Brad Wright is the only full-time emergency management staffer in Pulaski County – a largely rural county of just over 30,000 people in the New River Valley. But it’s also the home of one of the region’s largest private employers – Volvo – and next door to an Army ammunition production facility and Radford University. Those are all factors to consider in Wright’s line of work. He has worked to expand the county’s emergency management staffing since he was promoted from a part-time position five years ago.
“I’ve added the two part-time disaster reservist folks and the wildfire mitigation. So, that’s a growth in the last five years for us. And this year, the discussion was had in this next budget to add another full-time position.”
If that position is granted, it would help Wright address the many responsibilities he has as an emergency manager. That includes responding directly to disasters, but also preparing for them. There’s the recovery aspect after emergencies, too. For example, Wright says some residents in Pulaski County are still picking up the pieces after Hurricane Helene – more than a year and a half after that storm wrought havoc on communities in Eastern North Carolina and Southwestern Virginia.
“Overall, it wasn’t that bad. It’s cumbersome, I will say that – but we got through it,” Wright says. “And for the individual homeowners that have chosen to do mitigation, like raise their home or sell their land – we’re in that process now with FEMA and the state. We’re just talking about a handful of residents along the river that’s looking at that. That’s probably going to take three, four years to work through.”
As we talk, I can tell Wright is devoted to protecting the people who live in his community from any and all hazards. But I also sense some stress…
“Right when you think everything’s happened in this world, nothing else crazy can happen – something else is going to happen,” he says. “So, it’s hard to be prepared and plan for everything. If you take your job serious and do it right, your mind never stops. I hate to say that, it’s always what if, what happens… it’s not nine to five.”
Wright’s experience is very similar to those of other emergency managers and departments across the country, especially in small and rural communities. That’s the takeaway from recent reporting by ProPublica, which connected with more than 40 current and former emergency managers in 11 states to see how they’re doing.
Cassandra Garibay is one of the reporters who worked on that effort, and she tells me Helene was actually the catalyst for this work. She and her team started off by wanting to see how emergency managers in North Carolina specifically were dealing with the aftermath of that historic storm, and the challenges they faced before.
“Emergency messaging wasn’t necessarily consistent across all of the counties that were affected,” Garibay says. “And one of the hardest hit areas – Yancey County – there were no evacuation orders. We wanted to dive into why that was. He was, at the time, a one-person team – he had, I believe, a part-time employee as well at that time and noted that he had asked for resources previously. So, that kind of sent us down a path of looking at where else is this happening in terms of emergency managers who make these critical decisions – do they have the resources they need to make those decisions, respond, do they have the training?”
Many of the emergency management staff in North Carolina and others across the country that spoke with ProPublica mentioned short staffing. Garibay adds that this is particularly challenging because of the many hazards these folks are tasked with handling.
“The job of an emergency manager is to prepare, respond and recover from all hazards – and all hazards is very broad,” she says. “It can mean climate disasters, large-scale floods, fires, hurricanes – but it also means cyber threats, potential terrorism threats, mass shootings. Some of the emergency managers I talked to said one of their biggest planning events is if there is a big county fair or a tourism event – they are also responsible for planning the safety of that event.”
That’s a lot for one person or even a small team, and there is a constant need for funding…
“Largely, it’s hard for them to get resources because they’re advocating often for resources for something that hasn’t happened yet in their community or hasn’t happened in many years,” Garibay says. “That being said, many told me that they’re seeing more frequent disasters. They’re still in the recovery phase of the last flood or disaster when something new hits, and so that really complicates things.”
"It’s hard to be prepared and plan for everything. If you take your job serious and do it right, your mind never stops..."
This has been exacerbated by larger question marks at the federal level. Grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help pay a portion of salaries for emergency management staff in local communities, in addition to those that help with mitigation efforts, are in limbo or paused right now.
“True, dedicated funding – after 9/11, funding went up, after Katrina, funding went up – and then it wanes off,” Pulaski County Emergency Coordinator Brad Wright says. “So, it’s hard to sustain a program on funding that goes up and down from the federal, state levels. And at the county level – fire department, EMS – they’re going out the door about every day. Emergency management – we don’t have a disaster every day, but we got to prepare for those. And when it does happen, it ain’t over shortly like a fire or EMS call. It’s prolonged.”
Both Wright and the staff that spoke with Garibay at ProPublica noted that responding to emergencies, extreme weather and other disasters, especially as they become more prevalent, costly and destructive, will require the communities in which they occur to come together, as the future and the funding question mark remain unclear.
“Even the homeowners, businesses – everybody needs to take the steps that they can to be prepared and do their part in monitoring their surroundings, what’s going on in the world weather wise or whatever happens,” Wright says. “The individual person really needs to take the steps to be prepared themselves.”
I asked him if there is anything he’s optimistic about for the future when it comes to emergency management there in Pulaski County…
“This is going to sound weird probably, but job security,” he replied with a laugh. But then, he admitted that under budget discussions and things getting “tighter and tighter” as he put it, he wasn’t so sure… But he reiterated why emergency managers do what they do.
“There’s always going to be something that brings you back into focus. Hopefully it’ll be on a good situation that you were able to prevent something or mitigate something; whatever you’ve done correctly made the outcome better for your citizens.”
ProPublica is planning to continue reaching out to emergency managers across the country. Garibay tells me they’ve already heard from about 70 more such staff, including some in Virginia, since the original story through an online survey. Many of those expressed similar concerns about the need for more staff and funding, and have already started to address those concerns with the decision makers in their local communities.
“Our goal is to build out a long-term source network of emergency managers across the country – meaning we want to be able to turn to these emergency managers when there are big federal changes or when there are disasters in or near their communities and be able to dive deeper than some of the quick, breaking news,” she says. “As disasters unfold, we want to understand what are the infrastructure needs, what are the planning needs, how is emergency management shifting in this moment?”
If you are an emergency manager, or know one, they can find that survey here.
Colorado State University releases first Atlantic hurricane season projection for 2026
One of the first hurricane projections for the upcoming Atlantic season was published by Colorado State University earlier this month.
Before we get to that projection – first, what does a typical season look like?
- 14 named storms
- Seven hurricanes
- Three major hurricanes (category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale)
Officials at CSU are predicting that 2026 will be slightly below average, with 13 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes.
Phil Klotzbach helped put the projection together, and he says there are a number of reasons for that – the primary one being that all signs are pointing to a transition to El Nino conditions later this year. That recurring climate pattern contributes to warmer than normal waters in the Pacific Ocean, leading to strong winds blowing out of the west high up in the atmosphere, which stymies hurricane development in the Atlantic.
“In El Nino years, you tend to have fewer storms than you do with La Nina,” Klotzbach says. “And if you look at the ratios, the ratios tend to get larger as you go from a tropical storm to a major hurricane. To get a major hurricane, you need to have a pretty large area of robust, favorable conditions, and those areas just tend to be fewer in strong El Ninos than they would be in La Nina conditions.”
There are also mixed signals when it comes to water temperatures in the Atlantic right now. Tropical systems thrive on warm, ocean water. The western tropical Atlantic is currently warmer than normal, but is slightly cooler than normal in the eastern tropical and subtropical areas.
Despite the potential for a below-average season, it only takes one significant, landfalling system to really cause problems, and that is always a possibility regardless of projections.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1st to November 30th.
All of Virginia now experiencing drought conditions
The entire state is now experiencing some level of drought.
That’s according to the latest update from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
All of Virginia is at least at the “moderate drought” condition – that's level two out of five on the drought monitor's scale. Some areas along the North Carolina line are experiencing extreme drought.
Some rain is in the forecast for Saturday, but it will take a longer period of sustained precipitation to alleviate the drought conditions.
Thanks for checking out this edition of CommonWx — the weather and climate newsletter from Radio IQ. Use this link to get the newsletter sent to your inbox.
