Crisis management Edward Segal was interviewed about efforts to recover from Hurriane Ian by WTOP News, Washington DC's top-rated all-news radio station. Transcribed excerpts from the itnerview follow below.

Segal is now avaialble to provide his analysis and insights about this crisis to other news organzations, blogs, and podcasts. Contact him at edwardsegalcommunications@gmail.com

 

WTOP: Hurricane Ian hit Florida's Gulf Coast as a powerful category 4, flooding homes, leaving nearly 3 million customers without power. We discussed the long road ahead for Florida's recovery with crisis and disaster specialist Edward Segal.

WTOP: It's good to have a plan if you didn't have one. What do you do now?

SEGAL: Well, because of the size and scope of this disaster, it's important to turn to those who can help. The good news is that FEMA and state and federal agencies are on the job. FEMA did the right thing several days ago, and they prepositioned supplies and personnel, and other resources throughout Florida, so they would not waste a second of time after it was safe to provide help to the victims. The other challenge, though, is because there's more than 2 million people don't have power or water or any ways to communicate. It's adding a crisis on top of a crisis and making it almost impossible for people to reach out to the people who can help them.

So this is a disaster on a lot of different levels. The challenge is of communications and power are going to add several layers of difficulty and challenges to this already disastrous situation. 

WTOP: You talked about the utility. I happened to see if Florida Power and Light did the same as FEMA, and that is in places that were considered safe. That's where they collected their transformers and their other equipment so that when the weather clears, they could get in there. I don't know how well that's going, but at least the utility gave it a try to be prepared.

SEGAL: It's important that they're doing what they can, and they're doing their best, but it's also important to be as innovative and creative as possible. I know from previous disasters the high-tech industry really stepped up with technology and strategies, and tactics to help turn the power on, whether it's literally parachuting satellite phones or many internet connections to make it easy as possible.

But we might be looking at the need to do the equivalent of the old Berlin Airlift…and do essentially a Florida airlift to parachute where it is safe and appropriate to do so, supplies, communications, equipment, medical supplies, whatever people are going to need to help get through what is going to be a very long recovery process.

This is a historic crisis, but it's also going to require a historic recovery process. It does appear that the federal government is off to a very good start.

It is marshaling its expertise and resources. Everyone seems to be working together, which is always a good sign in any crisis. But it's important to keep in mind that this massive recovery is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, and it's going to require hundreds of billions of dollars and many years for the state to bounce back. 

It's important to keep in mind what happened to other cities and other parts of the country after similar devastating storms. 

For example, there are parts of New Orleans that are still recovering from Hurricane Katrina that hit the city in 2005.Puerto Rico was still recovering from the 2017 Hurricane Maria when it was hit last week by Hurricane Fiona.

WTOP: Crisis and disaster specialist Edward Segal on Skype. He's the author of the recent book "Crisis Ahead, 101 Ways to Prepare for and Bounce Back from Disasters, Scandals, and Other Emergencies."