Thank you, Russ, for the introduction. And congratulations to this year’s awardees!
I want to start by setting a scene for you.
It’s a beautiful day. A quiet, crisp March morning, and everything is going as usual when suddenly you hear a loud bang.
You look up, and what do you see?
A ball of fire and plumes of smoke---debris raining down, hurtling toward the earth.
An unprecedented, life-threatening disaster is unfolding, and you as emergency managers are being called to respond—whether it’s in your playbook or not.
You might be thinking “great, another doom and gloom speech from the Administrator of FEMA,” but bear with me for a minute!
I want you to live in this story for a moment—think about the implication of what this kind of disaster would mean for you and your teams.
Because the fact of the matter is, the Emergency Management field is evolving—and it has been since NEMA first came on the scene 50 years ago!
Our operational tempo continues to increase. Our threat landscape continues to change. Sometimes it feels like the ground is shifting beneath us.
Yet that’s who we are—Emergency Managers. It’s in the name!
Look around you.
You are the professional enterprise—a network of dedicated public servants ready to put others first and respond to an emergency at the drop of a hat.
For 50 years, NEMA has been a convening power in our industry—bringing together the best and brightest to chart our path forward.
And as I look out at all of you, I can’t help but reflect on what 50 years-worth of evolution in emergency management has meant for communities across America. And what 50 years of NEMA has meant for our line of work.
Especially because FEMA is only 45!
For as long as FEMA’s been around, we’ve had NEMA to guide us, mentor us, and work alongside us as we respond to the unimaginable.
The problem is, the unimaginable is becoming second-nature. And as our scope of work continues to increase, our focus and the way we approach emergency management needs to evolve.
Throughout the history of our field, there’s been a number of what I like to call “triggering events” that have pushed us forward—forcing us to professionalize, organize, collaborate, and reframe the work that we do.
Let me take you back to ‘70s, the decade of both NEMA and FEMA’s founding, to paint the picture.
In March of ‘79, the East Coast woke up to the worst commercial nuclear accident on U.S. soil.
The Three Mile Island Accident ultimately became the driving force behind the creation of FEMA.
But it was the head of Pennsylvania’s Emergency Management Agency who alerted the Governor, and through him, the nation, to what had happened that morning.
The state jumped into action with the little information you had, but we had no clear mechanism to provide you with the federal support you needed.
So, FEMA was created as a coordinating agency to assist communities and states in the recovery process after disasters, like what happened on Three Mile Island.
At the time, the emergency management profession was one focused on recovery. Helping people get back on their feet after their worst days.
It’s still something we do well—but you know as well as I do that recovery is just one piece of the puzzle.
NEMA led the charge in the ‘90s, continuing to change the face of the Emergency Management enterprise.
While we at FEMA were just getting our feet under us, NEMA was taking over EMAC, and helping state emergency managers support each other during disaster recovery.
Since then, NEMA has coordinated state-to-state emergency management cooperation.
You knew from the start how important this network would become.
You had the foresight to know that emergency managers would need to become not just first responders but chief collaborators as well.
And it’s something we’ve carried with us ever since.
On another blue-sky day in 2001 our world was shaken again by the 9/11 attacks. Many of you in this room responded, working hard to save lives in New York, Pennsylvania, and Arlington, Virginia.
As you know, 9/11 was the impetus for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security—officially bridging the gap between national security and emergency management.
Our responsibilities—and our playbooks—grew exponentially. It’s something we’re still navigating today.
Our enterprise grew to include homeland security advisors. We created fusion centers to share information, and we had to learn to adapt to this new reality as Emergency Managers across America.
Fast forward to 2005. Hurricane Katrina decimates the Gulf Coast, leaving death and destruction in its wake.
It was another triggering event for our profession. A moment in time where we understood we had to shift our work to meet the needs of the day. Because out of challenge comes change.
We learned that as a profession, we needed to sharpen not just our recovery skills, but our ability to respond quickly, efficiently, and equitably, to communities in need.
We learned to pre-position ourselves ahead of storms. We leveraged new tools, new technology, and new partnerships to respond and jumpstart recovery.
Our roles changed again in 2020.
It was a whole new world—a time where Emergency Management met the Public Health nexus in new and unprecedented ways.
And what about cyber threats, like the hacking attempt on the Port of Houston back in 2021?
To sum it up, Emergency Managers today are not just first responders, chief collaborators, and recovery experts, we touch homeland security, public health, and cyberspace, too. The list never seems to end.
Our portfolio is ever-expanding, and the real question is, what’s our next triggering event?
Well, as you’ve heard me say: It’s Climate change—and its already here.
In 2023, NOAA calculated that the United States sustained 28 disasters that cost 1 billion dollars or more. The most ever in a single year since records began.
The New York Times also recently reported that 2.5 million people across the U.S. were displaced last year following severe weather events. That’s more than the population of the state of New Mexico!
The scale, size, and severity of the storms we are responding to are unparalleled.
Yes, I’m talking about the atmospheric rivers, the wildfires, the hurricanes—hurriquakes— and typhoons. But I’m also talking about droughts, extreme heat, extreme cold, and melting permafrost.
Climate change is what made 2023 the hottest year on record. It’s what caused the 10 feet of snow to blanket the Sierras a few weeks ago. And it’s what is making it harder for communities in Alaska to sustain themselves as permafrost melts around them.
And it’s not just about FEMA and the work we’re doing. You, the State Emergency Managers are on the frontline!
So, where do we go from here?
You already know the answer. We need to be United In Resilience.
As Emergency Managers, our mission is to help people.
If we’re going to prepare our communities for a future driven by climate change, then we need to invest in hazard mitigation before a disaster even strikes.
This is our “Year of Resilience.” And we want to be your partners in this critical work.
Because you are the backbone of emergency management. As state directors you know your communities best—you’re ready to do what it takes to keep people safe.
And there is so much more we can all do, together, to create a more resilient nation.
It starts with personal resilience. I heard a story not too long ago about a woman named Jo Ann. Her husband is a disabled veteran, and she is his caregiver.
They live in Florida and have been there through many hurricanes—which can be a real challenge because her husband relies on his power wheelchair and elevator access to get around.
But Jo Ann and her husband, they have a plan in place for when a storm is coming. To start, Jo Ann always has backup batteries on hand.
She also never waits to evacuate to make sure there is space in a disability-friendly disaster facility.
So, when a storm is coming, they work together to pack the car, gather medication, charge the extra batteries, and share their storm plans with their loved ones.
In their household, preparedness is a partnership.
Listen, “resilience” is more than just a flashy buzzword. It’s about real people putting plans in place that work for them and their communities.
I saw this firsthand when I visited Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in the aftermath of the tornadoes last year.
I talked with three older women who all lived alone. They each got to their safe rooms and called one another—staying on the line for the duration of the storm.
The plan was, if any of them dropped off the call, the others would know to send help their way.
They stayed on the phone until the threat had passed—waiting to make sure everyone was safe. Two of their houses were badly damaged, but all three women survived.
In fact, the two whose homes were damaged moved in with the third while they underwent repairs.
They had a community and they leaned on it. Their network helped them remain resilient in the face of a catastrophic storm.
Or look at Puerto Rico!
In the wake of hurricane after hurricane, it was clear that an increase in resilience-building was needed to solidify the Island’s power grid for future generations.
And we recently completed a two-year study that indicates that, through a partnership between FEMA and the Department of Energy, Puerto Rico will be able to successfully meet its projected electricity needs with 100% renewable energy by 2050.
That’s huge!
So, what can we do as emergency managers to invest in resilience ourselves?
How can we inspire more “Jo Anns” to make a plan, prepare, and take action?
How do we get our partners to look five, ten, even twenty years down the line and prepare for those futures, now?
It starts with all of us in this room.
It requires emergency managers, from the FEMA Administrator to the small-town firefighter, to understand the risk of the communities we serve, hunt for the resources to prepare them for the future, make a plan, and take action.
At FEMA we’ve worked with you to conduct roundtables with different communities to better understand the unique barriers they face so we can meet them where they are.
We’ve worked together to reach out to communities to let them know what tools they have available and how best to use them.
We need to continue to have these community-centric conversations—whether we’re going to LGBTQ+ friendly spaces, holding listening sessions with Tribal Nations, hosting older adult and caregiver specific webinars, or spending time in rural areas.
Because like the many other communities we work with, each has different barriers of access. Each has their own hurdles to jump through to get the tools they need. And it’s on us to help them get there.
This is how we build a resilient nation—by building trust, understanding barriers and breaking them. By finding ways to equitably deliver our resources to communities before they need them.
We need to all be at the table, together, for these conversations.
Especially, because you, NEMA, are the older sibling, our big sister, who has done this work longer than we have.
And we want to join you as partners to better prepare the communities we serve for whatever comes their way.
Because this is the future of our profession.
One of the ways we’re working to support the whole Emergency Management community as we look forward to this future is by underscoring the importance of capacity building.
Listen, our partners in public safety have standards and benchmarks that they use to ensure they are properly staffed and able to achieve their mission.
I think we need that, too. So, we’re beginning that process with our Emergency Management Benchmarking Survey.
Our goal is to ultimately standardize emergency management across the country.
As your federal counterpart, we want to give you the tools you need to go back to your leadership and advocate for more capacity so you can build resilience at home.
And your voices will make a huge difference in helping us paint a more comprehensive picture of the emergency management enterprise as it currently exists.
At the end of the day, understanding your strengths, gaps, and opportunities for improvement will help us better support you going forward—and in turn, better support the communities you serve.
Because that’s what this is all about, helping people.
From the 1970s to the 2020s, the emergency management profession has grown leaps and bounds.
The expertise in this room makes that clear.
Together, we can craft the emergency management field of the future—one that prioritizes resilience, thinks decades ahead, and is stronger for it.
I know our world keeps expanding. An emergency manager today wraps their arms around so much more than our counterparts from 50 years ago.
But I don’t think we should shy away from the challenge. You know why?
Remember that crisp beautiful morning I told you about earlier?
The ball of fire the plume of smoke hurtling down toward us from the sky?
I know it sounds like the plot of “Don’t Look Up” and conjures the image of a satellite crashing to earth, but this is actually the tragic story of the Challenger Explosion.
A disaster we as Emergency Managers had to respond to back in 1986--nearly 40 years ago.
Which means it’s already in our playbooks.
Part of evolution is knowing where you come from. Remembering the lessons of the past and using that hindsight to guide our choices in the future.
So how can we look back at what we learned 30, 40, even 50 years ago, and use the decades-worth of knowledge we’ve gained since to approach an old problem differently?
Because 2024 is not 1986—the implications of that crash, the national security concerns, the cascading impacts, would be vastly different today than they were back then.
But there are still lessons to be learned.
So, that’s my charge to you. To look to the future with an eye on the past—leveraging hindsight, and using it as a springboard to build a more resilient future.
Because this is who we are. This is where we are going, United In Resilience.
Thank you again, to NEMA for having me at this year’s conference.
I look forward to seeing the future you all chart for yourselves.