Emergency preparedness professionals today face evolving challenges, including the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), the need for effective communication across various media platforms, and the delicate balance between speed, cost, and accuracy in disaster response. During the April 2025 National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, Nicolette Phillips, marketing coordinator for Domestic Preparedness, sat down with John Wilson, a veteran in emergency management with a 44-year career that includes roles within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Hurricane Center, to learn how he manages these challenges.
In 1985, Wilson took a job in Lee County because he was impressed with their regional approach to hurricane preparedness and response. With a bachelor’s degree in geography and a master’s in urban and regional planning, he had been planning- and mitigation-focused, but he acquired operations and recovery experience on the job.
During this discussion, he emphasizes the importance of lessons learned from past events and advises new professionals to focus on creating common ground and to invite collaboration in addressing these complexities. The following are excerpts from that discussion.
What are some of the most pressing challenges currently facing emergency preparedness professionals?
Well, obviously, the role of the federal system, in that arena. What’s going to change? How’s it going to change? When is it going to change? How much can some states take on? They want to have to evaluate their ability to do things. Certain states probably can do some things better at their level than we can federally. Other states may not have that capacity or resiliency. So I think that’s going to become a vetting process that a lot of states are doing right now. The issues that face disaster survivors these days are so different from how they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. Our perception of what needs to be fixed has certainly expanded over the years, and what programs and processes are available to help these people get back on their feet is another one. I mean, I hear different wrinkles of issues that take place I never even thought about as an emergency manager back in the ’80s or ’90s.
Do you think AI and technology have a lot to do with that?
They certainly have an input, whether it’s good or bad, friend or foe. There’s a lot of debate on that. Somebody could bring factors into AI to present a picture that really isn’t there, but it’s finding a picture that someone would like. It’s a balance between perception, intuition, and empathy, which are so important in this business. It’s always going to be an art versus a science. AI is good to this point in this particular situation. But is it the total solution? Sometimes in our country, I get the impression that we’re looking for a silver bullet to fix things. I’m not quite sure if that’s realistic.
Can a response be fast, cheap, and error-free?
You can do something quickly, which seems to be the focus—getting aid out fast and removing bureaucracy that delays it. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be inexpensive. And then there’s the side of it where you can’t make mistakes. You don’t want another audit from the Office of the Inspector General saying we did something wrong. Error-free doesn’t necessarily mean fast. Or cheap. If you try to do it cheaply, you may not be error-free. And if you’re not putting enough resources in, you may not have enough manpower. Government doesn’t want to make mistakes. They have processes in place to make sure the big mistakes are lessened—but that doesn’t necessarily make things quick.
Do emergency plans hold during a real disaster?
Once the stuff hits the ground, the plan goes away—but the process stays. If you have to make changes, you know the players so you can do it quickly. The plan’s not necessarily going to work, but you know, “Okay, we need to adjust here, we need to adjust there.” Everybody’s familiar with each other. They know the strengths and weaknesses. They say, “Okay, we’re good. We’re cool. We trust you.” A friend of mine looked at what we did in our EOC during an evacuation and said, “John, you’re like a conductor in an orchestra. You don’t necessarily tell them what to do, but you have a sheet of music and say that’s kind of your area. You’re the solo. Now, what are we going to do?” I thought that was an interesting perspective on what we did. Sometimes, just because you’re in charge doesn’t mean you’re the best person to make a decision, but you are accountable.
How has the field of emergency management evolved over the years?
Immensely. It’s got more education now. When I came into it, it was getting away from the traditional civil defense posture—Cold War, mostly on nuclear attack. And it started moving towards the natural hazards, and then mitigation came into it. And then we had the comprehensive emergency management concept. The National Governors Association kind of spearheaded it at the beginning when FEMA was formed. And then the educational profession in the ’90s and the 2000s started to come into play and offer courses for people that were interested in doing it. My background was kind of cobbled. I kind of fell into it, but now there’s a more systematic approach. If people want to get into emergency management, you can do it either through experience in another profession, with education, or you can actually start as a college undergrad then graduate. And then various events shaped how it changed—9/11, Katrina, COVID, various events happening at the same time. All those had an influence in how emergency management changed.
Is there a particular event that comes to mind that shaped you?
Hurricane Andrew, 1992. It was the first major hurricane that hit Florida in a very long time. Hurricane Hugo hit South Carolina in 1989, and that was a good learning environment to change some things. Then Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was the first one that hit Florida that hit that area since the mid to late ’60s. So that was a laboratory for adjusting how we did business. That helped us when Hurricane Charlie came through southwest Florida in 2004. We used a lot of what we learned from Andrew to restructure our plans, procedures, response organization, and the use of the incident management systems to manage operations. Other storms since that time have expanded upon that. It’s become a lot more sophisticated, more complicated. That was when we got Web 2.0. Before that, the internet was just one way.
An event that was kind of a sea change for me was the terrorist attacks at Virginia Tech University in 2007. Students, through crowdsourcing, knew more of what was going on than the law enforcement and the other folks. They didn’t get it right first, but then they got it right quicker than law enforcement. And that was, to me, a tipping point. It made things more effective in some ways, but it got more vicious, the way social media can be. You’ve got people out there—bots and trolls. And people got more sensitive to criticism and more concerned about making sure everything was error-free. So, that was kind of a sea change—the use of social media. The other thing, I think, was the erosion of people’s confidence in leadership giving them the right decision. And now what I see is we have a tendency to follow media outlets affirming what I want to believe versus confirming.
It’s a real challenge right now in our country. How do you convey a message to so many people who have various levels of trust and differences? Certain social media outlets go to a certain segment of the community; where other segments won’t even go to those outlets for whatever reason. There’s so much information that people are being overwhelmed. So, do I use a filter that affirms what I think it is, or do I use a filter that confirms what I need to know?
With all those difficulties and challenges, what advice would you give to someone new to the field of emergency management?
Try to work on creating a common ground. As students come into the field of emergency management, obviously, they have a particular perspective they got through their educational process. Someone who came from another profession, like law enforcement, fire, or military, into emergency management will have a different perspective and a different way of looking at things. Becoming a team includes asking, “What are you willing to give up to reach this common ground?”
Certainly, some changes are in store for next year. It will be interesting to see the direction the winds take us.
About the Interviewee
John D. Wilson is currently a FEMA reservist and a member of the agency’s Hurricane Liaison Team, which provides immediate and critical storm information for use by decision makers in making competent and informed evacuation and response decisions. He has 43 years of emergency management and disaster response experience at the local, state, and national levels. He served as the emergency manager for Lee County, Florida, for 27 years, 19 of which were in the dual role as public safety director. He has experience in all hazards preparedness (planning, peer review, training, exercise development), comprehensive plan policy development, hurricane evacuation planning, and hazard mitigation. Mr. Wilson also has response and recovery experience in major and catastrophic disasters that include hurricanes Andrew (1992), Charley (2004), Ivan (2004), Katrina (2005), and Superstorm Sandy (2012); the 1998 and 2000 Wildfires in Florida; and the Deepwater Horizon Spill (2010). He has served as either chair or vice chair of the National Hurricane Conference’s Planning Committee since 2003 and served either as a board member or an officer of the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference until 2023 (six years of which, he served as the program committee chair). Mr. Wilson achieved a B.A. and an M.S. in planning from Florida State University.
John Wilson on Knowing What to Do When Stuff Hits the Ground
Emergency preparedness professionals today face evolving challenges, including the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), the need for effective communication across various media platforms, and the delicate balance between speed, cost, and accuracy in disaster response. During the April 2025 National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, Nicolette Phillips, marketing coordinator for Domestic Preparedness, sat down with John Wilson, a veteran in emergency management with a 44-year career that includes roles within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Hurricane Center, to learn how he manages these challenges.
In 1985, Wilson took a job in Lee County because he was impressed with their regional approach to hurricane preparedness and response. With a bachelor’s degree in geography and a master’s in urban and regional planning, he had been planning- and mitigation-focused, but he acquired operations and recovery experience on the job.
During this discussion, he emphasizes the importance of lessons learned from past events and advises new professionals to focus on creating common ground and to invite collaboration in addressing these complexities. The following are excerpts from that discussion.
What are some of the most pressing challenges currently facing emergency preparedness professionals?
Well, obviously, the role of the federal system, in that arena. What’s going to change? How’s it going to change? When is it going to change? How much can some states take on? They want to have to evaluate their ability to do things. Certain states probably can do some things better at their level than we can federally. Other states may not have that capacity or resiliency. So I think that’s going to become a vetting process that a lot of states are doing right now. The issues that face disaster survivors these days are so different from how they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. Our perception of what needs to be fixed has certainly expanded over the years, and what programs and processes are available to help these people get back on their feet is another one. I mean, I hear different wrinkles of issues that take place I never even thought about as an emergency manager back in the ’80s or ’90s.
Do you think AI and technology have a lot to do with that?
They certainly have an input, whether it’s good or bad, friend or foe. There’s a lot of debate on that. Somebody could bring factors into AI to present a picture that really isn’t there, but it’s finding a picture that someone would like. It’s a balance between perception, intuition, and empathy, which are so important in this business. It’s always going to be an art versus a science. AI is good to this point in this particular situation. But is it the total solution? Sometimes in our country, I get the impression that we’re looking for a silver bullet to fix things. I’m not quite sure if that’s realistic.
Can a response be fast, cheap, and error-free?
You can do something quickly, which seems to be the focus—getting aid out fast and removing bureaucracy that delays it. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be inexpensive. And then there’s the side of it where you can’t make mistakes. You don’t want another audit from the Office of the Inspector General saying we did something wrong. Error-free doesn’t necessarily mean fast. Or cheap. If you try to do it cheaply, you may not be error-free. And if you’re not putting enough resources in, you may not have enough manpower. Government doesn’t want to make mistakes. They have processes in place to make sure the big mistakes are lessened—but that doesn’t necessarily make things quick.
Do emergency plans hold during a real disaster?
Once the stuff hits the ground, the plan goes away—but the process stays. If you have to make changes, you know the players so you can do it quickly. The plan’s not necessarily going to work, but you know, “Okay, we need to adjust here, we need to adjust there.” Everybody’s familiar with each other. They know the strengths and weaknesses. They say, “Okay, we’re good. We’re cool. We trust you.” A friend of mine looked at what we did in our EOC during an evacuation and said, “John, you’re like a conductor in an orchestra. You don’t necessarily tell them what to do, but you have a sheet of music and say that’s kind of your area. You’re the solo. Now, what are we going to do?” I thought that was an interesting perspective on what we did. Sometimes, just because you’re in charge doesn’t mean you’re the best person to make a decision, but you are accountable.
How has the field of emergency management evolved over the years?
Immensely. It’s got more education now. When I came into it, it was getting away from the traditional civil defense posture—Cold War, mostly on nuclear attack. And it started moving towards the natural hazards, and then mitigation came into it. And then we had the comprehensive emergency management concept. The National Governors Association kind of spearheaded it at the beginning when FEMA was formed. And then the educational profession in the ’90s and the 2000s started to come into play and offer courses for people that were interested in doing it. My background was kind of cobbled. I kind of fell into it, but now there’s a more systematic approach. If people want to get into emergency management, you can do it either through experience in another profession, with education, or you can actually start as a college undergrad then graduate. And then various events shaped how it changed—9/11, Katrina, COVID, various events happening at the same time. All those had an influence in how emergency management changed.
Is there a particular event that comes to mind that shaped you?
Hurricane Andrew, 1992. It was the first major hurricane that hit Florida in a very long time. Hurricane Hugo hit South Carolina in 1989, and that was a good learning environment to change some things. Then Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was the first one that hit Florida that hit that area since the mid to late ’60s. So that was a laboratory for adjusting how we did business. That helped us when Hurricane Charlie came through southwest Florida in 2004. We used a lot of what we learned from Andrew to restructure our plans, procedures, response organization, and the use of the incident management systems to manage operations. Other storms since that time have expanded upon that. It’s become a lot more sophisticated, more complicated. That was when we got Web 2.0. Before that, the internet was just one way.
An event that was kind of a sea change for me was the terrorist attacks at Virginia Tech University in 2007. Students, through crowdsourcing, knew more of what was going on than the law enforcement and the other folks. They didn’t get it right first, but then they got it right quicker than law enforcement. And that was, to me, a tipping point. It made things more effective in some ways, but it got more vicious, the way social media can be. You’ve got people out there—bots and trolls. And people got more sensitive to criticism and more concerned about making sure everything was error-free. So, that was kind of a sea change—the use of social media. The other thing, I think, was the erosion of people’s confidence in leadership giving them the right decision. And now what I see is we have a tendency to follow media outlets affirming what I want to believe versus confirming.
It’s a real challenge right now in our country. How do you convey a message to so many people who have various levels of trust and differences? Certain social media outlets go to a certain segment of the community; where other segments won’t even go to those outlets for whatever reason. There’s so much information that people are being overwhelmed. So, do I use a filter that affirms what I think it is, or do I use a filter that confirms what I need to know?
With all those difficulties and challenges, what advice would you give to someone new to the field of emergency management?
Try to work on creating a common ground. As students come into the field of emergency management, obviously, they have a particular perspective they got through their educational process. Someone who came from another profession, like law enforcement, fire, or military, into emergency management will have a different perspective and a different way of looking at things. Becoming a team includes asking, “What are you willing to give up to reach this common ground?”
Certainly, some changes are in store for next year. It will be interesting to see the direction the winds take us.
About the Interviewee
John D. Wilson is currently a FEMA reservist and a member of the agency’s Hurricane Liaison Team, which provides immediate and critical storm information for use by decision makers in making competent and informed evacuation and response decisions. He has 43 years of emergency management and disaster response experience at the local, state, and national levels. He served as the emergency manager for Lee County, Florida, for 27 years, 19 of which were in the dual role as public safety director. He has experience in all hazards preparedness (planning, peer review, training, exercise development), comprehensive plan policy development, hurricane evacuation planning, and hazard mitigation. Mr. Wilson also has response and recovery experience in major and catastrophic disasters that include hurricanes Andrew (1992), Charley (2004), Ivan (2004), Katrina (2005), and Superstorm Sandy (2012); the 1998 and 2000 Wildfires in Florida; and the Deepwater Horizon Spill (2010). He has served as either chair or vice chair of the National Hurricane Conference’s Planning Committee since 2003 and served either as a board member or an officer of the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference until 2023 (six years of which, he served as the program committee chair). Mr. Wilson achieved a B.A. and an M.S. in planning from Florida State University.
SHARE:
TAGS:
COMMENTS
RELATED ARTICLES
TRENDING
August 2025
FIFA, Terrorism, and Preparedness for the 2026 World Cup in the U.S.
The Evolving Landscape of Domestic Extremism
RELATED ARTICLES
TRENDING
August 2025
FIFA, Terrorism, and Preparedness for the 2026 World Cup in the U.S.
The Evolving Landscape of Domestic Extremism