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Connecting Hope is a production of the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Join us as we explore the people, policies, and programs that bridge the gap from hopelessness to hope for Mississippians, young and old.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the Mississippi Department of Human Services. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. The "Mississippi Department of Human Services" name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
00;00;00;03 - 00;00;01;20
Mark Jones
Hello and welcome
00;00;01;20 - 00;00;33;06
Mark Jones
to connecting Hope. In today's episode, we will be covering the emergency support function six Mass Care and how it relates and serves. Before, during and after a disaster. Joining me for this discussion will be Leigh Liao, State Mass Care coordinator and employee of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, as well as Chase Munro from the American Red cross and Will Trueblood from the Salvation Army Emergency Disaster Services.
00;00;33;08 - 00;00;55;19
Mark Jones
We hope today's conversation will center around how mass care is mobilized and coordinated in partnerships that are strategic to bring specific care to communities in crisis following a natural disaster.
00;00;55;21 - 00;01;02;00
Mark Jones
So let's start by introducing our guests today. We'll start over here to my left. Chase.
00;01;02;03 - 00;01;09;11
Chase Munro
Good morning. I'm Chase Munro with the American Red cross. And I'm the mass care program manager for Alabama and Mississippi.
00;01;09;14 - 00;01;14;04
Mark Jones
Next, our our guest and co-host for today segment, Leigh.
00;01;14;07 - 00;01;22;26
Leigh Liao
Not co-host. My name is Leigh Liao, I am with Mississippi Department Human Services, and I'm the state mass care coordinator.
00;01;22;28 - 00;01;26;25
William Trueblood
My name is Will Trueblood, and I just do whatever Leigh says.
00;01;26;27 - 00;01;29;01
Mark Jones
That's a great title. Yes.
00;01;29;04 - 00;01;38;29
William Trueblood
I am with the Salvation Army. I am the emergency disaster services director for the Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi Division. Say that ten times real fast.
00;01;39;01 - 00;02;03;17
Mark Jones
With both of your titles. I think we have to take a deep breath before we actually say them right. Welcome to connecting Hope. And we hope that your insights and your wisdom will help inform our public. Really, what goes on behind the scenes and out front during the course of a disaster, and how all of that chaos is organized and brought together to support Mississippians.
00;02;03;17 - 00;02;11;20
Mark Jones
So first question is, is what is an emergency support function? I'm just going to turn that over to our panel to kind of flesh that out.
00;02;11;27 - 00;02;40;28
Leigh Liao
All right. I'll start and kind of look at my, partners, actually, during the ease of doing the, disaster response. So, emergency emergency support function came out of the national response framework, and it is a way for us, you know, as agency non government entities and community partner to organize and support the local when their resources are tapped out.
00;02;40;28 - 00;02;51;22
Leigh Liao
Can I use the word tapped out and. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason was that I expand that capability a stretch and you know longer can you know support they locally and then look for the state or federal for support.
00;02;51;24 - 00;03;12;24
Mark Jones
So it really comes down to that. And I'm going to give that to to chase a will to the work of other entities. It's not one entity working together. Response framework prevents I'll as I use that word, chaos prevents chaos from happening in the midst of a response. So again, emergency response framework emergency support function.
00;03;12;25 - 00;03;28;06
Chase Munro
Oh absolutely. Yeah. It's the it's that framework that lets us really work together. It formalizes those relationships, so that during a disaster, we have, you know, some clear, reporting lines so that, information isn't muddled. And, you know, it really does work. Well.
00;03;28;09 - 00;03;40;29
Leigh Liao
And then also, we are not, you know, stepping on over each other, kind of like right now is steady state. We are coordinating. We're making plans and kind of understanding what that structure would look like once we're mobilized.
00;03;41;04 - 00;04;02;13
William Trueblood
Absolutely. And I think that, one of the topics that has really been touched on, though, is the kind of the same way that ISIS creates uniformity. And so you understand, like the ISIS structure, terms, titles, things like that. In a similar way, the National Response Framework created the ESF functions. So that way it's universal across the board.
00;04;02;13 - 00;04;15;28
William Trueblood
So you're talking the same language across state lines. You're not dealing with one state doing things one way, another state doing things another way. You're all able to speak the same language, which gives us an ability to all be on the same page in these situations.
00;04;16;04 - 00;04;30;26
Chase Munro
And that's important because on large, events, we'll have support that comes in from each of our organizations, from, you know, far afield and, having that ability for everyone to know, the way that we, coordinate and work together in that common framework really is helpful.
00;04;30;28 - 00;04;31;13
William Trueblood
Absolutely.
00;04;31;18 - 00;05;08;08
Mark Jones
So there are about 15 emergency support functions. And in reality, y'all are grouped within emergency support function six, which is called mass care. And just as we mentioned on the ground, you're going to be organized within your incident command structure. That's the way that the incident on the ground and really as it's coordinated, you know, even from a larger scale where you have multiple incidents going on at one time that coordinate, really, and make sure that that service delivery continues in an effective way.
00;05;08;10 - 00;05;33;16
Mark Jones
And in a similar way, the state and federal were organizing all of those different resources that are there. We know that in a storm. So this way, this emergency support function safe, you also have a support function for public utility. You also have one for public information. You have other ones, one in ESF, eight that is in health health services.
00;05;33;18 - 00;05;58;20
Mark Jones
So all of those are broken out and, and transportation, some of those other pieces, they're broken out in order to bring competencies together and ensure that when the crisis has happened and as you mentioned, tapped out resources in a local community, all of a sudden we know where to drive. You have experts actually brought together versus working in isolation?
00;05;58;23 - 00;06;28;22
Mark Jones
So let's talk about specifically ESF six and mass care and what all that entails, kind of leading on into from preparedness, immediate response, intermediate recovery and then long term recovery because, there's a lot of pieces in there that start flowing together. And it's it's, it's partners from the Red Cross and Salvation Army, those that are recognizable nationally, but it's also local partners and smaller entities as well as government agencies.
00;06;28;22 - 00;06;32;23
Mark Jones
So let's start there. You have six. What is mask here do. What does it.
00;06;32;23 - 00;06;44;10
Leigh Liao
Mean. Yeah I think I want to look to Chase because I remember when we have usually did a presentation talk about mask care. Remember the newsprint to talk about a mask where they were people. What do you control?
00;06;44;10 - 00;07;17;11
Chase Munro
So you mask here for us, it really has four different buckets. So you have, sheltering, you've got feeding, you've got distribution of emergency supplies and family reunification. Naturally, mask care is going to be, at its peak during that response phase. But in that preparedness phase, there's a lot of readiness activities that, we all need to do, together and with our own organization and to make sure that we have the pieces in place so that we're able to scale to really whatever, you know, sized disaster we end up getting hit with.
00;07;17;14 - 00;07;21;00
Chase Munro
But, but, yeah, that's kind of in a nutshell, what mass care is.
00;07;21;02 - 00;07;37;28
Mark Jones
And to that point, you mentioned you're working behind the scenes year round to prepare. And, I go to the Red cross and the Salvation Army. Y'all have resources strategically stationed in order to, to quickly mobilize.
00;07;37;28 - 00;08;08;02
William Trueblood
Absolutely. And that's that is one of the benefits of being a national organization is I have across, you know, my region, my three states. I have 31 different local, local organizations. We call them course, but I have 31 local cores that I can resource out to, that I can get resources from or personnel from or things like that that I need, which is really helpful when you're dealing with mass care in a state when, you know, hundreds of thousands of people have been impacted.
00;08;08;05 - 00;08;37;27
Mark Jones
And that points to to the work that both the Red cross, Salvation Army, Baptist that are critical to a lot of service delivery, Lutheran Disaster services, Saint Vincent de Paul, all of those, all of those that we, we see come together. Y'all have the resources, though, when we talk about how many people get the idea of a large disaster like the hurricane, the tornado that that takes out a whole town like, unfortunately, Smithville, Mississippi or Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
00;08;37;29 - 00;09;02;01
Mark Jones
But they don't think about the ability to mobilize, even on a local level with a small house fire or a large house fire, a significant industry, disaster, chemical spill, all of those things because of infrastructure that y'all are building year round, allows you to provide that mass care. So, absolutely. Where do we bring how does all of that bring in together?
00;09;02;07 - 00;09;13;05
Mark Jones
Because you're working as independent in organizations. But again, how is it brought together and in a disaster response, from the local level all the way to the large scale.
00;09;13;08 - 00;09;34;29
William Trueblood
I would say the most important thing from my perspective is the blue sky conversations. That's that's what it really comes down to, is the fact that when we're not in disaster time, it's building those relationships like we were just, before we started talking about some of this stuff earlier, when we were all sitting in the room, we were discussing people we know, common, friends that we all have and things like that.
00;09;34;29 - 00;09;55;00
William Trueblood
And what, what those relationships do for us is they allow us to call people on a personal basis during times of disaster, rather than more of a professional. Let's go through all of the proper channels. It allows me to reach directly out, to chase, to lead, and to say, hey guys, we have X, Y, and Z, but it's because of those blue skies conversations.
00;09;55;00 - 00;10;14;01
William Trueblood
It's because of that time during the preparedness phase where we're building those relationships at the Boaz and things like that, that allow us to have a more robust response where we're not duplicating efforts. Because now I know what Chase is doing, and I know what Lee's providing, and that helps us in that sense.
00;10;14;04 - 00;10;24;21
Mark Jones
I'm going to turn straight to Lee. State massacre coordinator. Your job is to essentially coordinate, but bring things together. But help facilitate those.
00;10;24;21 - 00;11;01;18
Leigh Liao
Conversations in a uniform way. And then I think I want to touch back to, you know, disaster response. We're taking care of the whole community. And when we use the word whole community, a comprise of, multiple you want to talk about, you know, when people functional access need people who are transportation challenge who are deficient maybe in languages, English proficiency and some other, I think seniors and also, in any sort of health condition and not just once I call it the bucket.
00;11;01;18 - 00;11;22;16
Leigh Liao
There's also additional bucket in the just basic of, of mortality. Go back to I know well have mentioned some of the informal one. And then we also as a state level and then county level, even local community, they have regular meetings. So one of the key thing we always have and Mema is the state ESF meeting. And then also for us we have our annual for DHS.
00;11;22;18 - 00;11;48;14
Leigh Liao
We have our annual county ESF six meeting where the county organizing inviting partner to come. And and so have we have the plan. The county also have the ESF six plan and the local level. And then have a discussion. And one of the key discussion will be, you know, sheltering. Do we have sufficient shelter facility? Who are our feeding partners, who are all their other partner that can provide health services?
00;11;48;16 - 00;11;57;14
Leigh Liao
Crisis counseling, spiritual care? There's also all that other additional services to support the whole community.
00;11;57;16 - 00;12;23;27
Chase Munro
And using those meetings. That's for us, a core way that we help build mask capacity in the community. Because when we come to those meetings, we want to be, you know, brutally honest about exactly what capacity that we have local to that community and importantly, what the, what the the delta between that and what the needs that we see getting everybody kind of on board the, on the same, piece of paper to say, hey, this is what this community really ultimately needs.
00;12;23;27 - 00;12;42;19
Chase Munro
This is where we are. How can we together come up as a community and figure out how do we meet that? Are there groups that we can, you know, target to get trained as additional Red cross volunteers? Are there, you know, different vendors? We haven't tapped into different, partners that might have, buildings that they'd be willing to open up to us and the.
00;12;42;24 - 00;13;02;00
Leigh Liao
National partners the Red cross had, or some of the content that, you know, well, might not have, but records does had a good relationship, and they can forge that relationship and they can partner on. Yeah. Yeah. I like what Chase said is never about is a brutally honest conversation is not saying everything's great. We have plenty of shelter facility.
00;13;02;00 - 00;13;31;19
Leigh Liao
I can tell you, no one ever going to have plenty of shelter facility because we don't know what is two day, three days down the line with. We have a, catastrophic event. There would be no shelter facility and not anywhere. It doesn't have to be Mississippi doesn't, you know, that's Florida, California. Any state. No. But at the same time, is that having that conversation, knowing what's out there, but at the same time is not to it's not that not to act.
00;13;31;19 - 00;13;51;02
Leigh Liao
There's always the action. What can we do? You know, what is that capability? We can shore up a build up and it's like a it's like an onion. I feel like it's an onion. You build one layer, another layer and go back to my job. My job. I don't have all the answers. All my answers lie with the my partners and they get call a lot for me.
00;13;51;04 - 00;14;01;25
Leigh Liao
And I do get county have you know, funnel their way and saying we need resources, we need to open a shelter, but we're lacking x, y, z. That's where the partner comes in. Yeah.
00;14;01;27 - 00;14;21;27
Mark Jones
The support that I love that you said I don't have to have all the answers. That's why we have partnerships. That is that's essentially in a nutshell. Why are we having a more emergency support function is because everybody has their strength and and capabilities. The one thing that I want to bring out, thinking towards, we know that a flood may be coming in Vicksburg.
00;14;21;27 - 00;14;45;22
Mark Jones
We can forecast that flooding a lot of weather forecasting models gives us a heads up, even 4 or 5 seven days out of a tornado coming. You know, obviously sometimes we can't predict when, chemical spill or other types of disasters may happen, but the sheltering piece and immediately caring for those life changing needs, there's things that also it's not just standing up a shelter.
00;14;45;22 - 00;15;14;02
Mark Jones
It has to be a suitable location. There's all those things that you guys are putting into place, making sure that whether Red cross has the shelter is the food capability coming from another partner like the Salvation Army and securing that location to make sure that safety and security are there, that it's staffed with personnel. I think that's one thing that's kind of hidden, in in DHS is role in this is when those shelters are opening, it's usually our economic assistance staff that are jumping in there for you.
00;15;14;04 - 00;15;30;07
Leigh Liao
Yeah. I mean, to jump in and kind of support. Now I'm going to look at Red cross because as their primary sheltering agency for the state of Mississippi. And yeah, we're there to support Red cross as the managing entity for that shelter to ensuring that to to to take care of the masses. Yeah. Join us.
00;15;30;07 - 00;15;46;18
Chase Munro
SS yeah, absolutely. And it's a great partnership. You know, we we always want to have, shelters staffed as locally as possible to talk about, you know, building that mass care capacity. But like you mentioned, you know, there's a lot of communities that we just don't have quite enough local people that can immediately respond.
00;15;46;20 - 00;16;05;22
Chase Munro
And we've got this, wonderful relationship with Mississippi Department of Human Services that if we open up a Red cross shelter and we need for, 2 or 3 days to have some additional staff support, you know, y'all can loan us some folks, while, we mobilize people from outside of the immediate area to kind of come in as that, that cavalry support.
00;16;05;22 - 00;16;09;19
Chase Munro
So it really does, make a big difference for the people of Mississippi.
00;16;09;19 - 00;16;31;12
Leigh Liao
And I want to go ahead. Yeah, I want to touch on the local. Helping the local is very important, especially as, you know, someone who is in, you know, experiencing the the emergency, the disaster. And you walk into the facility, you see a familiar face, you see somebody is, you know, full in that community. And they understand the culture of that community.
00;16;31;19 - 00;16;58;10
Leigh Liao
They understand the social, economic good, the community. They understand and like the water usage, anything, things we might not think about. And I think everyone can say we're very unique of Mississippi and North, South, Middle East, everywhere, central. Everybody has their local uniqueness. And that's what made Mississippi so wonderful. So go back to what she said. Yeah, local helping local is extremely important.
00;16;58;10 - 00;17;20;18
Leigh Liao
So I value this partnership. And I think, you know, but you know looking for both partner I know they have national capability that national Calvary can come in and support. Yes. That's also the other side. The other an additional layer of the onion. You know, we can't. Mississippi I'm so glad that other people from out of state can come in and to support us.
00;17;20;19 - 00;17;28;14
Leigh Liao
You know, sometimes we can support us a couple of days, two weeks and then after, well, yeah. Well, I would say yes, we need additional support to come in.
00;17;28;14 - 00;17;47;14
Chase Munro
And the conversations we have around that yes. Of six framework really allows us to all coordinate because, you know, we're all independent, you know, agencies, you know, the Salvation Army, Red cross, we're volunteer driven. It makes us a little bit different than most of the other, state or federal entities that that you see, you know, working around, mama.
00;17;47;14 - 00;18;04;28
Chase Munro
But, you know, when we are talking about needing to scale up, you know, we can talk about, okay, what capabilities do you have that you can bring? Because if we have, local inherent capacity from another agency that we can supplement, you know, what we're doing with, you know, that can offset the need to have to fly, you know, additional resources.
00;18;04;28 - 00;18;07;03
Chase Munro
And that that does make a difference. Right?
00;18;07;04 - 00;18;24;17
William Trueblood
And we we just you hit on the chase a little bit when you were just talking about, like, the supporting each other function. And just recently we, I saw a disaster that I was helping out with in another division. And they specifically the Red cross came to us and said, hey, we need feeding. Yeah, but we didn't have any kitchens.
00;18;24;17 - 00;18;41;13
William Trueblood
We were we were working with our Southern Baptist partners and so we reached out to our Southern Baptist partners and said, hey, they need a kitchen over here. And they were able to mobilize one of their kitchens and put it right at the shelter. So that way they could prepare food for the mobile feeding trucks going out, but at the same time also provide meals at the shelter.
00;18;41;15 - 00;19;09;28
William Trueblood
So the Southern Baptist really came through. And it comes from those partnerships. It has that ability to work with each other. But when we talk about sheltering, I think one thing that often gets forgotten or overlooked is we tend to focus on the displaced people who have lost homes, who have lost power, that now need shelter. But we can sometimes forget about the people that have already been displaced, the ones that were in shelters before the disaster hit.
00;19;10;01 - 00;19;28;13
William Trueblood
Because now what you're creating is a disaster within a disaster, right? This family is now homeless. They have nowhere to go, and they're living in a shelter. And now a storm is coming directly for them. And it's where do these people go? What do we do with with the people who are the most vulnerable of our populations when it comes to sheltering?
00;19;28;13 - 00;19;49;20
William Trueblood
Because now you're talking about packing entire families up and moving them across the state temporarily, and there's a lot of logistical work. And again, it goes back to those partnerships, you know, having those conversations and being able to call our partners at the Red cross or at F6 and saying, hey, we have a shelter with 20 families, right?
00;19;49;23 - 00;19;58;03
William Trueblood
That we need to get out of this area where, where can we get them safely? And and it comes down to that communication in those conversations. Yeah.
00;19;58;06 - 00;20;24;20
Chase Munro
And you're absolutely right. You know, we have seen, you know, an uptick, recently in the number of large scale responses that we've been, you know, participating in and, it's, really created a lot of complexity for families that have recurrent disasters. And you have some compounding effects that are coming. And so so we're still, you know, you know, figuring out that together, you know, how do we best meet those, those needs that, that are compounding?
00;20;24;27 - 00;20;49;26
Leigh Liao
Yeah. And I listening to hearing that, I always want to say don't let any disaster go to waste and then always view that as opportunity for that family, because I'm sitting next to two very compassionate organization representatives, both very compassionate individual also. And a lot of people are in work in disaster is a choice they make. And they are they are extremely compassionate.
00;20;49;26 - 00;21;12;26
Leigh Liao
When we have issues like that one family usually that will I call a bubble up to the ESF six desk. And it will be, you know, communicated and people are looking for resources and amazingly, how many organizations will come on board and to support. And that to me is an opportunity for that family and never should go to waste.
00;21;12;26 - 00;21;34;17
Leigh Liao
And then I'm so proud of our partners. Everyone always step up and do the right thing and then have an even organization. Don't have that capability. They start going through their contact and then start calling and start seeing what. And then with that, that kind of help me as a state coordinator, it becomes a resource list, add another add on resource.
00;21;34;19 - 00;22;02;20
Leigh Liao
And I want to go back to our organization, Mississippi Department Human Services. Also, we as a agency, not only for our day to day. What we do is amazing. The resources I can tell you. Last I think emergency I, you know, aging not all services was involved. You know, it was a family they encounter. It was some issue and it came to the ESF six desk and I was like, I know who I need to call.
00;22;02;23 - 00;22;22;24
Leigh Liao
Yeah. And then, you know, my colleagues step up and do what they do. So for that family, they were taken care of and that situation was preexisting already there. But because of disaster, you have the FEMA folks walking door to door checking on things. You have Mema folk checking on things, and they see what's going on.
00;22;22;27 - 00;22;53;26
Mark Jones
So I want to turn to the effect, though, of a lack of coordination. That's also the elephant in the room. It never happened. I could each one of you could tell stories. I appreciate the heart, but there's also so much to that that people just start showing up. It can actually create stresses on a local community. It can create stress stresses on law enforcement or or minimize, you know, access to electricity or hotel rooms.
00;22;53;26 - 00;23;18;24
Mark Jones
And and by having the ESF mask care coordination going on, you're preventing, a more complex disaster from actually coming on board. Another disaster within the disaster. You don't have tennis courts full of boxes of clothes that people just come and drop. And that's that's the importance of having coordination, is making sure that resources are getting as quickly to possible.
00;23;18;27 - 00;23;47;21
Mark Jones
Both of your organizations. So one of your first talking points is, is if you want to help, the best is to to provide financial support or cash or, or to come volunteer. Those are going to be your first two calls. Absolutely. But at the same time, you want that coordinated. Y'all are working to coordinate that within your own organization, but also working to coordinate that donation message through mass care and to make sure that there are specific needs that are being identified.
00;23;47;23 - 00;24;10;11
Mark Jones
Because at some point, you can stress the system so much that you're doing more harm than you were actually, capable of doing good. And that's not what we want to put into a local community. So if y'all want to share a little bit about what we need to do to encourage people to be engaged locally or with recognized entities that are doing last year if they want to help.
00;24;10;14 - 00;24;33;06
William Trueblood
Yeah, I would say right off the bat, I know Chase has seen this like when it comes to full scale mass care response, the number one duplicating services issue we've seen has been feeding. And that's just been because there's been even at times like our organizations, we work well together. We have great conversations and things like that.
00;24;33;06 - 00;24;54;24
William Trueblood
But even there are times where our vehicles would be on the same street and we have to sit and coordinate. Okay, well, let's move over to this neighborhood instead. But I know for us, like we hit the weekends and I'm sure Chase has seen this himself. We hit the weekends and everybody with a food truck or anybody that every church that has the capacity suddenly wants to open up.
00;24;54;24 - 00;25;12;19
William Trueblood
And all the volunteers want to start serving on the weekend. And so there's this mass influx of food on the weekends, Saturday and Sunday, because everybody's free on the weekend. They all want to give their time. They all want to give their effort. And then we've been serving all week. So we have meals planned out. We have locations planned out.
00;25;12;19 - 00;25;43;28
William Trueblood
We know where we're supposed to be when we're supposed to be there. But then suddenly this influx of food throws everything off, which is why the coordination piece is so important. Even if they want to be involved and things like that, we we support, we welcome that. But it's a matter of coordinating with the national partners, the state agencies and saying, this is what we'd like to do before you just do it, because then it allows us to say, hey, we welcome that we can cut our meals down and put your food truck over here and things like that.
00;25;43;28 - 00;26;15;07
Chase Munro
And coordinate that in advance is really important because there's a lead time for producing meals. And, you know, sometimes can be hard to pivot like same day, you know, because like, wheels are already in motion, you know, this has already been prepared. But but yeah, you're absolutely right. And yeah, you talked about, you know, ways that people can help when they say, okay, there's going to be a disaster at some point in my community, and I know I'm going to want to help and say, the best thing that folks can do is to find an organization, join it now, you know, get the training, learn, you know, how within that organization's framework
00;26;15;07 - 00;26;43;09
Chase Munro
can they best fit in? Yeah. And and training. Exactly. Get trained for a unique role. And that that's really helpful. I think that, it's also it's a great that we have an outpouring of folks that want to volunteer right after a disaster. And, you know, we, we'll work with those folks and figure out, you know, tasks, within, like a shelter or a distribution site that makes sense that you don't need a lot of training, and you can kind of work with somebody.
00;26;43;12 - 00;26;49;27
Chase Munro
But but. Yeah, absolutely. The generosity of the American people is what both of our organizations, you know, exist.
00;26;49;27 - 00;26;51;00
William Trueblood
Absolutely.
00;26;51;02 - 00;27;10;17
Mark Jones
So talk about coordination. Let's talk about some of the things that if people the storm's coming down, some of the things that people can expect as, as maybe a hurricane or we know a storm's coming, what y'all are doing, but also what can they expect service delivery wise? What are some of the services that that mass care is going to drop?
00;27;10;17 - 00;27;29;02
Mark Jones
And then also maybe y'all get at the same time some of those tips that people need to be prepared themselves for when that storm's coming in and it's coming in. Unfortunately, everybody, the first question within an hour is where's salvation, where's Red cross, where's whoever? And what's that responsibility of the communities as well?
00;27;29;03 - 00;27;54;15
Leigh Liao
I'll start. I'll think first, you know, always. And then you hear a lot, you know, first 72 hours, you own your own. And when I said that is you're not on your own, but you need to prepare yourself in that for 72 hours. What can I do if nobody can reach me? And then back to the meeting we have, you know, the county meeting that's for you to kind of see what's your gap.
00;27;54;17 - 00;28;19;08
Leigh Liao
And then you have neighbors, you have friends and families, and you have your church family, have even your work families and all that can, I think, just have a thought. Think about it. What can you fortify yourself for 72 hours? And that's helping your community. That's helping these partners. Organization. Because at the beginning of every emergency response is saving lives.
00;28;19;10 - 00;28;26;25
Leigh Liao
Yeah, they're going to save lives. And then next thing you know is that, you know, putting a roof over your head and.
00;28;26;28 - 00;28;29;22
Mark Jones
Immediate life sustaining needs.
00;28;29;25 - 00;28;30;19
Leigh Liao
Right.
00;28;30;22 - 00;28;51;17
William Trueblood
And the problem with that, because she's absolutely correct. We've all heard it the first 72 is on you. Yeah. You know, because we we've all heard the saying it it resounds it goes on all our training. Yes. Like that. So we know it. The biggest issue is I read somewhere recently that, Mississippi was 50th out of 50 states in per capita income.
00;28;51;17 - 00;29;14;17
William Trueblood
Yeah. So you're dealing with vulnerable populations and people that don't have a lot. They're triaging. Yes. And they're looking at their lives and thinking, where am I going to get my next meal? How am I going to feed my kids? Right. And when you're looking at them and telling that family that's looking at how am I going to keep my lights on, how am I going to keep my kids in this house?
00;29;14;17 - 00;29;33;15
William Trueblood
How am I going to keep my home operational? And then saying, by the way, make sure you get yourself a generator, get enough fuel to run it for 72 hours, make sure you have enough food to feed your family for 72 hours. They're going to have enough food to feed my family for the next 24 hours, let alone 72 during a disaster.
00;29;33;17 - 00;29;53;11
William Trueblood
And so we're looking at very vulnerable populations and then asking them to make this a priority. And that can be difficult. Those are difficult conversations to have because you're looking at them saying, this is what you need to do, and they're going to know what you're saying, I need to do doesn't align with what my actual life is over here.
00;29;53;14 - 00;29;55;07
William Trueblood
So that's that's a hard conversation to have.
00;29;55;08 - 00;30;21;15
Mark Jones
That's a beautiful point to make, is that the majority of the people that the Mississippi Department of Human Services encounters in our case management on a daily basis, they're living life almost hour by hour financially. And now you're asking them to invest 50 to $100 in, shelf stable food supplies to keep. And so I'm going to highlight something, maybe a call to action, not to the salvation Army Red cross, but those local churches.
00;30;21;17 - 00;30;45;05
Mark Jones
If you're wondering what you can do to help keep your low income in your vulnerable, at risk populations, maybe look at FEMA's suggested items to help low income families, any family, be prepared for that 72 hours. And we're talking, you know, a little, canned foods that are shelf stable beans and whatever goes in those help. It's our job.
00;30;45;05 - 00;31;03;28
Mark Jones
It's incumbent upon us from a compassionate standpoint to recognize that not everybody lives in the world where they can keep, foods, food supplies, and you get to the end of it. You look at the end of the week or end of the paycheck and you say, I need my preparedness box today.
00;31;04;02 - 00;31;30;06
Leigh Liao
Yeah. And then I go back to, you know, still have I feel like, yeah, for that family awareness is one thing and that's key. And then knowing that I can and then now that where the community come in and then for me personal level, yes I can. But then now I have awareness that there might be my community that can and you can start a program.
00;31;30;06 - 00;31;52;24
Leigh Liao
You can go to your church and ask, what can we do? You know, a lot of churches have pantries. That's do a disaster pantry or give some of the organization to come in, do some training or just a program presentation kind of awareness. I strongly feel like an individual can, you know, start a movement, start anything. But this is a exactly a great point.
00;31;52;27 - 00;32;01;03
Leigh Liao
A lot of people don't prepare because they don't have the means to do so, but does not stop you to have that conversation.
00;32;01;09 - 00;32;24;20
Mark Jones
So let me courage though it even though we're talking from a state level coordination, every every county EOC is going to be broken down and organized in a similar response format. So even if it's not a statewide response, what we're encouraging is those churches, those entities that are involved to go ahead, though, and contact and coordinate that through even their local EOC so that local agency is aware of the resources available.
00;32;24;23 - 00;32;28;07
Mark Jones
They are the ones that have identified those pockets, of them.
00;32;28;13 - 00;32;51;29
Leigh Liao
And I'm glad you bring up the, local emergency management. That's one thing, reaching out in, the general public can reach out to emergency management and they, you know, working actively, just like all of us, trying to have resource lists, try to knowing what organization to buy what. And then that they also have communication line to both of the partners and additional ESF six partners.
00;32;52;02 - 00;32;59;18
Leigh Liao
And that and then you have mentioned, Boaz, do you want to talk a little bit about I think that's it, the what's the acronym stand for? That's a quiz.
00;32;59;20 - 00;33;01;25
William Trueblood
Volunteer agency er.
00;33;01;28 - 00;33;02;19
Chase Munro
Organization.
00;33;02;19 - 00;33;04;18
William Trueblood
Is ations activity disaster.
00;33;04;20 - 00;33;11;14
Leigh Liao
And that's in your community, a lot of organization, you know, even some organization had coed was coerced.
00;33;11;21 - 00;33;12;14
Chase Munro
It's a community.
00;33;12;14 - 00;33;13;06
William Trueblood
Organization.
00;33;13;13 - 00;33;34;20
Leigh Liao
Right. If you still have one in your community. Star one. Yeah. And a lot of you community also have long term recovery communities. And those are all you're going to see. Organization all in all three buckets or all three. See they all involve just different stages of the emergency management spectrum. And but get involved.
00;33;34;22 - 00;34;15;14
Mark Jones
So it comes back to the reason there's an emergency support function is coordination cooperation in order to make sure that we're getting the most effective service delivery and filling in, you keep on going there. And I love it, is filling in those gaps. Every disaster is is a local response. It doesn't matter if it's all the way from, as we saw last summer, from the panhandle of Florida, up through the East Coast, through North Carolina, each one of those communities, they don't they care what happened to the rest in the country, but when it's affected them, it really comes down to I care what's affected me and what's available to fit my needs.
00;34;15;16 - 00;34;40;14
Mark Jones
Sometimes it's, you know, you're more cut off road. So how do we get how do you get your canteens up into mountain roads? And you have to be innovative and creative. And so you are trying to find ways maybe within the other support functions to, to drop food supplies. And that's where coordination with within that disaster response framework is critical because you've got you don't have to be an expert on on everything.
00;34;40;16 - 00;34;47;28
Mark Jones
You just have to know your lane. Stay within that lane and find somebody else who's the expert or has the capability and willingness to do it.
00;34;48;01 - 00;34;52;20
Leigh Liao
Yeah. And go back to it. Always start locally and locally.
00;34;52;24 - 00;35;15;15
Mark Jones
Yeah. So that's where we go. So we people are familiar with that initial preparation kind of initial response phase where, you know behind a bulldozer there's clearing the way with downed trees down 49 going on to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Canteens are getting into place. The feeding industry they are the volunteers are starting to roll into town. The cameras are there, right?
00;35;15;15 - 00;35;40;27
Mark Jones
The national news, they're telling everybody at it. 24 hours later, all that's all the news are gone. And the visible signs going on and power starting to come back on. But you guys are still there. Yep. And that's where mask care still, it's not something that once everything's in place, Lee, you just pull your hands off. You're engaged for really the long term.
00;35;41;04 - 00;35;57;07
Mark Jones
And so let's talk about that intermediate and transition to long term recovery because people don't see that. And it's a lost piece of of disaster response. And it's probably also the most expensive piece and time consuming piece for manpower and every other thing we have.
00;35;57;12 - 00;36;16;16
Leigh Liao
Yeah. So once the immediate needs taken care of, you start to think, I'm going to look at both partners, and you guys can start jumping in the other human services needs start, you know, kind of come on board. It kind of become visible, right? What? One thing I can think of is, you know, disaster case management.
00;36;16;19 - 00;36;31;29
Leigh Liao
Yeah. Kind of supporting that individual family, kind of going through the process. And then there's crisis counseling. And then I think those organization has spiritual care for that. That's a key. That's a very, very key component. Anything out that I mean, I know there's additional I.
00;36;31;29 - 00;36;53;17
Chase Munro
Think, you know, for us, you know, we really focus on that immediate response and that those earlier phases of recovery. And, one of the key things that we can do in a community is, is serve as kind of a convener to help bring together the the different organizations. If you've got local committees that are standing up and help that community figure out, hey, what does that long term road to recovery kind of look like?
00;36;53;17 - 00;37;07;29
Chase Munro
And, who is going to be best positioned to help lead that? Because, you know, in a lot of communities, for a lot of of responses, that's going to be a long road. And, and, you know, having that be locally led is going to make a lot of difference for that community.
00;37;08;06 - 00;37;09;23
Mark Jones
Which means go ahead with.
00;37;09;23 - 00;37;31;02
William Trueblood
Us. I'm just going to say that, you know, from our side, we in. You're right. It is. It is largely locally led because as Lee said, everything begins and ends locally. I know from our perspective a lot of things people don't think about is, yes, like the this family over here may not have been directly impacted by the tornado.
00;37;31;03 - 00;37;35;23
William Trueblood
Maybe their house wasn't damaged, but the power that was knocked out made all their food go run.
00;37;35;27 - 00;37;36;18
Leigh Liao
Right.
00;37;36;21 - 00;37;57;03
William Trueblood
And so now that family has a fridge full of food that they can no longer eat, and they've got to throw all that food out. And so now you're talking about that intermediate phase of disaster where, okay, we fed you all the immediate meals for the people cleaning up the debris, getting their houses repaired, things like that, but now need to bring in food boxes.
00;37;57;06 - 00;38;25;03
William Trueblood
We need to bring in gift cards. We need to bring in disaster case management to talk about people who may have been secondarily impacted without being primarily impacted. But then to your point, the biggest one really is long term recovery is after the cameras have gone, people have forgotten, people have moved on. The disaster is over in people's minds, but it's not over for the victim.
00;38;25;06 - 00;38;52;17
William Trueblood
I mean, that FEMA process that the appeals process. And then you get into sometimes state processes, like when you're after FEMA is exhausted, you can go to states and things like that. That process can take a year or two years. And so when you're dealing with situations like that, like we just finished up, believe it or not, $3 million Hurricane Ida, long term recovery.
00;38;52;19 - 00;39;14;05
William Trueblood
Three years later, we're still talking about Hurricane Ida, and we're still funding all the way up through March, we were still buying furniture. We were still buying appliances. We were still buying clothes for families that were impacted three years ago, because this process sometimes can take that long. And so when a lot of people hear about disaster, you get that initial 24, 48 hour.
00;39;14;05 - 00;39;32;20
William Trueblood
I want to give, I want to help. But it's really important for people to remember is you're giving more than just to the response you're giving to the intermediate response also, and you're giving to the long term recovery. So it's not just a gift right there at the beginning. It helps all the way down the road.
00;39;32;22 - 00;39;56;12
Mark Jones
And there's a process that it goes through. The size of the disaster determines the amount of, of state and federal resources that to your point, that are flowing down, a lot of people, the way DHS works in this, I don't know if y'all are familiar with replacement snap. Replacement snap is our current Snap beneficiaries. They again they're if they're it's day to day for them anyway.
00;39;56;14 - 00;40;15;07
Mark Jones
And now we come to the point they have lost electricity and the the great thing about it the the rule on replacement snap is current Snap beneficiaries who get who have had a power outage over six hours can go to our website and immediately start filling out that form to have those benefits replaced for that last month.
00;40;15;09 - 00;40;47;16
Mark Jones
Then if we get a national a federal disaster declaration, which could take two weeks, three weeks, a month for that to come down, we move into what's sometimes called automatic replacement, where we can just push those to everybody's cards, and then we can get some hot food waivers, some other types of waivers that once the power grid is coming back on, it allows in in local areas for, the beneficiaries to use their Snap benefits at for hot meals because, again, they may have lost their, their stove, they may still be struggling, to get those resources back.
00;40;47;16 - 00;41;07;13
Mark Jones
But again, it's pushing money back into those local communities for those local, victims of a disaster to actually respond. And then we also we will work with you to get, our E18 team will put in for what's called d snap, which has noncurrent snap recipients that may have had loss. So we can get that same type of replacement benefit.
00;41;07;18 - 00;41;30;11
Mark Jones
But again, it's working with and knowing what the Salvation Army Red cross Lutheran's everybody's bringing to town to do. But then there's another piece and I'm going to hit it. We're getting up on some time, but there's also taking into consideration a mask here that you don't have a negative effect on the economy of the local community, because you've got to know you're bringing all that food stuffs in.
00;41;30;11 - 00;41;50;20
Mark Jones
But as power is coming back on and a local restaurant, a local business is starting to open back up, doing an influx of making cash gifts to an organization like y'all allows you to put a gift card. Maybe later, not immediately. Those take times to roll in and coordinated that network. Enough assistance so that we're not affecting negatively.
00;41;50;23 - 00;41;56;14
Mark Jones
That's why ESF six again operates. We don't want to have a negative impact on our compassion into a community.
00;41;56;16 - 00;42;19;24
Chase Munro
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, when we talk about, you know, preparing meals, you know, we want to prepare meals locally where we can and especially in the early phases of a disaster. We, you know, we really do try to work with, locally owned small restaurants that really represent what the community looks like, because the type of food that they're going to prepare, that's going to be the food that that community is going to be most comfortable with.
00;42;19;24 - 00;42;37;20
Chase Munro
And, there's a lot of psychological benefit that comes with that. And, and that, of course, also helps that local economy. You know, also, we, you know, we do make a significant purchases, you know, on the local economy as well. But, you know, that's always, you know, a balance figuring out, okay, what do we currently have?
00;42;37;23 - 00;42;50;10
Chase Munro
You know, locally, what do we have? You know, in, like, national inventories, what can we purchase locally? What can the economy support and what the other organizations have, that can be brought to bear.
00;42;50;12 - 00;42;58;08
William Trueblood
And Chase is spot on. It's it's important regionally because we know our Baptist partners shout out to our Baptist partners. Yeah. They're amazing.
00;42;58;11 - 00;43;00;27
Chase Munro
Yeah, they are absolutely amazing.
00;43;00;29 - 00;43;24;24
William Trueblood
But you're talking about you get a disaster here in Mississippi. You may get a Baptist partner from North Carolina. Well what they're comfortable cooking may not necessarily be what the Mississippi community, the community here locally is comfortable eating. So that does take some work and some coordination to make sure that we're preparing what what the community needs and what the community wants.
00;43;24;24 - 00;43;51;12
William Trueblood
And I think one of the biggest things to touch on what Chase was saying was, you know, using the local economy, but also knowing when it's time to step back because at a certain point, disaster feeding can very easily trickle into becoming poverty feeding. And that can sometimes take money directly out of the local economy when they're like, well, I could go and eat here or buy groceries or things, right?
00;43;51;16 - 00;44;01;07
William Trueblood
But they're still here serving, right. So my power may have been on for a week, but I'm going to go over here and grab a meal for free instead. And you don't want that. You want to make sure the economy's still running.
00;44;01;14 - 00;44;26;17
Mark Jones
And that goes to the point of why we have an Essex mass care coordinator working within Mema. Working year round, even external of an activation of of the EOC cooperation, coordination so that you can maximize the the work and have minimal effect, on negative effect and have maximum positive effect on people's lives.
00;44;26;22 - 00;44;29;16
William Trueblood
We are so blessed to have Lee. Oh, yeah.
00;44;29;19 - 00;44;50;19
Leigh Liao
And I kind of thank you. And I kind of touch on, you know, one key thing I want to talk about my job a lot of. Yes. Steady stay. You know, blue sky, gray sky days. One key thing is just having great partnership and facilitate a conversation. And I say my both partner a very good understanding the local needs.
00;44;50;19 - 00;45;07;13
Leigh Liao
And then, you know, analysis wise. And I also look to my partner to understand how big is this breadbox, what are we needing right now? But yeah, go back to that point. You know, I never want to have the difficult conversation to tell a partner and say, you know, I'm saying you need to sell me, help me understand.
00;45;07;13 - 00;45;31;04
Leigh Liao
Why are you still feeding? What is is am I missing something? You know, power's back on everybody's back home. We only have, say, x number of major destroy on dwelling and people. Seems like. Oh, we're doing okay. What's going on? And it could be possibly a partner say, hey, there's a preexisting, you know, poverty level here and in the, you know, there's a need here.
00;45;31;10 - 00;45;43;08
Leigh Liao
So maybe we're looking at maybe go back to the social services, go back to us, go back to the state agency. Are there's a barrier that there that I can support removing that.
00;45;43;11 - 00;45;46;22
Mark Jones
But that speaks to the activation of a long term recovery committee.
00;45;46;24 - 00;45;56;06
William Trueblood
Correct. Exactly. Yeah. And I think the best example we saw that was in May was in a rolling for it, where, you know, Rolling Fork was national news and.
00;45;56;06 - 00;45;56;18
Leigh Liao
Yes.
00;45;56;23 - 00;46;04;04
William Trueblood
It was everywhere. And so everybody and a brother, I mean, we're pumping 100,000 meals into.
00;46;04;05 - 00;46;08;20
Leigh Liao
People are just self deployed. That's when they got a food truck. They're going down there.
00;46;08;25 - 00;46;23;12
William Trueblood
And that's it was one of those things where because it was national news, everyone felt like they needed to be a part of it. They need to be there. But when you got a community of 10,000 people, but you're trying to put 50,000 meals a day into this community of 10,000 people, it it's just too much.
00;46;23;13 - 00;46;53;11
Mark Jones
It was in the perspective that everybody had a rolling fork. Again, you forget bells on a Humphreys County, Carroll County, Montgomery. Wynona, Grenada, Monroe County, all the way over that swamp. Anne-Marie Amory and y'all, y'all all visited. And you notice that the further away you got from, from Rolling Fork empty. And that's where I love it comes back to the work that India did.
00;46;53;13 - 00;47;14;26
Mark Jones
Outside of what we would normally do, you coordinated some long term recovery case management component with Saint Vincent de Paul, and that is still ongoing now over two years after that storm. And it and it points to this, in many cases we say that mass care, the Salvation Army, the Red cross are the first ones and the last ones out.
00;47;14;29 - 00;47;40;16
Mark Jones
In reality, you're already there. You're embedded in communities, your compassion and, personally, Lee's has a direct connection to the Red cross. I love that, and I have a personal connection to the Salvation Army. And knowing that you're embedded with local units across the state, essentially, what, 30 corps in three states. But even your service units equate to upwards of 90 units.
00;47;40;16 - 00;48;04;22
Mark Jones
And so wherever you see a Salvation Army thrift store and you've got local Baptist churches, you know, we got 3000 Mississippi Baptist churches and all of those are already there. And mask care happens on a daily basis within the state of Mississippi. It's the beauty of Mississippi. But it's there's also the tragedy that there's so much poverty, but there's so much compassion and there's so much coordination going on.
00;48;04;22 - 00;48;33;20
Mark Jones
And thank you for the work that y'all do, not only your organizations, but to your other partners that you facilitate your work through. Lee, thank you for the work that you do, and I'm going to leave this to you all. We're coming to the end. Is there anything that we've we haven't covered in regards to mass care, but also anything that we can leave people as we enter in to the hurricane season and also hopefully get some views on this going into the fall tornado season.
00;48;33;23 - 00;48;54;01
Leigh Liao
I just want to put it out there thinking as a first step of preparedness and, you know, just think and then have a conversation with people you love and kind of just say, very simple act when I emergency happen, how do I get in touch with you and go through the different situation? Because it not always you guys are we all sitting on a couch watching TV?
00;48;54;09 - 00;49;02;05
Leigh Liao
That's when the emergency happen. No. So, Yeah. Thank you for having me. I just thinking things first step of preparedness. Just.
00;49;02;07 - 00;49;04;15
Mark Jones
Yeah. Chase, you want to leave us with anything?
00;49;04;15 - 00;49;24;29
Chase Munro
Yes, sir. You know, the Red cross? You know, our mission really is driven by the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors. Encourage anyone that thinks that they might enjoy, you know, helping out their fellow community members or even, you know, deploying outside of the state to help with larger scale disasters, you know, sign up, you know, go to Red cross.org.
00;49;24;29 - 00;49;47;28
Chase Munro
It's an easy process. The training is not terribly complex. And the other piece to that is generosity of donors. You know, we, we're not funded by the the government. We are funded by the generosity of the American people. And, you know, giving those financial contributions is a great way to turn that compassion into action, even if you individually aren't able to, to go yourself and help.
00;49;48;01 - 00;49;49;07
Mark Jones
Well.
00;49;49;10 - 00;50;08;03
William Trueblood
Just mirror what she said. If you want to volunteer, sign up to volunteer. You can work locally with your local Salvation Army Corps. Disaster dot Salvation Army, USA. Dawn. Great place to sign up. But as he said, we're not funded by the government. Most of our stuff does not get reimbursements, but we were just touching on Rolling Fork.
00;50;08;05 - 00;50;29;21
William Trueblood
We talked about the the $3 million long term recovery program for Ida, Rolling Fork. We had the blessings of the generosity of the American people. And we're running a $500,000 long term recovery program for all of those, ranging all the way from Humphreys and Sharkey's, all the way up through Emory in several different long term recovery committees.
00;50;29;23 - 00;50;48;11
William Trueblood
And it's because the people see the need and they answer the call. So I just want to take a second thank people also, and not just, you know, talk about what they can do for us in the future, but thank them for what they've done for us in the past, because we're able to do the things we're able to do because of those generous gifts.
00;50;48;13 - 00;51;11;16
Mark Jones
You guys do amazing work. Mississippi is blessed to have such a strong yes six coordination going on. And, our hopes and prayers are for a peaceful, peaceful hurricane season. But we also know that the hands and feet of good will also be going out into communities no matter what the storm happens. Thank you for joining us today.
00;51;11;23 - 00;51;12;12
Chase Munro
Thanks for having us.