In this episode, we are joined by Mike Swigart, the Postal Service’s Executive Director for Continuity and Preparedness to talk about what happens when disasters strike. Join us as we’ll learn more about how the Postal Service works to ensure mail operations – essential for access to food, medicine, and other necessities during unfortunate events.
This week on Mailin' It, we are joined by Mike Swigart the Postal Service’s Executive Director for Continuity and Preparedness, to discuss the vital role the Postal Service plays in emergency response. We’ll talk about how the Postal Service supports FEMA and other larger government disaster relief efforts. We’ll also dive into the types of emergencies the Postal Service responds to and the guidelines used to train personnel regularly.
Dale Parsan:
Hi, everybody. Welcome to “Mailin’ It!” the official podcast of the United States Postal Service. I'm your host Dale Parsan. In a recent episode of Mailin’ It!, we talked at length about the Postal Service's incredible effort earlier this year to rapidly deliver hundreds of millions of free COVID-19 test kits in just a few short months. It was a role that people often don't see the Postal Service play - us serving as an emergency responder. That being said, the Postal Service actually has a long history of stepping up when the country needs our infrastructure and delivery resources, dating back to the mass distribution of smallpox vaccines in the early 1800’s. In fact, the Postal Service is part of the federal government's official response to major natural disasters like hurricanes wildfires and earthquakes. In addition to delivering Postal Services, information and supplies to survivors, postal workers can serve as the eyes and ears at ground zero for other agencies administering aid. To do all of that, to be a major part of an effective disaster relief effort and continue to deliver Postal Services to the American public, the Postal Service itself needs to make sure it's prepared to swing into action whenever and wherever where needed. In today's episode, we're going to talk to the man responsible for making sure the Postal Services operation around the country remains at the ready. Mike Swigart is the Postal Service’s executive director for continuity and preparedness. Mike, welcome to Mailin’ It.
Mike Swigart:
Thank you, Dale. How are you today?
Dale Parsan:
I'm doing well. Let's jump into things, all right? Let's start by talking a little bit about you and your background. I heard that you're an engineer by training. How did you make the jump to continuity and preparedness?
Mike Swigart:
How much time you got
Dale Parsan:
I'll be honest, if I had your job with what you've just explained to me, I don't think I would sleep well at night.
Mike Swigart:
Sleep is where you can find it
Dale Parsan:
Absolutely. Well, it sounds like it takes a special type of person to be able to do this work on a day to day basis.
Mike Swigart:
The people that do this enjoy it. There's a passion for the work for sure. It's knowing that you're able to help people when they need it absolutely is really what it comes down to.
Dale Parsan:
So when we talk about continuity at the Postal Service, what exactly does that mean?
Mike Swigart:
So continuity at the Postal Service really means having the ability to continue to deliver Postal Services to the American public, no matter what's happening. That means we're able to collect fees, postage, we're able to process that mail and we're able to deliver it. Number of reasons for that one, the obvious we're not on congressional budget. So we need that funding coming in. So it's imperative and it just makes good business sense for us to be able to do that on a daily basis, no matter what's going on. The second is that we're legislatively or required by law to deliver universal service six days a week. So between the business reasons and what we're required to do by law, we gotta be ready. It’s just, it's a fact of life. We're 30,000 facilities large ranging from Guam and the islands of Pacific all the way east to Puerto Rico. So something's happening normally on a daily basis somewhere. So it's prudent for us to be ready to go. Continuity means that no matter what comes, we're able to get that delivery. We're able to get the carrier back out on the street. We're able to continue operations in a short time period and just continue on. Like, it never happened.
Dale Parsan:
There's always this sense from the American people after we have something that affects and really rocks the nation. Whenever that we see our carrier, I mean, I'm from south Florida, so hurricanes are something I grew up with and after you've got power out for so long after you've got, you know, a lot of damaged trees down, whatnot, once things start to get back to normal, you can really see it by seeing you know, that white postal truck - that LLV driving up. And I can see my, my mail carrier dropping off the mail and it, it does give a sense of relief that things are getting back to normal.
Mike Swigart:
So for a lot of people, and if you stop and think about it, the letter carrier is very often the only visible sign that a citizen has of the federal government on a daily basis. They deal with IRS and they have to mail their tax in, but they don't see a person. They see that person every day and they form a relationship with that letter carrier. So when they see that carrier back out on the street, after an event like a hurricane's happen, that is the first sign that things are returning to normal or what, whatever the new normal is. But it is a sign that, okay, life's moving on. We'll, be okay. Let's just, let's move forward.
Dale Parsan:
Yeah. So before we get too much further, I wanna make sure that for the audience, we're defining disaster, that word here, because to different people, it's gonna mean different things. So could you walk us through that? What, what disaster means in this sense for continuity and preparedness?
Mike Swigart:
So our focus it's anything that could disrupt or has disrupted operations, but really our focus, most of the time is on three big natural hazards. Hurricanes… One, because they're very broad based they include wind and flooding hazards, but you have warning for hurricanes. So there's a lead up period to those where we help everybody get ready and we refine the scope of who has to do what. By virtue of some of relationships, earthquakes are the next biggest. And it's not that they're the next biggest, it's the next one we worry about. Not so much that you can't get ready for it, but you generally don't have any warning. So the preparedness in that effort, it's a lot like hurricanes, but you have to be ready to react once it occurs. And when it does occur, it's gonna be somewhat chaotic.
There'll be a lot of what we call the fog of war. When you go into a disaster. You don't really know what's happening for a day or two. And then you start to assess everything and have a good idea of what what's happening with postal operations, but also what's happening with civilian infrastructure around us, roads, bridges, water, treatment systems, buildings, those types of things. That's it it's, you have to be able to have some plan in place or process in place so that when it does happen in the middle of the night and everybody's asleep, you get everybody up and you start to work, start to move forward with that process. The last one that we really focus on is wildfires. And that's not so much that they're large necessarily. But it's the fact that they happen very quickly. You may get a half an hour notice that you need to evacuate. You may get less than that. And again, I can give you a lot of stories on that when, when you're ready.
Dale Parsan:
So it sounds a lot like your team spends every day either reacting to disasters helping the country, helping the Postal Service. But at the same time, you guys are also planning for, you know, potential futures. So a lot of contingency planning. At what point do contingency plans, you know, become enacted, does it require the postmaster general, you know, themselves to, to issue a decree of saying, “Hey, we gotta do this,” or is it mostly held within your group, your discretion with your expertise?
Mike Swigart:
All the above or none of the above.
If you have a hurricane it's happening on the ground in Florida. Or Louisiana. So the people on the ground have to know what to do when they need to do it. They can't wait for somebody to tell them to do it. Now caveat that by hurricane season, we're diligently watching the tropical forecast. And when we see areas of interest or invest as, as a hurricane center calls, 'em out where they start to get, they get a little bit more serious about how they look at it, how they model it, trajectories. Trajectories. We'll start to watch. We will monitor that. And if things are looking like a potential landfall, then we'll reach out and say, okay, place, time, place to start looking at this and, and getting ready. And that's, that's really one of the, one of the primary functions of our group is that we're, we're watching all this. I mean, we're tied in with FEMA. We're tied in with NOAA - national weather service. We get a feed every day from them and we output an outlook of what I'll call it of severe weather. It's not, “Hey, it's gonna be 71 and sunny in your area today.” It's “Okay, in the middle, middle Midwest, you're gonna have a chance for severe storms today.” Right? You need to watch out for this or there's tornado potential in that area, the hurricane coming in, or you've got dry conditions. So the fire indexes are up and it's those types of things. So it's, it's very, it's a snapshot of, to senior leadership and to the field to say, okay, you need to pay attention to this particular threat today, or the potential for this threat today. That, and then it goes on as it happens, they react to it. There's nobody telling them to react. They have to react to it as it, as it occurs.
Dale Parsan:
Yeah. And we're not just talking, you know, east coast to west coast, we're talking Hawaii, Alaska Guam,
Mike Swigart:
Guam, Puerto Rico. Yeah. Yeah.
Dale Parsan:
We're talking just, I mean, everywhere. So I would think just from a geography perspective, we're talking so many different types of events that in some areas, you know, predominantly in Florida, which you're gonna be dealing with are, you know, tornadoes and hurricanes from my experience. But you know, it's completely different on the west coast where, you know, we're predominantly gonna be dealing with more…
Mike Swigart:
Fires and earthquakes. Right. So, and every event might be an issue in one location. And another in the classic example is winter storms. The Northeast, we tell 'em they got a blizzard coming in. They're like, yeah. Okay.
Dale Parsan:
I'm literally counting on my fingers. I can't.
Mike Swigart:
Yeah.
Dale Parsan:
So your team is spread out?
Mike Swigart:
Our team spread out across the continental US. I don't have anybody in the island locations anymore, but we, we, we support them.
Dale Parsan:
So we, we touched a little bit before on how the Postal Service can, you know, help out the other federal agencies help out the larger federal government in responding to disasters. So at what point does the Postal Service officially become a part of a federal government response?
Mike Swigart:
We, we are part of the planned federal government response now. It's how that level of activation occurs depends on the size of the disaster. So it's all based around a Stafford Act disaster with FEMA. Stafford Act means the federal emergency management agency can go in and provide funding and support to local communities or state communities. Now that doesn't happen until state requests or local communities request the state for assistance, the states request FEMA for assistance. And then it gets, you'll hear, talk about presidential declarations of disasters. That's what's happening. When you hear that is FEMA is declaring and, and triggering the Stafford Act. Once that gets triggered, we are part of the planned federal response with many other executive branches and agencies. Everybody has a defined role pre pre-event and ours is surrounding many things, but they're all linked to our ability to deliver. Our daily operation of providing Postal Services to the American public is recognized as a primary mission essential function that supports the federal government's continuity plans. They have eight national essential functions. Ours is one that supports one of those eight. So just by doing what we do every day, we're part of an emergency support. So that's one piece then building on that when you have a disaster that's large enough will take Harvey, for instance you had a large Harvey hurricane,
Dale Parsan:
Oh, hurricane Harvey, sorry.
Mike Swigart:
Right. you had a lot of large shelters that were opened up for these folks to go to that didn't have any other, other place to go. We visit those shelters with generally with marketing folks to, to help people understand the process, to do the change of address and what other services we have. We also, as part of the intake process for any shelter change of address is part of that. We worked probably 15 years ago to get that part of the, of the intake process in those larger shelters at times, we've actually opened up retail operations, temporary retail operations. In addition to that, FEMA sets up what they call disaster recovery centers. And these are basically, if you can think of a trade show where you have everybody has a booth and they tell you what they do, it's kind of similar to that, where you have all the support agencies that, that can help individuals or survivors set up and boost and people come in and they can with FEMA, they can sit down and, and fill out the, the paperwork for individual assistance. We always have a booth there with folks managing it to help with change of address or other things. Small business administration, the insurance companies go in there. The reason we do that is in that, in that scenario, the mail becomes critical for people that still don't have direct deposit, right. You either get a paper check. So they're dependent on a paper check or they're dependent upon treasury check, social security payments, medicine, prescriptions, they get mailed to 'em. We'll work with the, with our customer, the major pharma companies to, to make sure that those are getting into and out of the, the recipient's hands and not caught up somewhere in the system. So again, we're, we're part of the response, but we're doing what we do every day.
Dale Parsan:
Absolutely. So on average, how many disaster level events do you and your team respond to in a given year?
Mike Swigart:
Help me out. What do you mean by disaster level?
Dale Parsan:
Well anything that would necessarily need you to break out your continuity plans, your contingency plans.
Mike Swigart:
We're monitoring between 800, 900 events every year. What some of those may turn into events where we have to break out the continuity plans. And some of them may not for example.
Dale Parsan:
Again, I don't know how you sleep at night, Mike, but I'm glad you're on the case. So what are some types of emergencies that, you know, you, you say eight to 900 at any given moment, right? Or currently involved or, or whatnot, but eight to 900, that that's quite a lot. And frankly, I feel like if the news covered each and every one, you know, we would be on a, you know, 24-hour news cycle of people talking a mile a minute. So what are some of the more unique ones?
Mike Swigart:
The more unique ones? Tsunami for me is one that most people don't pay attention to. And when I first took over the job, we had a tsunami checklist and everybody read it and kind of laughed it off. Then we had the Japan earthquake. And had the large tsunami and everybody saw what it can do. And then all of a sudden, everybody was like, whoa, okay. Maybe not so much laughing. We've already had five or six actual alerts for tsunamis this year based on earthquakes in the Pacific. Now, granted, they only turned out to be, you know, half a foot of water to a foot of water in the end for us. But we still monitor that. And there's a checklist for operations who are on in the Pacific or on the west coast that, okay, if you get the tsunami alerts from your locality, here's what you need to do. You know? And a lot of that's just, it's moved to higher ground. Make sure you got things elevated, that kind of stuff. But that's one of the more unique ones. The other one is volcanoes. Prior to the eruption in Hawaii, the last volcano eruption we had in the states was with Mount St. Helens. In 2019. Let me look, 2018 or 2019. When that erupted your issues were, you know, you have Kilauea. It was big crater lake. Everybody drives up and watches it. Well, all of a sudden the lake disappeared and whet underground and they had no idea where it was gonna come out. You know, getting people outta harm's way. That's I won't say that's easier, but it it's simpler. What we learned with that volcano was when lava hits cold water, it develops two things. One is poisonous gas to the human. The other one that we really learned was called Pele’s hair.
Dale Parsan:
Pele’s hair?
Mike Swigart:
Pele’s hair. What happens when that lava hits saltwater is it creates this glass or fiberglass substance. And it looks like fiberglass. It's very long and thin fibers that are airborne and they can cut you. They can cause issues. If you inhale them, they can cause issues with your eyes. So we had to educate as we were going through so that the folks in the field, not, not just national preparedness - safety was involved in, you know, other stakeholders, but you had to educate all of our employees about the hazard and it was, it was there. And they, they actually put up in the units that were right there on the big island, they actually put up canopies. So while they were outside, if this stuff was floating down, it wasn't coming down on, 'em working. Then when they were out on the routes, they had to be conscious of it.
Dale Parsan:
This sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel.
Mike Swigart:
It is science for sure.
Dale Parsan:
But it's, that's just something I've never, never had to look into. That is terrifying.
Mike Swigart:
We had not until that point either.
Dale Parsan:
And the Postal Service tries its best to keep operating and keep things going.
Mike Swigart:
Yes, sir.
Dale Parsan:
My gosh, Mike, with so many people relying on emails, social media, for information nowadays, and even with other delivery providers in the marketplace for when they want to have things delivered. Why do you think it's so important that the Postal Service specifically be involved in disaster relief efforts?
Mike Swigart:
We, we have a universal service obligation. We go to every address six days a week, regardless of whether we, you know, how many pieces of mail or packages we have. That alone provides stability and something standard in terms of people to get money. So we talk about the three M's. When we're talking about our delivery, after an event, it's money, it's medicine and it's merchandise. We've talked about money a little bit with the treasury checks. We've talked about medicine with the prescriptions. Ecommerce is merchandise, but the fact that we're out there delivering it, and we're able to do that after any event provides that first sign, that things are gonna be okay, we might have a new normal, but we're gonna be okay as a community.
Dale Parsan:
This may come off as a loaded question, just cuz there's so many variables to take into account Mike, but what's the general timeline for responding to events for getting operations back up and running?
Mike Swigart:
As we talked about earlier, it's imperative for us for two reasons to, to be back op or to be operational. One is so that we can continue to get postage in order to keep the business moving. And two we're required to be there six days a week. So there isn't really a set timeline. We're back into areas as soon as the weather clears the water recedes they allow us back into areas, you know, that has a lot of damages as soon as it is safe for us to do so. So as soon as we can get a carrier out on a street, we're doing that. Is he gonna deliver to every address on that street? If there's a bridge out, no he's not. He's gonna or she’s, they're gonna stop at the bridge and come back and we'll set up some other alternative method for the folks that are downstream that bridge to, to come and collect our mail. If our facility is operational and is safe, we're gonna be in there as soon as we can. As soon as the weather is cleared you know, like for a hurricane, for example, after the hurricane is passed through the winds die down, we're back out. Now we're assessing now, you know, and we'll work out of facilities without power if we need to for a short period of time, but we're, we're operating wherever it's safe to do so as soon as we can.
Dale Parsan:
And that also, I mean, it's one thing to have that policy or process in place, but it's another thing to be one of the employees at these locations, right? We hear from it from time and time again throughout the year that there's so much sense of responsibility that our employees feel about going back in. I mean, I hear it from carriers. They want to be there. They want to be helping their local community.
Mike Swigart:
They do feel that responsibility and the process you mentioned, I don't think we've touched on this, but we have a very simple process that gets applied to all of these different types of disasters. And it's called the three PS. It's people, property product, and then we hold communication. So it's people, is everybody safe, our employees, do they know what we want 'em to do ahead of time? Or have we accounted for them once the event happens and that's taken very seriously. Property, we go through and look at each of our facilities, can we operate out of it or can we not? If we can't, where can we go to an alternate location? And what's it take to get back into that facility? And then product is okay, where can we deliver? Where can't we deliver? Are we limited in accepting mail on one location and we move it to another location. For instance you might move processing from one facility to another if that one facility isn't able to handle it for whatever reason. And then communications is really just telling everybody what we're doing, what, you know, we tell our employees what our operating plan is, the adjusted operating plan, telling our business mailers what the adjusted plan is telling the government congressional, what our adjusted operational plan is.
Dale Parsan:
So in the time that you've been here with the Postal Service, Mike, what in your opinions, the most impactful disaster level event that you've responded to and what made it stand out so much?
Mike Swigart:
It's very hard to pick one. Each has its own challenges. And I don't know that I'm gonna pick one. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a little bit resistant here and, and I'll tell you why. I wasn't with the Postal Service in 9/11, but that had its own challenges that was national, right. That had the thread of shutting down the air industry. If you remember. That would have been very detrimental to the Postal Service. That was one type of challenge. Let's go to Katrina in 2006. We weren't real robust with our plans and we learned a lot as did everybody else and Katrina and Katrina really wasn't the hurricane that was the issue. It was the rainfall and levy failed. That was like a day after. And most people don't understand that the hurricane itself didn't cause all the damage. It was a levy failure. The next large event was Sandy and Sandy was an issue because quite honestly, most of the people and not Postal people, but people in general on hearing that it was gonna hit Long Island and New York city just went, no, it's not, it never hits here. So it wasn't necessarily taken all that seriously. And that in itself is a challenge because a lot of the precautionary things that could have been done may not have been done. Post that I think 2017 was probably the watershed mark for us, because you had back to back to back hurricanes of significance. Start out with Michael, and then you had Irma come in across Florida and didn't do a whole lot of damage, but it had the potential was a category five and it, it looked pretty dire at one point. And then you had Maria come in and really pummeled Puerto Rico. And we learned an awful lot on that because they lost basically their power grid. If you remember, that was a big challenge for them. And the port was damaged for a couple of days and the airport was shut down. So logistics became the challenge. Last year, Ida came through and that's the first I've ever seen an entire metropolitan city go down without power. It took out one transmission tower along the Mississippi river by wind. And I don't think they were expecting that. And you had an entire metropolitan area plus without power. So that was the big challenge there. So I can't… just like each one has its own personality, they present their own sets of challenges. So it's not, there's not one that really stands out for me. They all do.
Dale Parsan:
I can't say I'm surprised!
Mike Swigart:
For different reasons!
Dale Parsan:
Mike. So we're getting towards the closing outta the of today's episode. And I have to say just a huge, thank you for you coming out and sharing with me and the audience, what it is that your group does, cuz frankly, I had no idea, like you said, that you guys serve as kind of the silent warriors in the background, making sure that we keep our infrastructure ongoing or that we can be back up to speed as quickly as possible and help the help the American people get back to what their new sense of normal following a disaster. With that being said, I just wanna thank you again for joining us today.
Mike Swigart:
Thank you for having me.
Dale Parsan:
All right, Mike, it's time for Did You Know… This is a chance for us to share some interesting details about the Postal Service that most people probably don't know. Some people think of email as a thorn in the Postal Services side, a poor substitute for the time honored tradition of letter writing. But did you know that the post office actually offered a hybrid email and hard copy mail service 40 years ago?
Mike Swigart:
I did not know that - 40 years ago!
Dale Parsan:
Mike Swigart:
Very good.
Dale Parsan:
Well that wraps up this episode of Mailin’ It. Don't forget to subscribe to Mailin’ It wherever you get your podcast to make sure you don't miss the next episode. And follow along on Instagram @USPostal Service, Twitter @USPS and on Facebook.