Andrea Taylor from the Public Information Department interviews Randy Storms, Emergency Preparedness Coordinator.
Links Mentioned
- 2 Weeks Ready: https://www.oregon.gov/oem/hazardsprep/pages/2-weeks-ready.aspx
- CERT: https://www.oregon.gov/oem/community-preparedness/pages/cert-program.aspx
- Do1thing: https://www.do1thing.com/
- Ready: https://www.ready.gov/
Transcript
Andy
Hi. Welcome. My name is Andrea Taylor, and I’m the public information assistant. And today we have Randy storms here with us. Randy, how are you?
Randy
I’m great. Thanks.
Andy
So, Randy, you are the emergency preparedness coordinator, correct?
Randy
Yes.
Andy
What does the emergency preparedness coordinator do? Can you help our listeners understand that?
Randy
Sure. Well, the short answer is I work to help CTSI become more resilient to natural hazards and disasters. So I’m responsible for every aspect of emergency management for the tribe. There’s four phases, including, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. And I spend a lot of time working on planning documents and writing grant proposals and meeting with, officials from different agencies and other Oregon tribes.
Andy
So, grant proposals and stuff for, funding for supplies or?
Randy
Supplies and equipment and programs. We recently got a major grant from the office of the State fire marshal, for half a million dollars. That one’s going to be directed to, fund a full time fire programs manager position. Which, that’s already in process. We’re also receiving a $222,000, grant, from the O DHS, which is, directed towards resilience activities, and we haven’t, haven’t quite figured out how we’re going to spend that one yet.
Andy
Okay. In resilience activities, meaning, like how to train people and get prepared or?
Randy
It could be training, it could be equipment. The, the there’s a number of different ways that we can, jump with it. And we need to…
Andy
Actually settle all that.
Randy
We need to sit down and prioritize some things and then figure out how we’re going to do it.
Andy
Well, that’s really awesome, though.
Randy
And every tribe in the state, received that same $222,000.
Andy
Okay. Because they want it, well they see a gap and they wanted to fill that gap. They wanted to make sure that tribes have at least a jumpstart.
Randy
Yeah. So ODHS has been a great partner for us.
Andy
Good. So what is your role here within the tribe? You know, the community, the county. How do you carry us through to, you know, all of that?
Randy
Well, I’m a, I’m a one man shop, so I wear a bunch of different hats. Because Siletz tribal members are spread all over the state. I need to keep an eye on conditions all over Oregon and trying to anticipate where problems are going to pop up. So, like, if there’s a wildfire down in Lane County or if there’s flooding up in Tillamook, I need to be able to track those incidents, and then work to help the tribal members stay safe in those locations.
Andy
How do you help them? You know, we’re in Lincoln County. How do you help somebody in, Lane County?
Randy
So one of the big, ways that we do that is through the CTSI alerts program, which is the mass notification program. It’s based on the Everbridge software, and it allows me to contact tribal members directly by text, or by cell, or by email. I can look at a map. And if there’s, say, there’s a wildfire evacuation east of Eugene, I can look on my map, and see where the tribal members are, if they’re going to be impacted by that evacuation. And then I can send a message directly to just those people who are affected and say, “Hey, look out. Get the heck out of Dodge, because wild fire is coming.”
Andy
I have a question about CTSI alerts. How does that, how did that come about? Did you do automatically role in that just because you have everyone’s contact info or did they people have to subscribe to it?
Randy
So when we first launched it, we used enrollment data. So if, and this is, there’s two different organizations, there’s one for tribal members and one for tribal employees. So the tribal member group, we took it from enrollment data, the tribal employee group, we took it from payroll information. That’s kind of worked for us and against us because those databases were not set up specifically for this purpose. So things like phone numbers became an issue. Parts of the CTSI alerts program, depend on, for instance, I would much rather receive a text. Ever. Than anything else. Just, just text me. But if the CTSI alerts program doesn’t specifically know that the number that’s attached to my account is a cell number, it won’t even try to send me a text. It will always just default to the next method and call me instead.
Andy
Okay.
Randy
So there’s a whole lot of records that we got from the, tribe and tribal enrollment data that did not specify that. And so we’re working to figure out ways now to gather those details and sort of fine tune the experience.
Andy
Right. I think I think I usually get the text and a call, and I don’t mind because I’m, I’m all about that, “better safe than sorry.” Like, I’d rather over alert you than not alert you at all. So I don’t mind it. I do know that I am certain that, I’m probably one of those meshed up phone numbers that were in there because I did not specify whether mine was a phone, or a home phone or cell. I just put my number in and I’m like, you’re going to call it either way. So initially it wasn’t set up. I wasn’t thinking about CTSI Alerts. I was thinking there, if they need to call me, it’s here.
Randy
Well, and a lot of people who are tribal employees are also tribal members. So there’s the potential that they will receive a message twice.
Andy
I do.
Randy
If I send it to both groups. Another thing is that the system will keep trying to contact you. If I’ve set it, if I’ve set that particular notification to ask for a response. If it tries to text you and doesn’t receive a response from you, it will assume that you didn’t get it and move down to the next method on the list, which is probably calling you. And if that doesn’t work, it’ll try emailing you. And if that doesn’t work, you know.
Andy
It’s going to come knocking on my door.
Randy
Right. Exactly.
Andy
Okay. It is a really awesome program that you guys, that you have started here and that you have gotten going because honestly, it’s been very helpful in quite a few things. Whether it was you know, evacuation for, flooding because we had some flooding here what fall last year. And, here this Siletz river and I got a notification that the river was high and there was potential for flooding. And I thought that was really cool.
Randy
Well, and the beautiful part is that we were all prepared to go out and purchase this program, and it was tens of thousands of dollars a year. And, the state of Oregon stepped up and said, “hey, we’re offering it for free to every jurisdiction in the state.” So, and tribal governments are not considered a jurisdiction. Yeah. So we said,“Yes, please! We will gladly accept your tens of thousands of dollars a year”
Andy
And awesome software to help ensure the safety of our members and community. That’s awesome. Okay, so you helped set an emergency plan and execute that plan in the event of an emergency, which we’ve kind of touched on. Do you do that alone? Do you have a team? How does that carry out?
Randy
Okay, so first the emergency plan. There’s a bunch of documents that, we maintain that kind of guide us when we have an emergency situation. There’s two really important ones. First, one is the natural hazard mitigation plan or NHMP, and then the emergency operations plan, which is an EOP. NHMP is going to detail all the natural hazards for this area. It gives us historical data and helps us to identify which hazards are going to be most likely, estimate how severe the impacts are likely to be. And lets us prioritize how our mitigation and preparedness efforts should be targeted. Like if we had, I mean, we could spend a lot of money preparing for tornadoes here, but it’s.
Andy
Not likely.
Randy
Probably not going to be super effective that would not be money well spent.
Andy
Correct.
Randy
And then the EOP gives us detailed sort of step by step guidance to respond to each specific hazard.
Andy
Okay.
Randy
Also I’ll say that, so emergency management is divided into blue sky days and gray sky days. Most days are blue sky days. This is routine business as usual. No impending disasters. So we’re working on preparedness and mitigation activities during those periods. Gray sky days are when a disaster event is either imminent or already occurring. And on blue sky days, I’m on my own. When things start to get sporty and we see some gray sky on the horizon, that EOP document tells us how the labor is going to get divided. For instance, if it looks serious enough, we can activate the emergency operations center, and then we have eight predestinated CTSI staff members who have each receive some training. And they will be responsible for specific tasks during the incident.
Andy
So it’s a team effort when it comes to the nitty gritty. It’s, we have designated people. We rely on them. They know that we’re relying on them. And this is my team because I’m only one human.
Randy
Right. So it’s scalable and, it’s really the, the CEO. It makes the call for how much of how much of the EOC that we want to activate in that. I mean, if it’s, a fire in the dumpster in the parking lot, we probably don’t need eight people to respond to that. We can judge what we’re likely to need and then bring in just those people to help out.
Andy
That’s awesome. I like that you – you have a plan. You have a goal. You have a plan. You’re working hand in hand with these people. So what kind of training do you take to stay up to date in preparedness?
Randy
Oh, tons and tons of training. So over the last two years, I’ve received certification in over 60 different courses. A lot of those are virtual. A number of them are in person and cover everything from terrorist attacks to livestock evacuations during a wildfire. I’m a certified FAA part 107 remote pilot. I hold a, general amateur radio license. I’ve made multiple trips back to FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute. That’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Last year, I also went to Tribal Nations Training Week at the center for Domestic Preparedness. Anniston, Alabama.
Andy
Wow. So you’re sitting around doing nothing then, huh? Staying busy.
Randy
I keep pretty busy.
Andy
Staying pretty busy? That’s awesome. It’s good to know that you’re always learning the new methods, always learning the new training. And then you can bring that back with you, which is, I mean, the goal, right? To always know how to handle things and what the newest data is.
Randy
It is and we also do a number of, I participate in exercises and trainings locally with other jurisdictions too. If they call me up and say, hey, we’re doing we’re doing communications exercises this week, I’ll say, hey, can I get in on some of that action and go over there and do that with them.
Andy
Good. And I guess that kind of goes into the next question is what sort of trainings do you offer to the community here. You know, here in Siletz and then also just the county?
Randy
So I get asked to do trainings and presentations to various groups all the time. I just did one for the Tribal Elders Council about personal and family preparedness. Back in February, we had a training and mass casualty incident response, disaster triage, and also Stop the Bleed, which involves advanced hemorrhage control techniques. We had about 40 people from all over come to that one. Last year, we hosted the Tribal Preparedness Coalition conference. This is a group of the Nine Tribes of Oregon, and the emergency management, and medical staff from those organizations. We all get together a couple times a year. We hosted that convention and we did a, we did a course called Community Based Response to All Hazards Threats in Tribal Communities, which is quite a mouthful.
Andy
It is!
Randy
And took, half a day. And then we do drills and exercises for topics like mass care and sheltering and evacuation procedures, just here.
Andy
Okay.
Randy
Just for our own staff.
Andy
And then we also have in your, you talk about, CERT. Do you want to tell us a more about CERT?
Randy
Oh, I love CERT.
Andy
When you were in a CERT hat at this moment, like.
Randy
Yeah, I got the swag. So my training focus for this whole next coming year for the next 12 months is on whole community preparedness. And the vehicle that I’ve chosen to deliver that training is the Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT. CERT is, a very popular program. It comes to us from FEMA and it involves 24 hours of free training, with a practical disaster simulation at the end as a culminating activity, which is just a ball. It’s a lot of fun. We put out fires, and bandage wounds, and extricate people from rubble. And, oh, it’s a lot of fun.
Andy
Well, I think I’ve seen the news release on that. Is that the one where they, they ask for, like, people to come and be the injured victim. And they’re you know, at Toledo High School, I think I saw one and it was, you know, “come and be our dead guy and we want to figure out how to carry you out.”
Randy
Yeah. For the, for the academy that we did in the fall, we brought over a group from the valley called Cascadia Moulage. And Moulage is that trauma make up where they do, you know, broken bones and sucking chest wounds. And I don’t know what else, but they brought a team over to help us with that. And we had, I think, between between a dozen and 20 volunteers from the community who came to be our victims for that day. And, and, you know, it takes a couple hours to get everybody made up in their Moulage. And then we placed them in the scenario, and then we bring the teams through to, to practice their skills.
Randy
So CERT training is designed to make the average person better prepared to take care of themselves and their family, in an emergency. And then once people have completed the training, they’re then eligible to volunteer as part of an organized CERT unit. Which can be called on when it’s needed to assist professional emergency responders and help the community following a disaster.
Randy
And the tribe has partnered with Siletz Valley Fire and Toledo Fire to launch a new team, serving the East County. So we serve the communities of Siletz, Toledo, Logsden, and Eddyville. If we have a large scale incident that needs warm bodies on the ground to, to help out professional responders to take some of the load off them, I can call up that team and say, hey, we need six people down here to direct traffic or to carry stretchers or to whatever it is.
Andy
Need water… You know.
Randy
Exactly. A lot of people came to me after the winter storm and said, “boy, I really wish I knew how I could have helped. I was just sitting around in my house all day.” Well, here’s your answer. We can we can always put people to work. There’s never a shortage of things to do.
Andy
I agree, I agree. There’s always somewhere you just have to, I guess be in the know of contact and CERT would be the way to make that contact.
Randy
Yeah. And our next our next CERT academy is going to begin soon. We’re aiming for this spring, so watch for announcements with those details and dates.
Andy
Okay. What other outreach are you doing? What, what else do you do to engage with the community and get them more involved?
Randy
I do a lot of in-person events. I have information booths at, multiple events every year. Pow-Wow, National Night Out. I did Toledo Summer Festival this year. I’ve done open house events for Siletz fire Station and Logsden Community Center. And I do 1 or 2 preparedness fairs annually in different parts of the county.
Andy
Yeah, I think I saw you. I remember seeing you at the Toledo Summer Festival, went and said hi. You had, you had pamphlets and, and prizes and stuff and did. You even did a game at Pow-Wow, Correct?
Randy
Oh, I did! Not this last year, but the year before. I had the spinner wheel of prizes.
Andy
Yeah, yeah! That’s awesome. I think that’s a really great way to again put just put CERT out there for people to see and then maybe, you know, they can contact with questions. Let’s move on to what kind of disasters are out there. You know there’s so many, I know that there’s so many. But besides, you know, the Cascadia earthquake here on the coast, what other types of emergencies are there that can occur that we should be prepared for?
Randy
Well, I’m glad you asked that because Cascadia is going to be a big deal.
Andy
It will be.
Randy
But while we’re waiting for Cascadia, we get a dozen smaller disasters all the time. Things like wildfires and flooding, landslides and the winter storm is a good example – that illustrates it does not take a 9.0 earthquake to completely disrupt us. That event was just a sequence of events that, by themselves are not unusual for coastal Oregon, in January. Like heavy rain and low temperatures. But, when you string them together and combine them, we really got clobbered and it created a real mess.
Andy
It really did, it really did. It just, I don’t know how many people drove down to 229 or highway 20. Best description… It looked like World War three had occurred right there. It was, it looked like a war zone. It was pretty bad.
Randy
Yeah. I drove in on that Sunday, which was day two. Though we started to get really sporty on Saturday, and I came in Sunday morning early and uhh, yeah. It was, just a slalom course up and over in a couple of places because.
Andy
Yeah I was gonna say, did you monster truck through.
Randy
There were just hundreds and hundreds of trees down and for, for months afterward.
Andy
Oh, yeah. They just got it cleaned up. I can only imagine you just kind of hot wheeling it over. So, what are some little things that I can do over time to spread out the cost of being prepared? Because something that I consider it is, you know, how do I break up the cost of that? Because I feel like that’s a big factor for a lot of households, is I don’t I don’t have the money to go buy generator and $20,000 worth of food right now.
Andy
How do I, what are little things I can do?
Randy
That’s a great point. And you don’t need to make a huge investment right off the bat. There’s a great program that I like called Do one Thing. The website is do1thing.com. It’s the numeral one, do number one thing.com. This is a web based 12 month program that focuses on a different area of emergency preparedness every month, and they give you a range of preparedness options for each topic. So every month has a low or no cost option, an activity to become better prepared. And then you you’re offered a choice of three things that you can do. Three activities for the month. You choose one of those things and you can jump into the program at any point. You don’t have to start on January 1st or whatever, but you only have to do one thing a month. And how easy is that?
Andy
That is pretty easy. That is really easy. Does it offer without, because I haven’t gone to that website because I, I know that it obviously offers tips and tricks. But what about sustainable ways to like, does it recommend water storage and, I don’t know, sustainable ways such as, like, you know, livestock and whatever else.
Randy
It may brush on that.
Andy
But that’s not the focus.
Randy
There are other there are other sources that are probably better for that.
Andy
Okay. Are there any other websites or resources on how to follow through with being prepared in the event of one of the other natural disasters? The more, you know the 20 others before we get to the big one.
Randy
Sure. So Ready.gov is the place to start the. This is a just a clearinghouse of information and checklists and fact sheets and all the sort of things like you were saying, of all the information that you’re going to want is going to be at Ready.gov and it’s all written at a level that you don’t need to be an emergency manager to figure it out.
Randy
It’s for ordinary families, right, to make use of. And it also has links to dozens of other resources. So if you want to drill down on another topic and learn more about a particular thing, it has that resource as well.
Andy
So it could be one of those crazy little rabbit holes that you click and you link, and you link, and you link, and you link. And, at two in the morning you find yourself becoming an expert in how to prepare food for shelf stability. You know.
Randy
Exactly, exactly. Then, then then there’s another site that I really like, called Two Weeks ready. And the, the web address is kind of complicated, so I’m not going to try and give it to you here. Just Google Two Weeks Ready, and it and it’s going to pop right up. And the, the, Oregon, Office of Emergency Management really leans heavily into Two Weeks Ready.
This is a national program, and the goal is to make citizens ready to survive without help for two weeks following a disaster. And then the way that they keep it manageable is that they’ve broken things down into very simple topics like food, water, shelter, first aid, that kind of thing. So you’re only looking at the information that, that you’re specifically interested in, and it’s kind of manageable bite sized pieces.
Andy
Right. If I’m being super honest, you say first aid and I’m, I’m certain that I have enough water and food and I have shelter. I think I only own some Tylenol, though, and some Band-Aids, and we might need to, you know, I might need to personally increase my supply. I think I have like a ton of cold medicine because I have small kids, and I swear they’ve always got a runny nose, so. But I don’t know how that’s actually going to help us in the event of a natural disaster. They’re not going to be suffering from colds, it’s probably going to be something else.
Randy
That’s interesting that you bring up medications. That’s something that actually became a problem for us during the winter storm. We had an, number of tribal members who depend on electrical power for refrigeration, for things.
Andy
Oh, yes.
Randy
Like, for medicines and, and like that. So we had to sort of problem solve how we were going to keep those people supplied with the medicines that they needed. The other problem was that without power and without, and without internet, the clinic was unable to fill prescriptions for, span of a day or two. And that became a stumbling block for us.
So the, the….
Andy
Well, and then the phone lines were down Tuesday for a good week after that, too, after power had been restored and we had reopened our, our offices and everything. I remember that they had phone line issues afterward, and they had on the CTSI.gov, Facebook page. We had people’s phone numbers listed in case you can call somebody in pharmacy so they can still help you, but they couldn’t answer the phone.
Randy
And this was, a lesson learned from that event. Is that maybe we need to explore some alternative set-ups, like maybe a Starlink kind of arrangement that we could, tie phones to so that regardless of, whether the, the physical phone lines are down or the computer network is down, we would still be able to communicate.
So we are we are investigating those.
Andy
Oh, good. That’s good to hear though, because you already see somewhere where maybe we were not first place winners. And you see that and you’re like, we could probably fix this. We can adjust this, we can, all that. And I like that the storm was big enough that we had to use some of our preparedness strategies, but it wasn’t so catastrophic that we were hurting.
Randy
Well, and it was, it was great to see the community come together and assist with that effort. The opening, the warming shelters, most people are, are used to having the power go out for maybe a day or 2, or 2 days. You get to three days and that starts to become problematic, especially when, when the temperatures are low.
Randy
And if you have elders or people with disabilities, it’s just that much worse. So it was it was great to see all the tribal members and tribal employees, come together and help us, execute that warming shelter.
Andy
That was really awesome. I was I was really proud, honestly. All right, so we are we’re about to wrap up. I have one final question for you, though. What is your favorite event CTSI does and why?
Randy
So the obvious choice there would be would be Pow-Wow, because that’s just spectacular and impressive. But yeah, and always a good time. Last year I had the chance to stop in and visit Culture Camp for a little while, and I think that’s got to be my favorite. It was, seeing, seeing all those kids, engaging with their heritage and, and learning some traditional skills.
Randy
And it was just really inspiring.
Andy
It is really cool. And they, they do, you know, some new activities every year. Maybe it’s somebody can’t come one year. So they’re not offering this, but they offer another activities. And I think I do agree culture camp is pretty awesome, honestly. I think a few years back they did clamming and that was really awesome to see.
Andy
They took, yeah, every two mornings they took kids clamming and that was her family’s event. It was really cool to see how that works and learn about where you know where to find the clams, because I’ve gone clamming and I brought home two after like 3.5 hours of digging. I was running on other information.
Randy
Yeah, no, that’s a neat skill.
Andy
Well, is there anything that you feel like we didn’t cover that you want to cover before we take off?
Randy
I would encourage everyone to think about what went right and what went wrong for them during the winter storm, and work to fix those problems. So I would just encourage everybody to think, for instance, back to the winter storm, and maybe some areas that they weren’t prepared for then and how they might fix that before we get clobbered the next time.
Randy
If, you did not have enough food in the house, if you didn’t have enough of your medicines on hand, if you didn’t have an alternative way to heat your home, or you didn’t have another place to go where you could get warm, those are things that we can we can look at between disasters and try and fix so that we’re better prepared the next time we have a problem.
Andy
Thank you. Thank you so much, Randy, and I hope you have a wonderful day. And I really do appreciate you coming on the show and engaging with our tribal members and our listeners.
Randy
Thanks very much.
Andy
Much. Thank you.