Meet Mark Hooten

Pete Navesky works to get things back to normal.

After tornados, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other disasters, people need a lot of help. Lots of times, people need help getting water, electricity, ice, and other things when the electricity is out. Often people's houses and other buildings are damaged, and sometimes they are in such bad shape they're dangerous until they are repair them. Some people need temporary houses. Lots of people need help cleaning up the mess left by a disaster.

Pete and his counterparts go all over the country when disasters happen. They helped people after the tornadoes and ice storms in Oklahoma. Pete spend most of his time preparing and making plans for handling emergency situations so that when disasters happen, he can respond quickly. Pete studies what kind of services are essential and will need to be repair first in an emergency, and he also practices disaster management techniques to stay sharp.

Pete's work affects the community because when disasters happen, all kinds of people are affected. He also helps get schools and other public buildings functioning again after a disaster.

Pete says the best part of his job is seeing immediate benefits of his work. Hospitals reopen, police offices and fire departments can function again, water and drainage systems start working again- there's an immediate sense of accomplishment.

Pete's work can be challenging because he's always dealing with stressful situations. He has to have patience and a good sense of humor to do his work, and also a sense of understanding and sympathy for the people he's helping. He says its also challenging to make decisions quickly under pressure, but in an emergency situation actions must happen fast.

There are different parts of emergency management- Pete calls them Response, Recovery, and Mitigation. Response is the immediate rescue teams like police, fire fighters, and medical workers. Recovery involves keeping people in essential services so that the community can keep functioning- that includes water delivery and debris removal. Mitigation is looking at the situation afterward and asking why the disaster happened, and how we can reduce the impact of future disasters- these are the engineers and scientists.

Career Check

Pete really recommends this career. The field is wide open to anyone, and people come from all kinds of educational backgrounds.

Pete was just in the right place at the right time to get into this line of work. He got lots of help getting started, and it took him a year to learn the job.

The best way to get started is to go to the local city government and find out who the local emergency managers are. Then find out what they do. You might find a way to get some good volunteer experience.