FEMA or NFIP

[Richard M. Pinkerton]

My question is this;
I am ATC 20/45 Certified, multiple FEMA IS Certs, a few NWCG Certs, and am now on my second term for my Associates Degree in Building Inspection Technology which will help me secure my IFC, IRC, IBC, and whatever else I can muster. I plan to obtain my Bachelors in Emergency Management in 2010 and then apply all the Building Inspection Certs with all the Emergency Management Certs.
I can not seem to find a job that will benefit from the marriage of these two fields and set of qualifications. Does anyone have any ideas? Any direction that I may have overlooked? Any contact information?

[Scott Patterson]

My question is this;
I am ATC 20/45 Certified, multiple FEMA IS Certs, a few NWCG Certs, and am now on my second term for my Associates Degree in Building Inspection Technology which will help me secure my IFC, IRC, IBC, and whatever else I can muster. I plan to obtain my Bachelors in Emergency Management in 2010 and then apply all the Building Inspection Certs with all the Emergency Management Certs.
I can not seem to find a job that will benefit from the marriage of these two fields and set of qualifications. Does anyone have any ideas? Any direction that I may have overlooked? Any contact information?

What do you want to do?

I have found that ones field of degree does not always lead to working in that field or profession. Do you want to work for the government of for the private sector?

[Richard M. Pinkerton]

I would like to work private sector, but have enough structure to work individual or multi agency jurisdictions.
I could go either way.
Thank you for your reply, I wait eagerly for your further response.
Richard Pinkerton

[Scott Patterson]

I would like to work private sector, but have enough structure to work individual or multi agency jurisdictions.
I could go either way.
Thank you for your reply, I wait eagerly for your further response.
Richard Pinkerton

Hi Richard, I really don't have much more to offer. Sorry.....

As for the certifications you are listing or have, I have to be honest and tell you that I do not have a clue what they are or do. I tried to Google them and could not find anything that would tell me about them. Might be that somebody else could offer a little advice.

[Richard M. Pinkerton]

ATC 20 and ATC 45:
Applied Technology Council Post Earthquake Building Inspections.
Applied Technology Council Post Wind and Flood Damage Building Inspections.

FEMA IS:
Federal Emergency Management Agency, Incident System;
Incident Command Systems and National Incident Management System.

NWCG:
Northwest Wildfire Coordinated Group;
Fire Fighter and Single Resource Engine Boss.

[Bruce Ramsey]

I have some experience in the public safety sector. Incident Command System is a universal way of managing people and an event. Positions report to positions instead of people reporting to people. That allows different people to hold a position over an extended period of days, weeks, months, etc. This is widely used and adopted by public safety so that when people finish thier shift, the next person can continue that role in the operation. They know they report to the next position and it does not matter who the actual person filling that position is.

Based on the other certs, I would guess that you might by able to wrangle a job with PB or the other contracting company that performs disaster assement in a FEMA declared disaster zone.

Maybe fire jumper or wildfire management within the fire service looks promising.

You may want to look into Disaster Recovery Planner. There is a certifing body that grants levels 1, 2, and 3 Disaster Recovery Planner. They have 9 designated areas of disaster recovery planning. You learn their language, do some disaster recovery planning, and write a term paper. Fortune 500 companines hire disaster recovery planners to ensure their businesses survive any and all hardship from unavailable suppliers, leaky roof, building collapse, loss of employees, etc. Disaster recovery planning is seen as an overhead expense and is often underfunded. You basically have to convince the CEO and check writers that the cost of disaster recovery planning is similar to insurance and if you don't have it and something happens, the company will fail. Pay often starts around $80k and goes up. Because funding is very intermittent, many work in fortune 100 or are consultants.

You might want to look at Texas Tech. They have an ongoing program where they shoot 2x4's at walls from a cannon to determine what will happen in a hurricane. They authored FEMA pub 302 (or 320 or something like that) about how to build a shelter within a normal home to withstand 2x4's flying at 100 miles an hour. Some of your ACT certs might help with them.

I would guess that there may be some state level jobs in public safety that you might be able to wrangle. I know my state has a group at the state level who use ICS to coordinate disaster recovery. We get hurricanes pretty regularly. We have 2 nuke plants in state and a 3rd just across the state border so our state residents would be affected is things went awry. We do not have a FEMA Task Force team (California has 6 and VA has 2 of the 28) but we have several state level rescue teams for Haz Mat and other stuff. The state maintains a command center in the basement near the capital building with a map of the state 20 feet long and 10 feet high on the wall.

They had a project a few years back where they flew helicopters along the interstate taking pics. Then they tried to design a plan where they would turn both sides of the interstate into a single diretion of travel so people ecaping via cars would have double the available roads. How many troopers are needed at every exit to redirect traffic, how many local law enforcement to set up detours overlocal roads for traffic going against the flow, etc. Neat idea. Came about after everyone left FL and GA on their way to safety during hurricane season a few years back.

[Jerry Peck]

They had a project a few years back where they flew helicopters along the interstate taking pics. Then they tried to design a plan where they would turn both sides of the interstate into a single diretion of travel so people ecaping via cars would have double the available roads. How many troopers are needed at every exit to redirect traffic, how many local law enforcement to set up detours overlocal roads for traffic going against the flow, etc. Neat idea. Came about after everyone left FL and GA on their way to safety during hurricane season a few years back.

Called "contraflow", that became quite obvious when Hurricane Andrew was bearing down on South Florida in 1992.

I was in Orlando (lived in South Florida) for a FABI meeting that weekend, watching the hurricane advisories, we ended the Saturday portion early and canceled the Sunday portion of the meeting on Saturday afternoon to allow everyone time to get home, however, being on the Board at the time, I (and most board members as most were from South Florida at that time) stayed overnight Saturday as we had a Board Meeting Sunday morning. We got up Sunday morning, canceled the Board Meeting and headed back to South Florida.

To make a long story short, I was one of a *VERY FEW* vehicles heading south on the Florida Turnpike, which was backed-up at the Lantana toll booths (tolls had been suspended, but all traffic was slowing to get through the toll booths as the automatic arms would only allow one vehicle at a time through).

I mean backed-up bumper-to-bumper from that point all the way to where the Turnpike ended and where I-95 ended at the Turnpike - that's about 80-90 miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to flee Hurricane Andrew about 7 hours before landfall ... I doubt them all made it out, but the storm hit south of there so they were okay, just stuck in their cars.

[Richard M. Pinkerton]

Well, being that I will have all my Inspection certs, an Associates Degree in Building Inspection Technology, multiple Emergency Management certs, along with my construction experience, I'm hoping that in 2 years, there will be a municipality that could benefit from my experience and knowledge in Building Codes and Emergency Operations as a Building Inspector/Hazard Mitigator.