Semi-Structured Interviews

OMB Control # 0648-XXXX
Expiration Date XX/XX/20XX

HURRICANE IDA EM INTERVIEW GUIDE (60 min)
DEMOGRAPHICS & JOB: To elicit background, job duties, staff, and work during a Hurricane
1.
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4.

In general, what’s your role in your office? What are your job duties?
How long have you been in this role? Before this what did you do?
What is your professional training and education related to this position?
Could you briefly describe the team or staff you work with?
a. Prompt: Who else are you working with inside your office (i.e., public information
officer)?
b. Prompt: Is there any liaison officer you partner with?
5. How many hurricanes have you worked before?
a. Prompt: If the experience expands more than a decade, ask in the last 5-10 years.
6. What was your role during Hurricane Ida? (e.g., capture days/hours worked, tasks,
responsibilities, etc.)
a. Prompt, if needed: could you talk about additional tasks or responsibilities you
had during Hurricane Ida?
HAZARDS: To elicit which hazards & impacts were most important to EMs & their staff
7. Could you please tell me about how Hurricane Ida impacted your community /
jurisdiction?
8. Is there any past hurricane you remember to be devastating for your county?
9. What were your or your office’s main concerns about weather hazards before Ida?
10. What were the wind and/or water hazards that you were worried most about during
Hurricane Ida? (e.g. flooding, surge, tornadoes, synoptic winds, etc.)
11. What did you do in Ida when there was a threat to flash flooding?
12. What did you do in Ida when there was a threat to tornadoes or strong winds?
13. What did you do to help prepare people for these different weather concerns?
14. What kinds of questions did you get from the public before and during the storm?
What were they asking about/saying?
15. How did the public communicate with you (e.g., social media, phone)?
16. Were you aware of any dual threats (e.g., flooding and winds that occurred at the same
time) during Hurricane Ida?
a. If so: How were decisions made about communicating information for dual
threats?

VULNERABILITY: To elicit who EMs think is most likely and most significantly affected by the
hurricane and Covid.
17. Can you tell us what are the most urgent socioeconomic issues in your county? Are there
any groups of people more affected by that?
18. Who do you most worry about being impacted by hurricanes in your community
/jurisdiction?
a. Prompt: Which areas or groups of people?
b. Prompt: What infrastructures are most severely impacted (by wind? By water?)
c. Prompt: Whose lives may be in danger the most or may not recover as easily?

COVID: To learn the different ways Covid might have impacted how EMs planned,
communicated, and changed policies for sheltering / evacuation / messaging
19. Can you tell us how Covid-19 has affected your county? Do you remember any time
during these two years that it was more complex?
20. Who are you most worried about with Covid in your community/jurisdiction?
21. How have your concerns changed with Covid?
22. How did the pandemic change official policies and practices in your office related to
hurricane planning or response?
23. Could you explain how Covid-19 has affected the county’s capacity of emergency
preparedness and response to weather hazards? Examples?
24. Has Covid impacted the network of emergency responders?
25. How has Covid impacted your staff ability when facing weather threats?
26. Was there a time when you and/or your team had to work from home during this
pandemic? If yes, how did that change your capacity to deal with weather threats?
27. What concerns did you hear most from the public about Covid related to hurricanes and
weather hazards?
28. How did Covid change the advice or information you shared?
29. Where did people primarily go to evacuate or shelter from Ida? Was this different from
before Covid?
RISK ASSESSMENT: To understand what information helps them attend to and assess weather
hazards; what information was requested by populations in their areas of responsibility
1. Focusing on the 36-48 hours leading up to a hurricane, what information do you use
most frequently to monitor and/or assess these hazards?
a. Prompt: What information is most important to you 24 hours out? 12 hours?
Landfall? During?
b. Prompt: How is the “trigger chart” used for each period?
2. What information (scientific or technical) is essential to you in assessing wind and water
hazards?

THINGS THAT WORKED / DIDN’T WORK WELL: To capture what successes & limitations
emergency managers experienced when an event included overlapping threats. Includes
things like staffing issues, office culture, uncertainty, expertise, technology (e.g., computer
models)
3. If you were faced with another hurricane like Ida again, is there anything you think you
would do differently to help your office and your public deal with or prepare?
4. Any specific product (e.g., information, tool, model data) you wish you had to
communicate dual threats, including Covid, during Ida?
5. What do you think worked well [or didn’t work well] in terms of communicating
information about dual threats?
6. Anything else you think we should know but haven’t discussed?
Public Burden Statement
A Federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, nor shall a person be subject to
a penalty for failure to comply with an information collection subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act
of 1995 unless the information collection has a currently valid OMB Control Number. The approved OMB Control Number
for this information collection is 0648-XXXX. Without this approval, we could not conduct this information collection.
Public reporting for this information collection is estimated to be approximately one hour per response, including the
time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and
completing and reviewing the information collection. All responses to this information collection are voluntary. Send
comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this information collection, including suggestions for
reducing this burden to the Nicole Kurkowski, R2O Team Lead, DOC/NOAA/NWS/OSTI, 1325 East West Highway, Silver
Spring, MD 20910, 301-427-9104, [email protected]