Introduction

When I started my emergency management career, I didn't know policies, programs, or procedures. I didn't speak the emergency management language. Words flowed from my mouth less like a river than like a stagnant lake clogged with debris.

The only thing I had going for me was that I loved being involved with emergency management.

I was always fascinated by the weather. One of my earliest childhood memories was standing in the street gutter next to my mom, watching swirling dark clouds above wind-blown trees. In elementary school, I even won a prize in a poetry contest for my disaster sonnet:

Wind met rage and rain, and together they became a storm. (Give me a break, I was just a kid.)

I joined FEMA six months short of my thirtieth birthday. Before that, I had tended bar, worked on the Ski Patrol, and sold advertising space in newspapers. Starting over at twenty-nine, with student loans, no savings, and a wife and two kids, was tough. My previous job paid me $35,000 a year in 1989. FEMA offered me $16,000 a year to start.

The only way for me to get more experience (and make more money) was to go on a disaster deployment, which meant leaving my family for months. I knew deployments came with the job. I accepted that and was excited by the opportunity.

However, I worried about being fired. I worried about being relegated to the back seat. I was super sensitive about being dissed because of my age or title. Even after finishing my training and becoming an emergency management specialist, some still called me "the intern."

I was also the type of person who couldn't shake off small mistakes. I agonized over mispronouncing a word or using the wrong one in the presence of agency leaders. I would replay what I said in my mind at night and sometimes for days. I thought no one would forget my mistakes. Once, I tried to praise an agency director for building robust regional offices. Instead of "strong regions," I said, "strong agencies." That bugged me for months.

I struggled with the politics of working in a government job and office. I had to learn to balance personal beliefs with my professional responsibilities. And this was before social media. Now it seems like anything you share on your Facebook or Instagram account has the potential to be connected back to your organization. There's a lot less privacy for people joining the force today than when I started.

I also struggled with whom I owed my professional loyalty to, when to speak up, and when to keep my mouth shut. I lacked confidence in sharing my observations, even though some of them turned out to be good. I particularly sucked at articulating my thoughts in meetings.

If you picked up this book, my guess is that you have some of these challenges, too.

By the time I retired from FEMA in 2016, I had worked more disasters and been deployed in the field longer than practically anyone in the agency's history to that point. Counting my winters on the Ski Patrol, I've spent three decades responding to incidents. I've been an emergency medical provider, intern, logistics courier, and recovery center manager. On occasion, FEMA selected me for special assignments, like a city liaison, but mostly, I was an External Affairs Officer (EAO).

An EAO has a seat at the command table and works with all elements of the disaster response. Emergency public information is considered an operational resource during a crisis, so EAOs are trained to think and act like incident responders. EAOs are deployed for every event, usually when things are most chaotic in the first wave. My position gave me an excuse to wander into rooms while crisis leaders decided what to do. As you read my stories and wonder how I happened to be there, that's the answer.

What I learned has shaped me, forming the drive to write this book. I wanted to share these stories because perhaps they will help you too.

Someone once asked what I remembered most after three decades of being a disaster responder. My answer wasn't a specific event, like Hurricane Katrina or 9/11. It was this: When you work in emergency management, you go to work when something bad happens, but what sticks with you is all the good you see. You meet the most incredible people and see the best in them. You take a small part of that and keep it inside. You carry it to the next disaster, and it becomes part of who you are.

What I remember most are the people I worked with, those I worked for, those who prepared, and those who survived. People from both the response and survivor sides taught me how to do my job—people who made a difference in the recovery of their family, neighborhood, community, tribe, city, state, territory, or nation. They came in all ages, races, genders, and backgrounds, but they all had one thing in common: leadership principles.

I have repeatedly found that leadership is the single most crucial component of any crisis. It's more important than money, helicopters, sirens, and cots. Outstanding leadership expands partnerships, improves teamwork, and overcomes challenges, leading to less suffering, faster help, and more robust and resilient communities.

Let me predict a few things that will happen during your career: you'll get seated next to the disaster conspiracy theorist at a family reunion; almost every incident notification call will come when you're out of the office; and your generation will crave accountable and authentic crisis leadership.

Whether you are an emergency coordinator, specialist, trainee, volunteer, disaster reservist, or intern at the beginning of your career, I wrote this book with you in mind. You will discover the principles used by people who were at their best when things were the worst. They are the principles for becoming a crisis leader that future generations can count on.

This book is not theoretical. It's not academic. It's a book for practitioners written by a practitioner who was in the "eye of the storm." While it includes stories about leaders who failed (and why), it is mostly about leaders who succeeded (and how). Ideally, it complements the training you will receive, including the established doctrine, response and recovery frameworks, and incident management systems you already know and use.

To complete a thought by Scottish historian Niall Ferguson, "We are constantly teetering on the edge of chaos," so we might as well be connoisseurs of the experience.

Are you ready to become a bold, compassionate, and wise crisis leader? I hope so. The world could use a few more.

It all begins with Principle Number One: Show Up.