CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Emergency responders have been discussing cybersecurity, counter-terrorism and extreme weather during the National Homeland Security Conference in downtown Chicago this week.
Among them on Tuesday was Brian Garcia, who’s a warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in San Francisco. He said extreme weather means regions must prepare for new threats.
“It’s the psyche that needs to be ingrained,” he said. “Tornadoes: You grow up doing drills in school. In California, we grew up doing earthquake drills.”
He said drills are crucial during periods of calm.
“When it’s five, six, seven years between major floods, we forget how it works,” he said.
Dave Reid, director of the Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience in California’s Santa Cruz County, said unprecedented weather frequently doesn't give them enough notice.
“Oftentimes we’re making decisions in real-time as to when to move people out of harm’s way,” he said.
Both men were speaking on a panel at the convention about lessons California has learned from bomb cyclones and other extreme weather.
One of those lessons, Reid said, is that climate change isn’t only an emergency management problem or challenge — rather, every department is impacted.
That can mean a state dispatching its health and human services department to evacuate elderly and other vulnerable residents, as well as using the public works department to clear roads.
Although Reid noted that there’s rarely enough time for emergency responders to make the ideal preparations, Garcia did point out that the technology has improved to provide greater notice and warning.
“We’re able to tell our partners in emergency management — weeks out — saying, ‘Hey, we’re expecting an atmospheric river, Pineapple Express, to come in and dump in a ton of rain across the area,’” he said. “We just don’t know exactly where.”
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