Florida Division of Emergency Management

Kevin Guthrie, you all know who he is.

He's the executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

And each of us wakes up each day, and I know each of our listeners do so too, hoping, Kevin, we hope you never retire.

Because what you've done with the department has been nothing short of amazing, truly.

So, yeah, we have two levels.

They're FEMA approved and sort of by the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

The level one awareness level is kind of it's for the daily care people.

It's for people that want to be able to work in the shelter.

Miami International Airport officials discuss the lack of a safety feature.

Florida's Division of Emergency Management is asking for $250 million.

It's the reason why that makes it so interesting.

Oh, I'm sure.

If your engine hasn't already stalled, it's likely to stall.

Right, right, right.

All right, Florida's Division of Emergency Management is asking state lawmakers for an additional $250 million as hurricane season enters what's typically its busiest period, although we're getting ready to make history there, right? First time in history we haven't had a hurricane on the books this late in the season.

But

so, so anyway, I spent the first two years of my elected career deployed for, for COVID.

So I was working, working under FDEM for as an incident commander down in South Florida and By the time we wrapped up, I had about 1,000 nurses and 300 National Guardsmen that I was responsible for.

And, yeah, then Dad was like, okay, cool, we've done COVID, so I'm ready to retire now.

And I was like, oh, great.

So my entire kind of educational focus and then my career trajectory really centered around work that I was able to do with some faculty members looking at the way in which Florida had started planning for natural disasters.

And so that set me on my path to work first with the Florida Division of Emergency Management, later Vermont Emergency Management, believe it or not.

And then after some time there, returned to Florida, moved into the private sector where I worked with PBSNJ, a major Florida company, heading up their disaster recovery team.

after working there for a good part of my career, I transitioned to Florida state university, take on the role of planner and residents here in our department of regional planning.

Well, sort of.

Alligator Alcatraz was a state-run prison that was managed by the Florida Department of Emergency Management, historically tasked with dealing, you know, with, with emergencies like hurricanes here in Florida.

[laughs] But they got into the-

Yeah, very, hurricanes are very popular in Florida.

How was DeSantis using the money from Alligator Alcatraz personally?

That's a great question.

So there was great reporting, uh, by the Florida Phoenix and, and other outlets here in Florida that showed that, as I told you, the Florida Department of Emergency Management was the, the entity responsible for Alligator Alcatraz.

They were raiding our, our emergency fund, Florida's emergency fund, and it turns out that they were pretty much grifting with it.

And that, that was what really appealed to me, was this idea that, uh, you're really talking about building systems within systems to respond to events that break the traditional daily emergency response networks.

So you ran Florida's Division of Emergency Management under Governor Jeb Bush.

You were nominated to run FEMA by President Obama in 2009.

And when you joined the agency, I think it's fair to say it had really taken a hit reputationally, right? This is in the years after Hurricane Katrina.