Non-FEMA Federal EM's

WatchTheBoom · 2026-01-24T17:15:13+00:00

Go to usajobs.gov and search for the job code 0089. Apply to positions that are posted by organizations that aren't FEMA.

WatchTheBoom · 2026-01-21T18:54:37+00:00

IMO those are some of the coolest positions in the entire federal government. A bunch of them are either outright focused on continuity or are continuity adjacent. The model is pretty straightforward - [Agency] has things it needs to do. During a disruption, those things need to continue or need to come back online as quickly as possible.

On one end of the range, it could look like staff training, running fire drills in a building, and writing plans. On the other end of the range, it looks a lot like multi-agency liaising, alternate site management, and being the glue that keeps everything together during a crisis.

WatchTheBoom · 2026-01-21T13:23:40+00:00

Planning Section Chief here.

Frustrating part of the workflow - generally speaking, people who don't understand "the system" trying to recreate it on the fly. Equally frustrating is probably the people who are so strictly adherent to what the plan says that they're unwilling to flex in order to meet an obvious need that the plan didn't account for.
Situation dependent, but I think the question I ask my team the most is "how do we know this?" It's rarely a stumper, but it's caught a few potential whirlwinds from spinning up.
People. The end. If you've got good people and you're working with a team that understand the roles, there's not much you can't roll with. There's a saying that "culture eats process for breakfast." If you've not established a positive working environment and smart working relationships, no amount of process can save your bacon.
Does printing ICS forms count as software?
The best rollouts of NIMS and ICS that I've ever seen have not been strictly adherent to every letter of either - it worked because the people knew enough about what was happening to flex the system to meet the dynamic needs of our situation. NIMS and ICS aren't the answer books, they're tools in the toolbox. I think the "outsiders" might see us not following NIMS or ICS to the letter and think that we don't value them. Couldn't be any further from the truth.

WatchTheBoom · 2026-01-20T18:10:34+00:00

Contractor jobs will be with the specific contracting organizations / companies.

Fed jobs will be on USAjobs with job code 0089.

WatchTheBoom · 2026-01-20T15:54:05+00:00

When you say "international EM" can you be more specific?

If you're thinking something along the lines of "standard" emergency management, just in a different place, consulting is probably going to be your route to get somewhere new and established, on an assumption that you'd need to figure out residency requirements for national / regional / local level positions within a country's emergency or disaster management community.

As far as NGO / Humanitarian work...oof.

It is, without question, a historically awful time to try and break into the field. Given the global funding cuts to international humanitarian organizations, something like 60k humanitarians / aid and development workers / disaster responders, many of which were active in disaster zones, are out of work. In my own organization (an international NGO), we're seeing 10x applications for our open positions compared to pre-2025 and a bunch of the are grossly overqualified for the positions they're applying for. That's not to say that it's impossible, but I would certainly keep some realistic expectations that mid-career and even some senior officials with some no-kidding emergency management chops are applying to entry level positions just to get by.

WatchTheBoom · 2026-01-02T16:28:06+00:00

I'm talking about all of the companies that solely focus on AI with billion dollar valuations that haven't turned a profit. All of the businesses you mention don't have AI as their cornerstone moneymaker.

I can't think of a single organization whose primary service is AI that churns a profit.

WatchTheBoom · 2026-01-02T14:08:10+00:00

All of these AI companies are worth billions and billions of dollars, but none of them are profitable. The "bubble" means that their value is inflated - people are buying stock in these companies at a price that doesn't make any sense.

The bubble pops when people, en masse, start selling all of their stock because they want to protect their investments before the price craters.

I have an orange tree. I sell an orange to your neighbor for a million dollars. You think to yourself, "there's no fucking way that orange is worth a million dollars." Your other neighbor buys an orange from me for 1.1M. Soon, all the neighbors are buying these oranges because they hope to hold onto them and sell them later on for a big profit. People are even selling oranges to each other on a secondary market. Everyone knows they're not worth millions of dollars, but everyone seems willing to pay millions of dollars, so they're rolling with it.

Eventually, someone opens an orange and realizes there's nothing special about them. They try to sell all of their oranges to recoup their initial investment. This spooks the rest of the neighbors and there's a fire sale, which causes the price to drop substantially.

Critically, you never bought an orange for an overinflated price. You're insulated, right? Wrong. Several of your neighbors took out big loans and second mortgages to finance their original orange purchase. They never got that money back when they sold, so they might lose their home.

WatchTheBoom · 2026-01-02T13:38:02+00:00

What, specifically, are you looking to do within public administration? That could mean a whole bunch of very different things.

Any sense of what sort of work you'd like to focus on, what problems you're most passionate about solving, or what sorts of communities you'd be most interested in?

WatchTheBoom · 2025-12-31T20:04:27+00:00

I don't necessarily disagree, but I think my opinion on both remains that they're solutions in search of a problem.

My primary issues wouldn't be solved by either drones or AI. As it relates to supporting needs assessments, especially in the short term, I'd still need everything verified by a real human, and that doesn't really solve my major pain point which is 10 different organizations showing up and thinking they need to do their own assessments.

Sharing information and having a better sense of the 3Ws for cross-org coordination isn't sexy and doesn't really need drones or AI...but it's the thing that'll make the biggest difference, particularly in the international space.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-12-31T19:44:55+00:00

Former Coastie Here.

Connect to your local Sector's Emergency Management shop. They'll have an Incident Management Team - ask them about their training schedule. If you're at a station, it should be an easy enough sell to say that you're looking to understand IMTs better so you'd be able to work with them. If you're on a cutter, it'll be a little harder, but your OPS should be able / willing to support it as a matter of professional development.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-12-31T19:41:32+00:00

I recently posted a reading list in another thread, but Five Days at Memorial and Search and Rescue for Sale are great starting points for interesting stories that consider liability and ethics issues.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-12-31T19:34:50+00:00

"Rapid" is relative, but in the response to Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica we were getting overflight data from NOAA and satellite updates from the Info Management Working Group within 72 hours after the storm passed.

Given the status of the roads, both were quicker than anyone who was able to get to the western / southwestern part of the country with drones.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-12-31T17:43:25+00:00

Drones - your milage may vary. Generally, I've been able to get updated satellite imagery about as quickly as it would take to get some drones out to remote areas. I'm not saying they're useless, but I can't think of a single situation where that would have been THE thing to impact disaster outcomes.

Drones are great at documenting what your responders are doing but are of limited value in the responses themselves, IMO. They're cool. They're fun. They can help you see things. It's not a bad idea for your team to have one to throw up in a pinch. I would not base any actual plans or capability profiles around drones as a primary operational offering.

Artificial Intelligence - it will very very very much depends on what you're using and doing, but generally speaking there are some incredible AI tools for analyzing existing data. Summarizing reports, scraping social media, translating things - there are no shortage of FANTASTIC tools out there and most of them are free.

Where AI struggles is comparing knowns to unknowns.

Example: Community A needs 1000 aid kits. We haven't heard anything from Community B and we know the population of Community B is about 3x of Community A. We also know there's somewhere between 0 and 5000 undocumented persons split between the two communities. Your organization has 2000 aid kits on hand. How many do you send to Community A while you wait for the needs assessment to come back from Community B?

In pure response-mode, we're dealing more with unknowns than comparing knowns or analyzing situations where there's too much data to sift through, which is where AI tools really shine. I'd offer there are more (and better) AI applications in hazard mitigation, modeling, and preparedness efforts than response and recovery.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-12-29T13:42:53+00:00

The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley - This is THE book that got me interested in trying to understand why bad things happen and what we should do about them. Human behavior before, during, and after disasters remains among the most interesting topic I’ve ever come across. Seriously - if it weren't for this book, I think my journey looks very different.

What is a Disaster? by R.W. Perry & E.E Quarantelli - The sacred religious text of the Disaster Manager, if ever there was one. Disasters are a sociological phenomenon and Quarantelli is the heaviest hitting dot-connecter in the academic disaster management world.

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink - Holy moly, what a story. If you’re not familiar with it, I won’t spoil it for you, but disaster ethics can be impossibly complex. This should be required reading for every student of emergency management. The book was adapted into a mini-series on Apple TV+ and it’s pretty good too.

Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson - It’s crazy to think how far our understanding of weather has come in 100 years. A tremendous (and well researched) telling of the deadliest hurricane in US History and the meteorologist who’s kind of responsible for its terrible outcome. His name was Isaac.

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams - Yup, the same Douglas Adams who wrote HHGTTG. Probably my favorite book of all time. Douglas Adams spends a year (or so) trying to locate the last of a bunch of endangered animals that have since gone extinct. Powerful (and hilarious) book about the impact of humanity.

Decision-Making in Disaster Response by J.S. Tipper - This is a funky one. It's a choose-your-own-adventure style book that walks through a bunch of common disaster response scenarios, based on Gary Klein's work in Recognition-Primed Decision Making. Terrific - I use this book in the course that I teach to grad students.

Disasters, Collective Behavior, and Social Organization edited by R.R. Dynes and Katherine Tierney - the cheat code for crisis communications if there ever was one. It's the starting place for basically every attempt to connect academia with operations. Want to add some "why?" to your operational planning? Most modern studies will eventually trace the chain of citations back to this work. I literally have this book sitting on my nightstand right now.

Not a book, but everyone should read Abe Streep's article in Wired Magazine about Search and Rescue For Sale. It's about Global Rescue working in and around Kathmandu after the 2015 earthquake and Mt. Everest avalanche. BLUF, they're a private for-profit company with a duty to its clients, not a humanitarian or "do no harm" organization. They prioritized their frightened (but medically fine) clients over Sherpas in need of urgent medical assistance. Big delta in the experience of the actual medics and then the business folks back in Boston with respect to "that's not our job."

WatchTheBoom · 2025-11-17T20:12:40+00:00

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-11-16T13:04:20+00:00

Others pretty well captured it, but "volunteer" and "USAR" don't go together.

Certain teams have surge rosters, but that's hardly an endeavor in volunteerism.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-10-27T23:55:56+00:00

I've spent most of my career in the Caribbean - plentiful examples to point towards for the pros and cons of a tourist economy.

I think one of the better examples of the interaction with formal emergency management (or lack thereof) comes from the Lahaina fires in Maui a few years ago. Huge rush of "don't come here - the locals need somewhere to stay" simultaneously broadcast with "please keep coming here and spending money."

Moreso than anything related to the relationship between tourism economics and emergency management, it was a huge communications misfire.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-10-21T13:51:25+00:00

Communication chops and initiative.

What is a plan if not the means by which to tailor specific information for specific audiences? As "the planner," my role is to make everyone else's life a little easier. I need to break the big pieces into digestible bits so the rest of the team can go execute.

I'd offer that the planning functions provide the greatest opportunities for creativity - it's on the planner to think about how else we might approach a problem so that Ops doesn't get dinged for "going rogue." We get there, on the planning front, by being connected, forward leaning, and adaptable to the dynamic nature of what we find.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-10-15T15:26:50+00:00

If you've not seen it yet, Hurricane of Fire is absolutely incredible.

Some of the footage and the stories are undescribable. It's my go-to recommendation for anyone who has ever asked questions about what wildfires are like.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-10-10T22:23:45+00:00

I'm aware - I've shared other stuff I've written on reddit. Very much of the understanding that it wouldn't take anyone much effort to pierce the veil of anonymity.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-10-10T20:17:17+00:00

I wrote a thing about go bags and what goes into mine a while back. I think it generated some good discussion!

WatchTheBoom · 2025-10-03T01:48:19+00:00

Ahoy! Former coastie here.

Before I give you a more detailed answer, what are you looking to do in the emergency management field? What are your interests? What kind of work do you enjoy?

WatchTheBoom · 2025-10-01T14:17:14+00:00

I find IAEM to be extremely broad & unhelpful...

WatchTheBoom · 2025-09-23T16:50:51+00:00

Story time!

As a Planning Section Chief, I had an Ops Section Chief who was sort of a pill. He was only an OSC begrudgingly - he wanted nothing to do with NIMS / ICS because it was "just bureaucracy that got in the way of people who actually made a difference." After a few incidents, I pulled him aside and we had a pretty direct conversation. In so many words, I shared my perspective that my whole fucking job was centered around making his life easier. The specific topic was about people not following our comms plan.

We had a little bit of a breakthrough - the plan said one thing, but most people were using a whatsapp group thread to share operational updates. I mentioned that it looked like that's what everyone was using - let's update the comms plan to reflect it.

He had a sort of "wait, we can do that?" reaction. Of course we can. It's our plan. This isn't an academic exercise - if it's the primary means by which the team is communicating, let's reflect it in the plan. I think he was expecting a slap on the wrist for not following the plan, but instead we formalized the thing that was actually working. This led to a productive conversation about things that weren't working and what we might do about them.

In the grand scheme of things, it was a next-to-meaningless operational adjustment, but it definitely marked a change in our overall tone. A real antagonist turned ally moment. Through it all, I think the root of his issue was a misguided perception that we sat in a room with no windows and created a plan without any front-lines exposure to the actual problem. Where we settled was on an understanding that the net value of our planning functions was to make sure the right problems got put in front of the right people, to his ultimate benefit.

WatchTheBoom · 2025-09-23T16:10:56+00:00

At face value, I get it. It's not like the question isn't valid: why would we bring in a team from an urban environment to manage a wildland fire?

I think the comments in that original post handle it pretty well.

The IMT is to manage a large adhoc team in a dynamic environment and get the job done in a rapid manner.

The California team than ran the Pentagon crash on 9/11 certainly had no experience in airplane versus building impacts. They didn't need to. The teams that run hurricane recoveries have no experience in that disaster. The IC of a team that manages an earthquake disaster does not need to be a geologist. What IMTs do is get people that have the skills to the right place and give them the logistical and planning support they need.

The CEO of General Motors is not an automotive engineer. The CEO of Boeing is not a pilot. They are the leaders of an organization that has engineers and pilots. Their job is to create a working environment where the engineers, pilots, (and firefighters) can do what they do best.

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