I am honored to lead this Joint Information Center (JIC) with the US Secret Service.
I am incredibly thankful for everyone who participated with us from local, county, state, and Federal partners. Welcome to Illinois and the City of Chicago!
2024 Democratic National Convention Joint Information Center
Lots of dangers with these types of National Special Security Events (NSSEs), but through a well coordinated system with highly trained individuals,
Trust me, it took many months of introductions, planning, networking, scheduling, coordinating, and of course collaborating with our most trusted partners from across the country.
I’ve said it before, but it takes a certain skillset to be the agency’s PIO. No day is ever alike.
And no incident or event will ever be the same. Nothing is ever the same.
Proud of the work that was done this week to keep everyone safe.
Reporting live from the 2024 DNC’s Joint Information Center…
We’re still in the first week of National Preparedness Month, we need to examine shelter locations. Yes I said planning for shelter locations.
Because if this is your shelter idea…
…you might want to rethink your plan.
If you plan for a proper shelter location WITH your family, you’d likely be rewarded with a more comfortable situation. Food, water, etc….are nice things to have. But the last thing anyone needs during a crisis is more things to think about and burden you down.
No one has time for that!
Interior rooms with no windows is always a good shelter location esp during a tornado strike. Not only is it interior, but you can seek further shelter/cover underneath the counter top.
Nice!
After the danger passes, a simple meeting place outside is a good idea too.It should be a relatively easy to find location that everyone knows and can rally up. Also be identifiable from great distances. Something tall and unique could be used too.
Don’t be the bearer of bad news…make sure everyone knows the plans!
Since most of you are home, consider taking the time to assessing your situation, evaluate your options, and make good decisions. But no matter where it is, be sure to tell the rest of your family where to go in case of emergency.
Plan for stuff to happen right? Just look at us now.
Worst. Year. Ever.
Reporting live from the first week of National Preparedness week!
Sunday is off to a bang as we need some formality to the process. Revamp what? What does that mean?
<Cue the Hawaiian music in the JIC because we are going to revamp a few things today.>
1. We are going to take a look at the press releases and move them to media alerts…because no one reads press releases anymore. Let’s not waste time and align it to be more factual and numbers. From a PIO perspective, this “trending” is what news outlets are looking for. Big upticks/spikes in numbers.
And in this situation, I doubt they are concentrating at the minutia of individual numbers esp since they are projected to dramatically increase over the next few weeks.
2. Accountability must be improved as we got the formal FEMA Disaster Declaration under the Stafford Act. So everyone gets a T-card and everyone must fill out an ICS-214. That includes me too.
3. Don’t forget to sign in on the ICS-211 form and your T-card is good to go.
4. Get a hard copy of the IAP and read through it. Don’t get caught not knowing the current plan. Maybe…MAYBE use those fancy tactical cargo pockets to hold your IAP (I’m judging).
5. Daily morning briefs with your PIOs….we call them our PIO roll call. Not longer than 10 minutes, allows us to get a handle on our daily activities and allows us to coordinate with each other. SA/COP baby!
I hate to break the news to you but the PIO’s job isn’t easy. So much more work goes behind the scenes and talking on camera is really about 5% of the job. Your main bread and butter work comes from the preparation and planning that goes into that.
Additionally, most reporters aren’t going to catch you live and want to do interviews. This new fangled invention called the cell phone makes it easy to communicate with all your reporters.
I honestly can’t tell you how many phone calls and interviews I did standing in my garage at 11p at night.
Yep, it never ends.
Get some sleep peeps, it’s going to be a long week ahead.
As we all settle into a regular cycle of command and general staff meetings, we all try to abide by the social distancing that seems to be setting this response differently than others.
Note: The Health Department calls this their “Crisis Management Team (CMT) – prob better known in the All-hazards world as the Command and General Staff meeting. While lax on the formality, I think our health department would benefit from standardizing this meeting and abide by the guidance provided by the ICS templates on how to run the meetings.
Also, as you can tell, it’s a bit awkward for all of us to sit so far away.
And as we continue to prep and lay the ground work for our ongoing efforts for our communities, Incident Commander sits with the director of the Health Department to lay out our operational response.
Glad to hear Murray say to Karen, “Whatever it takes to support” on this Coronavirus incident.
Now that we are in sync, let’s continue to work the magic.
Where is @rusnivek? 