Allison Farole, MPA, CEM, MiPEM on LinkedIn: This week the National Weather Service presented the City of Grand Rapids… (2024)

No wonder the end of July is here, it’s been a busy few weeks.Kicked off the first week of the FEMA Vanguard Crisis Leaders Fellowship Cohort 8 (the Ochos) in Denver, Colorado. Spent the week getting to know and catch up with emergency managers at all levels of government and the private sector, while discussing vulnerability, threats to the homeland, and the impacts of climate change. Ironically, we spent the second to last day at NORTHCOM, NORAD, and SPACECOM discussing how vulnerable our critical infrastructure is — a few hours later we woke up to the largest IT outage impacting the globe and our ability to get home smoothly. 🤷♀️🤦🏽♀️ All-in-all, our conversations are obviously timely. Made it home in time to support the safety and security of the FPOTUS’ visit to Grand Rapids for his first public rally since the assassination attempt. Extremely proud of my GRPD colleagues and our regional partners for their work in ensuring this event occurred with no issues. Finally, after still enduring the impacts of the CrowdStrike outage, I made it to Miami to attend the National Homeland Security Conference. Here, we continued discussions around the fragility of our infrastructure systems, the upcoming election and the impacts of mis, dis, and mal-information. And of course, it is always so fun seeing and catching up with EM friends.Now to enjoy the last July weekend in beautiful West Michigan! 😃

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The City of Grand Rapids Office of Emergency Management is hiring an Emergency Management Specialist. This position currently focuses on public outreach and education, is grant funded, but there is opportunity for this position to become part of the general fund in the future. https://lnkd.in/ebNHz7rH

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Shout out to IAEM-USA Region 5 for a successful Virtual Sunshine Summit today! I truly enjoyed connecting with many of our members in Region 5 and hearing about the great work occurring across the region. Major shoutout to IAEM-USA Region 5 Vice President Ryan Wilkinson and the Symposium Sub-committee for putting together a great program. Also, I want to thank Justin Kates, CEM, CPM and Thomas S. for kicking the summit off with highlights of the great things happening within the International Association of Emergency Managers and FEMA Region 5. Peggy Clark, from Columbiana County, OH gave an insightful presentation on the East Palestine (OH) Train Derailment, where recovery is still occurring today.Anastasiya Bolton and Jamie Ayers gave a unique perspective on handling victim care through victim services and how the media can be an asset during the response and recovery of a criminal mass violent incident.And a final thank you to Tyler Esh, CEM, Tina Lindquist, Rob Dale, CEM, Debbi Fletcher, and Kevin Sur for your presentations during the Power Hour segment. I am fortunate to not only be President of a fantastic IAEM-USA Region, but very proud of the great work Region 5 is doing. 🎉I can’t wait to see many of you at conference in Colorado Springs in November!

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As Taylor Swift would say, “A lot going on at the moment.” Over the last 7 days I traveled over 6,300 miles for some fun and work-related adventures! 🤯 First, I was fortunate to experience The Eras Tour in Stockholm, Sweden. It was fascinating to be amongst 60,000 attendees and to observe crowd management tactics used for such large events.Came back to Chicago to attend the FEMA Extreme #Heat Summit to discuss future impacts of extreme heat across the country and how we can work together to build more #resilient communities to withstand these impacts. It was great to spend time with many Region 5 colleagues Thomas S., fellow FEMA Region 5 RAC Co-Chair Peter Austin, Theodore Berger, Scott Gauvin, IPEM, NEMEA and meeting new friends at the Summit.Finished up the week in Boyne City, MI to present on the importance of incorporating public works in the emergency management cycle at the Michigan American Public Works Association Expo with James Hurt. Definitely a whirlwind of a week, but I always enjoy getting a chance to network and continue to expand my horizons.

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