not, people just get angry at you. Like, how dare you?

John Scardena: 19:23

Well, I've had this thought for a while. Like mandates. I'm not, I used to be a fan of mandates and I'm not so much a fan of mandates anymore because we have created a culture where unless there is a mandate, people don't act. And I need people to be aware enough, cognizant enough to say, Hey, they're giving me a lot of bad warning signs here, and this is what they said they would do. I'm gonna do that too.. And so there needs to be a, a certain level, level of trust there. But yeah, people get angry at me too. If I give an evacuation order, which I've done before, it is brutal if that that storm doesn't hit right. Or like, here's another scenario, if the storm does hit, there's countless stories of friends who are line. Who are restoring pow power, right? And they'll go in to a restaurant after just working for 12 hours out in the elements, nonstop, exhausted, and they just want to eat a sandwich. And there's countless examples of people just berating them, like, why are you taking a break? I don't have power in my house. What are you doing? We are so shortsighted about being aware of the people behind that door that are trying to help them. At the same time, the people behind the door historically don't have a really great communication method to show all the things that they're trying to do to help other people in the community.

George Siegal: 21:00

I think we learn a lot about people in their darkest moments when yeah, when it's not going right for them, and whether it becomes a, it's okay, this is all about me as opposed to caring about everybody, and I can see how you could be that way if your house is destroyed. You know, every time I interview somebody who, who lost their house, it's, it's, it's just heartbreaking. In Malibu still, almost five years later, I think only 500 houses have been rebuilt because when you have older homes, it's not easy to just rebuild an older home because you, first of all, you may have, you probably had it underinsured. There's no way it's insured if it's a 60, 70 year old home and then they change building codes and what you have to do to build it. And now in California, a defensible defensible spaces you have to have around it. The vegetation you have to put in. Yeah. There are so many hoops you have to jump through. That alone should make people say, I don't ever want to end up in that position. What can I do now to not be in that position?

John Scardena: 21:54

Yeah. I would prefer never have a disaster happen to my house and go through that. Honestly, it's, it is the worst. The while we're, while we're talking on this, the same subject here, it's, it's bewildering to me, to see countless examples of this happening, and somehow the message is not clear, right? Like how many times do we have to help people out say the same thing over and over again before it becomes like solidified in their mind, right? Don't stay in this storm. Get out. It's better to be inconvenienced than to be dead, like active shooters, active, we could stop active shooters in the United States today. I'm highly convinced of that. But we have a cultural problem. We have a law problem. We have a political problem. Anytime you talk about anything serious, it becomes so politicized that nothing ever gets done. And as somebody who deeply cares about people and protecting people against all kinds of disasters, it's incredibly, incredibly frustrating at times dealing with that. At the same time, I had to empathize with people who are just trying to live a normal life and, and don't want to think about the scary stuff all the time.

George Siegal: 23:16

Except your home is probably your biggest investment. You know, the American dream, as we learned from the mayor of Malibu, is to pay off your mortgage and live happily ever after in your home. As he found out, when he went to file his claim because he did not have a mortgage, he did not have a heavyweight team behind him to fight for getting his money. Yeah, it almost makes me rethink, I wish interest rates weren't soaring. I would try to, you know, solidify those areas because maybe you want, you want Bank of America to fight for you against All State if you can, you know, they have a much better chance than you do. So you really have to think all these things through and, and the time to do it is not when the storm is coming at you. This is a good time of year to do it right now. This is when you should be thinking about those things and getting people into your house to inspect it, tell you what your vulnerabilities are.

John Scardena: 24:03

Fantastic, fantastic thought. Yeah. What is that quote from President Kennedy. The best time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining. Like we don't want, again, this comes back to that, that problem of a, a cultural preparedness. We need to get beyond preparedness. I don't like even using the word preparedness anymore. I say Readiness for that reason because they associate it with doomsday, preppy, something that's never gonna happen to me. We ha you have to have an investment. If you buy a car and you get in a car wreck, your insurance policy will go up. If you have a claim on your house, your insurance policy will go up. It's just throwing money away. Right? And so, , if we think about, like, here is a checklist almost, and Nat Sellers is a good friend who kind of hits out against that. But there's some basics out there. For example, choosing where you live, knowing what's in your insurance policy, which we've, we've hit out pretty hard. You know, have a, have an evacuation plan, which people don't wanna talk about. You know, the, the. The best preparedness campaign in US history is fire alarms and fire sprinklers. Look at firefighters today. 90% of what they respond to are not fires. They are, you know, medical calls because they were fantastic about educating people and putting things in place so they wouldn't have to respond to fires. We need to start doing this now.

George Siegal: 25:34

Right. But it seems like we have enough it's, it's on the tape, as you would say, right. If we have enough evidence of how bad it is every year, you know, we're seeing what's happening in California. Nobody probably could have guessed they would've had the kind of storm after storm they've been having, which now is going to lead to an incredibly bad fire season, I imagine.

John Scardena: 25:50

Well, the, the stupid thing about California, and I did a podcast about this on disaster tough.

George Siegal: 25:56

Is that

John Scardena: 25:56

for all the rain that has fallen on that state and historically, the most of the, the water that they get in the state are from atmospheric rivers. 90% of that is going out to the ocean. They're losing all that water. They're in a drought. They complain about a drought all the time, and yet because of stupid policy, Emergency manager's not influencing that policy. Homeowner's not influencing that policy. They didn't put the things in place to protect or to capture all that water that's fallen on the state. So they just went through another bout of another atmospheric river that's gonna come through and they're gonna lose all that water again. So, you know, even when they're given a, you know, What, like a golden egg, right? You have a drought, here's all the water. Let's not keep it right. Another problem.

George Siegal: 26:52

I think there's gonna be some sad stories coming out of there in the fall when everything dries out again, but all that brush and things regenerated with all the moisture that they're having and, and the fire situation's only gonna get worse. What was interesting was, yeah, I'm reading about here in Florida is the newer structures in Hurricane Ian held up pretty well, the newer things, things that were built to code, and I don't even like that term. I like thinking beyond code. What, what can we do to, that's what, yeah, I keep hearing, but so if you're living in an older home, history has shown you are the most vulnerable it appears to, to any kind of disaster. You really need to know what you're living in and what it can handle.

John Scardena: 27:28

We say that if you want to know where the tornado's gonna go, look for the trailer homes. Trailer homes are historically built in floodplains, open area. Low air, you know, low lying areas and cheap land. And so yeah, knowing where you live, very, very important. Knowing the structure that you have where to go inside that structure if something's gonna happen to you. Absolutely. Especially with hurricanes. I mean, hurricanes are a water problem, and they are a wind problem. There's a, there's a comedian, oh man, what's his name? Ron White. Maybe. He's like, he talks about a guy who wants to show how strong he is, and so he's 50 years old. He's in the best shape of his life and he says, I'm gonna tie myself to the beach to show that I'm stronger than this hurricane that's gonna come in. And he says, it isn't that the wind is blowing. It is what the wind is blowing.. If you get hit by a Volvo, it doesn't matter how strong you are, you know? And so like there's, there's examples of that, of people think they're stronger than a hurricane. That's ridiculous. Right?

George Siegal: 28:41

Yeah. I don't know. There's a meme. I, I think I sent it to you. It, it's funny, but it's not cuz it deals with a serious situation. It was a tornado holding a cell phone, Googling trailer parks near me and there are some areas that just seem to be bulls eyes for those kind of things. Yeah. Although this year we've seen with some of those storms, neighborhoods that, that look like they were nicer neighborhoods that just got destroyed by, yeah tornadoes.

John Scardena: 29:05

Well, to your point, again, newer homes, hopefully better building codes, that stuff is going to matter a lot. I, I cannot. I cannot even get it anymore. There is more than enough data we should have building codes that should stop majority of wind events, hurricanes included. We can stop this stuff. People don't have to die. I was in Georgia in 2017 and I was on the National Strike team and unfortunately had a really rough day with dealing with some loss of life. The frustration was through the roof. We know how to stop this stuff. We do. We can stop it, and yet people are still being hurt because of just honestly greed and really crappy policy. and I think it's time that homeowners, the individuals start saying things like, I don't wanna live in a home that is vulnerable to X. If I know I'm going to live in this hazard zone, I wanna live on the beach and experience, you know, beach life, you know, a phenomenal life 90% of the year. I wanna protect myself against that 10 percent time when the, you know, the hurricane could come in and wipe this out, right? Like tornadoes, the same thing. Wildfires the same thing. You know, living downstream from a plant that is just pumping out the worst of the worst, like, we know how to stop this stuff. It's up to homeowners to start influencing policy makers and really building building you know, new buildings. Saying, I won't live here unless you do this.

George Siegal: 30:54

Absolutely. People need to put their, their feet down. You know, we interviewed Roy Wright in our in our film and he was talking about how if the, if the tornado goes right over your house, okay, there's sometimes there's nothing you can do, but it's the areas around it. You know, as you get out a quarter mile, a half mile, you know that when they change the codes and just tighten things up a little bit with garage doors, with the way the house is bracketed, with the way things are done, they save those houses from being destroyed, and it makes a major difference in how life gets back to normal. Yeah. But most people don't want to even think about it. They just want the nice features in their home and they're happy because they don't think that the disaster's gonna hit them.

John Scardena: 31:33

Yeah. It, you know, funny enough tornadoes, there's there's a really great book social Vulnerability of Disaster, and it talks about how any disaster does not create new problems in a community. It highlights the good and the bad, and if you have a problem in your community, Beforehand, it's going to highlight that if you build crappy buildings, it's gonna show you that you build crappy buildings. If you had people that got along and were helping other people, those people will help people more. If they were narcissistic and cut people off and were rude, they will become worse., right? It just highlights it. And it's a really fascinating book. But in that, it talks about how tornadoes specifically cause more questions about deity and, and after action than any other type of disaster. Because tornadoes pick up, they can move and they can slam back down. And so, for example, in Georgia, I, you know, in 2017, I'd be driving this neighborhood, taking damage assessments and it'd be destroyed. House after destroyed house after destroyed house. And then we came up to a house that was right across the street from a from a fire station, funny enough, and it was perfectly manicured. The house looked beautiful, green lawn looked like it'd just been mowed. The flowers are gorgeous and the rest of the houses were destroyed., and it wasn't so much that it was building codes, it was just the way the tornado. So you get, people start asking, asking questions like, I'm a horrible person. My neighbor's a good person. Why did it happen to them? Or, I'm a good person, he's a horrible person. Why did it happen to me? And so you start asking these questions, but again, , you don't have to ask those questions. A, a hurricane could come through right over your house and it could be a crazy few hours and you could say, wow, that was a crazy few hours. We could get to that point, but we don't. And I, I think it's time to start kind of waking up to the music there that we need, we need to make changes.

George Siegal: 33:41

Henk Ovink said in, in our film that a disaster is like an x-ray or an mri. It, it shows you where the vulnerabilities are. It shows you where your problems are, and that's what everybody should be thinking about. And I would encourage anybody that has a home or you live in an apartment, you wanna know how that apartment was built. Is it mostly wood? Is it concrete? How are the stairwells for evacuation? You know, did they do everything right? Because a lot of times somebody else's screw up could end up costing you your life.

John Scardena: 34:08

Absolutely. I mean, that happens all the time. Like the reality is that like sometimes it's not negligence, sometimes it's incompetence, sometimes it's just human error. Most 99% of plane crashes are caused by human error., they did something wrong at some point in the process. Right? And it's not so much that, like somebody who's malicious, it's like, oh, they didn't tighten that bolt all the way, or the, they forgot to put down the wheel. Or, you know, they didn't check for the birds coming in. Like for whatever reason, you know, you look at Turkey, for example, the earthquake in Turkey is really unfortunate because they did update their building codes, but the building codes were so high, but they had a culture of building fast cuz they had massive growth that they were paying off the inspectors to put in lower to, to say things were paid off. But you compare that to one of the hospitals there, that was totally fine because they actually build it to spec. So it can be anything from like malicious to like some idiot saying, oh, this is never gonna happen. So I'm gonna sign off to all the way through doing it the right way.. Even if you do everything right, still bad things can happen. That's a Star Trek line. But it's a great line, right? Even if you do everything right, you know, you can still lose. And so I think it's kind of this reality of like, we live in an evolving world, things will happen, right? Like Murphy's Law is real, but if you wanna reduce your threat occurrence, you have to do the things that are in place now. Have insurance. Know what's in your insurance policy figure out where you're gonna live and the, you know, have a defensible home. Do all the offense stuff, right? If you have medications, get a surplus. Know who your doctors are, know where your evacuation plans are. Listen to the experts. Don't assume you know everything. Allow other people to be wrong. All that stuff you know, incrementally protects you against the disaster. Could disaster still happen? Absolutely. That's why they're called a disaster. But you can reduce your threat occurrence just by doing the things you're supposed to do on your major investments.

George Siegal: 36:23

You have to be your own best advocate. Yeah, a hundred percent. Because if you, yeah, if you're not, I mean, there's too many things going on in the world. If you are not concerned about your situation and that's not your number one priority, it's hard to rely on other people bailing you out.

John Scardena: 36:39

Well, even if they want to, I go into a major disaster and I want to help everybody. But when there are 2 million people, you're talking about 500,000 homes, right? 500,000 homes that are going to be impacted by this major storm. Like, Hey, I want to help you, but there's 500,000 homes. Right? And I have, even if I used every federal resource that I have, 26, 27-thousand employees going out there and trying to help out 27,000 people compared to 500,000 homes over a geographic area that's the size of, you know, Montana. You have to be your, your first line of defense. You are actually your first line of defense. Your insurance maybe is your second line of defense. You have to be, you know, knowledgeable about this kind of stuff.

George Siegal: 37:31

Great advice as always, John. Hey, I appreciate your time. How can people catch your podcast?

John Scardena: 37:36

Yeah. All they have to do is find disaster tough podcasts on any major channel. We're on everywhere on social media, so disaster tough podcasts as part of The Readiness Lab.

George Siegal: 37:46

Awesome. Thank you for the, the time. And let, let's hope we don't need you for a while. Right, . Let's hope that there's no disasters.

John Scardena: 37:52

Let's have fun and not you know, disaster fun. For sure.

George Siegal: 37:55

Thanks for listening to the Tell, Us How to Make It Better podcast. If you have a disaster story that you'd like to share, I'd love to hear from you. There's a link in the show notes to a contact form. Just click it and fill it out. And if you enjoyed what you were listening to, please become a subscriber. Share the link and even leave a review. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.