Tim Duffer was a firefighter when Tropical Storm Michael hit Danville in 2018 and caused widespread flooding that led to the deaths of five people across Virginia’s Southside.
“I don’t want to ever see citizens die because they drove into water,” he said. “A part of that’s education, being able to have the resources and the time to go out there and educate people on, ‘Hey, don’t drive into this water.’ People don’t know that — they think they can do it.”
Shortly after Michael hit, Duffer became the deputy fire chief and the city’s emergency management director, two roles with high demands in keeping citizens safe. Emergency managers do everything from disaster preparation and mitigation, to community outreach and education, to grant writing, to coordinating disaster response and recovery. That role, though it may sound like it is enough for a dedicated employee, is tackled by many who already have jobs in localities across the commonwealth.
Among 42 localities across the Southwest and Southside regions, about 14 have full-time emergency managers, according to data provided by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. Many of the remaining 28 localities have emergency managers who, like Duffer, split their time between that role and another full-time job.
In the aftermath of Tropical Storm Michael, which caused more than $10 million in damage to the city, working as both the deputy fire chief and the city’s emergency manager was like “drinking water from a firehose,” said Duffer, who was in Richmond on Thursday on behalf of the Virginia Emergency Management Agency to support legislative efforts to bring more resources to emergency management across the state.
Years ago, Danville had a full-time, dedicated emergency manager, but a number of positions were consolidated into one in departments across the city during the 2008 recession.
“The city had to make hard choices,” Duffer said.
Those cuts led to a lack of staffing, he said, and emergency management became more reactive rather than proactive, in areas across the state that lack full-time, dedicated emergency managers.
“We need to be meeting, we need to be planning. I tell people, I don’t like to meet people on the scene of a crisis, I want to meet them before,” Duffer said. “Let’s have a blue sky day to meet.”
Hurricane Helene drove home a need for emergency management resources
Danville didn’t see as much widespread flooding during Hurricane Helene as other localities in Southwest Virginia, but the storm did spin off tornadoes around the area. Those tornadoes damaged parts of Pittsylvania County and infrastructure for utilities administered by Danville in the county, Duffer said.
As Southwest Virginia continues to recover from Helene, four months later, lawmakers from the region have shifted their focus to Richmond and what they can do during the 2025 General Assembly session to offer support and resources to support emergency management ahead of the next disaster.
Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, and Del. Alex Askew, D-Virginia Beach, have introduced companion legislation in the state Senate and House of Delegates that would create a state fund and grant program to support emergency management programs and personnel across the state.
The Virginia Department of Emergency Management, or VDEM, had also submitted a request to include $15.68 million in the budget amendments to be considered during the 2025 session. That money would go toward hiring of dedicated, full-time emergency management personnel in localities that are lacking, or toward other mitigation efforts to prepare for future disasters. The money was not included in Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s budget amendment request. Youngkin did include about $127 million in his budget amendment proposal for Helene-related damage and to establish a standing fund to support recovery after future disasters.
The state agency relies on non-disaster federal grants to fund 65% of its core functions but that federal funding has not kept up with inflation and a 10% reduction in that funding occurred in fiscal year 2024, said Brian Misner, legislative co-chair for the Virginia Emergency Management Association.
“This is not the first time there have been similar asks from the agency,” Misner said during a presentation to a House appropriations subcommittee meeting on Wednesday. VEMA is made up of more than 900 emergency management employees who work across all levels of government, health care, education, the military and other industries.
Misner noted that the funding request, if granted, would allow for VDEM to funnel money down to localities through grants for full-time emergency management positions, the purchase of shelters, if necessary, to aid in disaster response and other preparation and response expenses.
“It really would help us with that local focus of making sure each community had a baseline capability to be able to work with each other in the region,” he said.
About 25% of the localities across the commonwealth have a full-time emergency manager, with enough staff to maintain essential program functions, Misner told the House subcommittee. Many localities don’t have full-time, dedicated emergency management personnel.
“We are concerned that this is not a sustainable approach,” Misner said.
He noted that many disasters start and end at the local level and many fail to reach the threshold necessary to trigger post-disaster assistance from federal agencies.
Nationally, he said, insurance companies are canceling homeowners and renters policies in high-risk areas and the cost of flood insurance can be prohibitively high for many.
“It hasn’t quite crept up to Virginia yet, but it’s starting to,” he said.
What full-time emergency management could look like
Peter McCann, director of the Office of Emergency Management at Radford University, works full time as an emergency manager.
Radford University was flooded when the New River surged, following Hurricane Helene. Parking lots and athletic fields were underwater after the river rose significantly higher than anticipated. Electrical equipment that had been installed on or near the ground in those facilities had been affected by the flooding.
McCann said his office altered plans in real time and pulled together a damage assessment for repairs and rebuilds after the floodwaters receded. “We’re still not completely, fully back and operational in all aspects,” he said, nearly four months after the disaster hit. “We’re still in the recovery process.”
McCann’s office put in resource requests to the state to prepare for flooding. They filled and placed sandbags around facilities and braced for the worst.
“For us, now, it’s looking like, alright, this happened once, it could happen again, what do we need to do to mitigate against those circumstances?” said McCann, who also was in Richmond on Thursday on behalf of VEMA to support the bill.
McCann said he tries to help surrounding localities that don’t have a dedicated emergency manager as much as possible to prepare for when disaster could strike. That help looks like assistance in coordinating response and recovery following a disaster.
“If you have someone dedicated to it, you’re looking at mitigation ahead of time, a lot of preparedness, getting plans in place,” he said.
That mitigation can look like considering all outcomes of a potential disaster, preparing for those outcomes, educating the community, and coordinating efforts with surrounding localities to make disaster-related losses as small as possible.
