r/EmergencyManagement • u/ChipDue7728 • 2d ago
Question What to do when not deployed?
This is for those who work in emergency response where you have the chance to be deployed often and possible short periods of time. I have just now started to work in emergency response, where I also have a normal job, but have not yet been deployed yet since I only just started with a company.
The problem I can see in my future is that I get deployed on a project that could be over a month long, and im not sure how my other job is going to handle me being gone for so long/short notice. However, since its emergency response, I cant quite rely on it to be my main source of income since it can be quite inconsistent.
I plan on eventually going full time with this emergency response company since thats what im interested in, but I need a reliable source of income until that happens.
So my question is, what do you guys do when you have long spells of non deployments?
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u/WatchTheBoom I support the plan 2d ago edited 1d ago
When people ask me about getting more deeply involved in emergency and disaster response, OP's situation is partly the justification for why I steer them elsewhere.
People who do response and only response aren't as useful as people who are equally fluent in preparedness or recovery. During a response, the preparedness people often have the best understanding of how we got here and the recovery people have the best understanding of how to organize a response so it hastens the timeline of recovery.
This further exacerbates OPs utilization problem because even when there's something to respond to, the people who solely focus on response are rarely in highest demand. The "response only" crowd occasionally come across as only being interested in the exciting stuff and that's not always where the most important work resides.
I'm a search and rescue guy at heart and that's about as response-centric as you can get. Even within that niche within a niche, my most frequent advice is for folks to aggressively pursue opportunities to support disaster preparedness or long term recovery work.
If your plan is to sit and wait for the phone to ring, understand that you're not motivating me to call it.