Emergency
As I unloaded tools from my pickup, I was thinking about emergency management.
Like you do.
No, stay with me. This is all going to come together.
I have kind of an unusual setup here on the shores of Olson Lake. Although I no longer farm, I still have a lot of the equipment from back when I had a real job. For example, I use about 100 gallons of diesel fuel a year (depending on how much it snows), but I still have two 500-gallon tanks, the amount that used to get me through about a week of field work. Last week I went to the other farm to fill my tractor and the pump wouldn’t run.
I didn't know why. For forty years, I've pulled the lever and the pump started. Then it didn't. I went back to my shop and loaded up my electrical tool box, because that seemed most likely, then added my plumbing tool box in case I needed the big pipe wrenches to take the pump off the tank, and then I packed up my rechargeable drill and grinder in case the screws holding it together were rusted in place.
I don't have a very big pickup, and the back was just about full of tools by the time I got to the job site.
Turns out the screws weren't rusted in place. I pulled the cover off and the problem was immediately evident - a little lever was about a quarter inch out of adjustment. I probably could have done the whole repair with my pocketknife. The entire job took about ten minutes. The preparation and cleaning up afterward took twice as long. No fuss, no muss, not even a good story. I was prepared for every problem, and none showed up.
And that's why I was thinking about emergency management. A friend of mine who used to be in the biz said something along the lines of, “...in emergency management, the goal is to never have a headline.”
That's not easy. It takes a lot of practice, it takes a lot of thought, it takes doing things wrong in drills so when the real thing happens, you're ready to do things right. When I was a county commissioner, our emergency management crew set up an exercise involving a train derailment with dangerous chemicals spilling hither and yon. A fireman was planning to wait for the dangerous chemical crew to show up from the state before doing anything. At least that was his plan until the dangerous chemical team explained that if there were an actual event, it would take them at least three hours to reach the scene. That information prompted a rethink, and now if something terrible does happen, our firemen will know what to do. And that's just one example. Emergency management “rehearsal” is expensive and tedious and can often feel pointless. It requires you to spend quite a bit of time living in Worst Case Scenario World. But it saves lives. It saves lives, and property, and anguish. And if you do it right, no one notices what you've done and not very many people are grateful.
Just something I was thinking about on a day when nothing bad happened. But I was ready anyway.
Copyright 2025 Brent Olson