Intern Insight- Week #2

I have been at the Department of Public Safety now for a total of five days and as I mentioned in my first post, I absolutely love it here. Every day seems to get better and I have been learning a lot of information very quickly. My first couple of days was information overload trying to memorize some of the common acronyms used around here. I also was trying to memorize everyone’s name, and what each room was responsible for. This week I have been working on my first project known as the “weather exercise” in the EOC. The EOC is the Emergency Operations Center and it is basically the central command of the building carrying out strategic overview of any emergency situation or disaster. I have been working on this project with Eric and Connie. Eric is the Operations & EOC Coordinator and Connie is the administrative coordinator. The weather project is being conducted to obtain feedback from multiple facilities to encourage them in participating in the statewide weather exercise that takes place on March 29th. I have also been going through multiple files determining what facilities have and do not have emergency plans on file and trying to encourage those who do not, to send us one immediately and for those who do to send us an updates to it that they may have.
Doing projects like this really allow me to see how much work actually goes into planning and preparing for emergency situations. Even menial tasks that you think are just boring and pointless all lead up to one common goal that will eventually be in place to help the citizens of Pennsylvania. Recently, I have sat in on a couple of meetings with PEMA (Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency) and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). It was a great experience being able to see a state and federal emergency management agency communicate with one another and how the state goes about getting funding for certain things. As my second week here comes to a close, I start off my third week attending a Mass Evacuation working group meeting with Eric. I can’t wait to see what else is in store for me and what other acronyms I’ll be using by the end of next week. Until next week, I leave you with one of my favorite proverbs that fits well into what I have learned thus far: “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”



*Go to http://bit.ly/wlSeqi to learn more about the Intern Insight Series.