Sandra Knight is the new Deputy Assistant Administrator for Mitigation for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington, DC. The link on her name will take you to an interview that was done recently with her that appears on the American Academy of Water Resource Engineers web site.
This is a bit of a different interview from what I've been doing for the online edition of Emergency Management Magazine. While I've focused on the professional side of things, they have taken a more personal approach to the background and experience of the individual. Perhaps this tactic might help people "get inside the mind" of the person and what makes them tick. Something for me to think about as I construct my questions in the future.
The only engineer (that is what she is) joke I have comes from my Army days. "You can always tell an engineer from a distance, but up close you can't tell them a damn thing!" I certainly don't have it in for engineers, where would we be without them on our teams today. But, they can be precise!
I would say that her experience as an engineer "could" be one that looks for engineering solutions to mitigation. There are cases when we need to do that, but sometimes it might be better to let the river go where it wants to go and get the people and infrastructure out of the way.
Certainly she is well qualified from a flood perspective to know the issues and assess the potential solutions. I live and earthquake country, as do most of you--since most of the USA is at risk, I hope she has good people on her staff who will start to look at the seismic risks we have in the nation. It is part of her job.
Thanks to Tom Antush for sharing the link!
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This is a bit of a different interview from what I've been doing for the online edition of Emergency Management Magazine. While I've focused on the professional side of things, they have taken a more personal approach to the background and experience of the individual. Perhaps this tactic might help people "get inside the mind" of the person and what makes them tick. Something for me to think about as I construct my questions in the future.
The only engineer (that is what she is) joke I have comes from my Army days. "You can always tell an engineer from a distance, but up close you can't tell them a damn thing!" I certainly don't have it in for engineers, where would we be without them on our teams today. But, they can be precise!
I would say that her experience as an engineer "could" be one that looks for engineering solutions to mitigation. There are cases when we need to do that, but sometimes it might be better to let the river go where it wants to go and get the people and infrastructure out of the way.
Certainly she is well qualified from a flood perspective to know the issues and assess the potential solutions. I live and earthquake country, as do most of you--since most of the USA is at risk, I hope she has good people on her staff who will start to look at the seismic risks we have in the nation. It is part of her job.
Thanks to Tom Antush for sharing the link!
