Severe weather situations can be stressful events, especially to some of the most vulnerable individuals in our communities including the elderly. Older individuals may not be aware of severe conditions or have the means to seek shelter, so having a plan and support system could make the difference when it comes to life and death situations.
On this week's episode, Dr. Lauren Southerland joins the podcast to explain why hazardous weather like heat, wildfire smoke and hurricanes often takes a greater toll on senior citizens. She also discusses what you can do to help keep your loved ones safe and what societal changes should be made to deal with an aging population and climate change.
Dr. Southerland is an emergency medicine physician at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center and clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Southerland, who is passionate about helping older adults maintain healthy, independent lives, specializes in geriatric emergency medicine.
Episode preview
We want to hear from you! Have a question for the meteorologists? Call 609-272-7099 and leave a message. You might hear your question and get an answer on a future episode! You can also email questions or comments to podcasts@lee.net. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.
We want to hear from you!
Have a question for the meteorologists? Call 609-272-7099 and leave a message. You might hear your question and get an answer on a future episode! You can also email questions or comments to podcasts@lee.net.
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About the Across the Sky podcast
The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:
Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Headliner and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Weathering the Storm: Senior Safety in Severe Weather
Across the sky podcast features experts on hurricane preparedness for senior citizens
Joe Martucci: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the across the sky podcast. We Enterprise's National Weather Podcast. I am Meteorologist Joe Martucci, based here in New Jersey. We have Sean Sublette over at the Richmond Times Dispatch. We have Matt Holiner, based in Chicagoland, and Kirsten Lang over in Tulsa. For this week's episode, we are talking about see preparedness when it comes to our senior residents and our listeners here on the across the sky podcast, we have Dr. Lauren Sutherland from the got to Remember to Z, Ohio State University to talk about this very topic. This is something I've actually done a story on in the past in regards to Superstorm Sandy in 2012 in New Jersey about how just kind of the challenges that our senior friends have when it comes to evacuating, when there are hurricane evacuations. But we get to much more than that.
Dr. Lauren Sutherland discusses what types of weather older adults worry about
Joe Martucci: Sean, Matt, Kirsten, what did you guys get out of this podcast, that we had with Lauren?
Sean Sublette: Yeah, it was really good to hear from her what types of weather she gets most concerned about. Right. Because there's all kinds of damaging severe weather hurricane, ice storm, winter storm, tornadoes, floods. So, it was interesting because her answer surprised me, but at the same time, it kind of gave me a little reassurance that we're moving in the right direction in terms of getting the right messages across.
Matt Holiner: And I think it's easy to look at the disaster preparedness, like, how do you seniors handle when you're talking about these big events, a landfalling hurricane or a major severe weather outbreak? But it's also worth noting that the other types of weather that impact seniors differently than younger adults, and we got into that talking about how seniors are more impacted by cold air outbreaks, heat waves, and air quality. We talk about that category that we often mention unhealthy for sensitive groups. Well, who's included in those sensitive groups? Older adults. And so we talk about that and why older adults are more susceptible to things like air pollution.
Sean Sublette: Yeah.
Kirsten Lang: And she also gives good advice for those who may have aging parents as well, and how to keep them safe during these times of events.
Joe Martucci: Well said, everyone. And without further ado, we're going to present Dr. Lauren Sutherland.
Dr. Lauren Sutherland specializes in geriatric emergency medicine
Joe Martucci: And we are now pleased to introduce Lauren Sutherland. She has an MD as well as a, newly acquired Master's of Public Health. She's an emergency medicine physician at the Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center and clinical Associate Professor of emergency medicine at OSU as well at the College of Medicine. She specializes in geriatric emergency medicine because she's really passionate about helping older people, maintaining healthy, independent lives and lifestyles. And her research focuses on finding strategies to continually advance this type of care. So, Dr. Sutherland, we appreciate you coming on today.
Lauren Southerland: Thank you so much for having me. It's always fun to talk about my favorite topic.
Joe Martucci: We're happy to have you too. we were talking off camera about we found this relevant to have you on for a few reasons. One, we find that a lot of our listening audience does skew a little bit on the older side. A lot of our senior populations listening, and we love that. We thank everybody who's listening out there, but also when it comes to disasters and emergencies and there's so much involved with it than just, hey, here's the weather forecast. It's okay. Now, what's emergency management doing? What are you doing? All those kind of things come at a crossroads. So my first question is, what actually got you interested in this topic?
Lauren Southerland: So I think what got me interested in it most is my patients. So being an emergency room doctor, I've had multiple cases where people have had to be picked up by EMS and brought to the Er because of poor preparation for weather disasters. One case I remember is there was a big storm coming up, and I had a patient who was brought in because the storm knocked out electricity, and she only had enough supplemental oxygen to last 4 hours, and she was oxygen dependent. So if you're at home on home oxygen and the power goes out, you're out of luck. So we had to bring her into the hospital until the power is back on at her home.
Joe Martucci: When you talk about your day to day when it comes to this topic, what are you doing? Is it more research? Are you out there in the field speaking with seniors or emergency managers? I know you're very busy. We have a lot of different titles for you. But speaking more about the geriatric emergency.
Lauren Southerland: Medicine part of it, yes. So the idea of geriatric emergency medicine is that the Er was really designed for a young person in a car accident. You're perfectly healthy, you're doing fine, and then something hits your appendix ruptures or you break your arm, and then you go to the Er. We fix that acute problem, we get you back home, and you're fine. What the Er is not set up for as well is, an older adult who has a lot of different medical issues that maybe they're managing them all. Okay. But then if something hits them, it doesn't have to be a full pneumonia. It could just be a cold, or it could be a new weakness, or their dementia is worse thinning. And then trying to sort out what exactly is the problem, whether it's a new medicine that's causing them to feel bad or what's going on is very difficult in the Er. And requires a lot more attention and time than we typically kind of budget per patient. So I love my older adult patients because I find them more intellectually stimulating, friendly. It's fun to try to navigate things and through this work of trying to make the Er better for older adults, I also do a lot of work with our community services. So working with our local paramedics, columbus has, I think, 22 different EMS agencies. Every little township has their own, and some of them have social workers. There's also local community agencies that help older adults to stay happy and healthy, or even do things like line our home repairs and home health services and AIDS and things, meals on Wheels. All of those are paid for by taxes. And so I work with our Public Health Office on Aging. I work with our area agency on aging, I work with Adult Protective Services. So really, all these different agencies. And, we've talked many times about the stresses that happen on especially what we call community dwelling older adults. So older people who, maybe have been in their home for 30, 40 years, and maybe that home is a weatherproof guideline from 40 years ago and hasn't been updated.
Joe Martucci: It sounds like both of my grandparents houses is what happened to here.
Lauren Southerland: Yeah. Do they have good windows? I'll have to ask next time.
Joe Martucci: I go over to ask them when the last time they got their windows replaced. And maybe they're Anderson windows, who knows?
Why are seniors more impacted by weather than regular adults or younger adults?
Matt Holiner: And Lauren just thinking about other ways that weather impacts, senior citizens. One thing that stands out to me is when we get Heat Advisories and Air Quality Alerts, particularly those air Quality alerts, there's usually a category called Unhealthy for sensitive groups. And what's included in that sensitive groups is senior citizens. So what I'm curious about is, why is it that things like the heat and when we have wildfire smoke or other pollutants in the air, why are seniors more impacted than regular adults or younger adults, I should say?
Lauren Southerland: Excellent question. we could do a whole semester, on this. So, older adults, as we age, our physiology changes. And part of that is your body is constantly detecting your heart rate, your blood pressure, monitoring your fluid status, and telling your kidneys how much to pee out and how much water to retain. Older adults, kind of quickly, unless they're really focused and they're someone who's exercising every day and keeping up their protein, your muscle mass tends to slowly decline as you age. And that means you can't shiver as well. You don't build body heat as well. We think of the older ladies that always have afghans and stuff because they're frequently cold. So cold events, they can't maintain body heat as well. Heat events, they can't sweat as well. And they dehydrate more easily as we gain medical problems as we go through life. Maybe you have some high blood pressure, so your doctor puts you on a water pill to keep your blood pressure down. Then you're peeing out more than you normally would and you dehydrate extra quickly. Also, your thirst response changes with age, and your appetite does, too. So older adults often don't feel the initial urge like, oh, it's hot out. I'm so thirsty. I should start hydrating really well. I know a lot of older adults also reduce their liquid intake because they're worried about having to get up in the night and pee. I don't drink anything after four because otherwise I'm up all night peeing. Unfortunately, urinary changes also happen, and so people will deliberately restrict their water intake, not realizing how the heat is affecting them. There's a lot more, but that's something to think about right now. Yeah.
As you age, your lungs become more susceptible to pollutants in the air
Matt Holiner: I wanted to hit on the air quality as well. what is it as you age that we become more susceptible to the pollutants in the air as well?
Lauren Southerland: So remember back in 1940 when a lot of older adults were alive and everybody smoked, and all restaurants were smoking? Restaurants. Even if you weren't a smoker, we know that that second hand smoke affected everybody. I'm the child of the 80s that I remember being picked up from school and, the other parents, everyone in the parent line had the cigarettes outside their car. It was very common. Right. So a lot of people have long term damage from smoking. Also, your just respiratory capacity, your ability to take a deep breath in, your ability to filter out bad things in your lungs, fight off infections. Imagine if you might have 100% lung capacity, but when you're 85, maybe you have 80% of your lung capacity. And then I throw some smoke in those lungs, and that puts you down to 50% lung capacity. So you just don't have as much what we call functional reserve or extra ability in your lungs to take any small hit.
What the elderly can do when severe storms and tornado warnings come through
Kirsten Lang: So we get, in Tulsa, some pretty severe weather, as you guys do as well, where you live. And I guess my question is, when you have severe storms and tornado warnings that come through for the elderly population, is there any advice? Because so many times they say you hear tornado warnings, you need to get to a safe space. What basement? bathroom in the middle of the house, whatever it might be. Some elderly patients aren't able to move around as easily. Is there any advice maybe that you would give to those that are in those types of situations? And I know everybody's a little different, but they're in those situations that they could do to, make themselves as safe as possible?
Lauren Southerland: Oh, that's a wonderful question. So I think especially sheltering from tornadoes or severe storms, you usually think, go to the basement. Right. But many older adults are almost restricted to the first level of their houses due to mobility issues. If you're in a walker, going down a flight of stairs to the basement is going to be very difficult and dangerous for you. So a couple of things they can do is, one, figure out who their local emergency medical services, EMS agency is, and often, they will keep lists of vulnerable older adults so that they'll know if, hey, if there's a big storm, a power is knocked out, they should know who to go and check up on. But if you don't call and say, my mom lives at this address, I'm four states away, I worry about her every storm. Can you make sure she's on your list of people to check if there's a problem in that area? Not all EMS agency does, but it's worth a call. And maybe you'll encourage more to do so. Another thing that you can do is make sure that you know who your neighbors are. So if you're an older adult who, is very healthy and capable, check in with your neighbor, say, hey, let's have a little cul de sac plant so that I've got all your cell phones, I can check with you, I can help you get to a safe place if you need to. So those of us, we have to be communities, and weather affects us all as communities, and we have to make sure that we're helping each other. And if you know that you would have difficulty getting to a safe place, can you work with family and friends to develop as safe a place as possible? On the first floor, sometimes a bathroom or in a room of the house?
Sean Sublette: Yeah. Extending off of that, a little bit. Those are the smaller disasters, if you will. But when we think about safety messaging for larger storms, whether that's a hurricane or maybe it's a more devastating or longer term a winter storm, are ah there some kind of messages that you wish we would be getting out as a weather community better than we are doing now when we look at these larger scale weather phenomenon that pose greater risk to older adults?
Lauren Southerland: Yes. I think one of them is medication management. So letting people know, even if you're safe in your home, if electricity goes out and you have insulin that needs to stay refrigerated, or other medications that need to be refrigerated, make sure you've got a lot of ice packs in your freezer or things to keep things cool until electricity comes back on. Or if you need to travel too, imagine having enough medication and packing it all up to travel. I also think the way emergency response systems work in the US. Is we don't want to evacuate people unless we absolutely have to. That's a big burden on people. It's a big issue with traffic. It can cause more problems. So they try to predict, but weather is what it is, and they try to delay evacuation orders until they're as sure as possible that people need to leave. And so sometimes that doesn't allow time for older adults to make the preparations they should be, especially for things like medication, oxygen travel, and pets. Pets is another big one. People love their pets. And sometimes emergency shelters won't let you take cats and dogs and lizards and birds with you. So having an emergency response plan for your animals, too, can make people more comfortable with evacuation and with following emergency orders. I don't know. Do you have any pets, Sean?
Sean Sublette: we have a three year old dog, half shiba inu, half husky, and, there are times she can be a handful. So I understand that that is a challenge, to be sure.
Lauren Southerland: That sounds adorable. And I will have to see your dog in, like, the super doll with everybody evacuated together. you could imagine the chaos.
Joe Martucci: No. Well, I know when we had, Sandy here in 2012 in New Jersey, there were some people, like, I don't want to move because of I have my pets. I don't know what to do with my pets. And I know it's not necessarily an age thing, but just in general, it's a good idea. You make a good point to, make sure you have a plan for your pets as well, because we often think of them just as a part of the family, as your brothers and sisters and parents and daughters and sons are here. So very good stuff. We're going to take a break, and then on the other side, we're going to talk to you more about this topic here with Dr. Lauren Sutherland here on the across the sky podcast. And we are back with the across the sky podcast, hosted by your Lee Weather team here. You can find new episodes every Monday wherever you get your podcasts or on your favorite news website. We are here with Dr. Lauren Sutherland from the Ohio State University. She is an emergency medicine physician here, specializing in geriatric emergency medicine. And, we were talking a little bit I was talking a little bit about Sandy in 2012. And I did a story on this last year about extreme sea level rise or extreme events caused by sea level rise, your sandies, whatever that have seen increased water levels in some of these coastal towns. A lot of people, who are seniors like to live at the shore. I want to do that one day, too, hand up. But the research that I found was that 12% of those over the age of 80 lack mobility to evacuate on their own, and 13 would be unable to hear sirens or commands from emergency personnel. And one of the chiefs of the local fire department down here had a quote talking to me about Sandy. They said, it's not that our seniors aren't intelligent enough to leave. It's just half the time they don't have a place to go because they don't have anybody left, or they can't even evacuate on their own. So just kind of going off of the numbers. And what I said there, what do you tell emergency personnel if you're speaking with them about this and what to do? Because sometimes they don't have anybody left. And not only that, if you can't hear a siren as well. You might not know, hey, a tornado is coming, or we have even a fire, right? It doesn't even have to be a weather event, per se, but any kind of these disasters that comes through, yeah.
Lauren Southerland: It can be a big deal. And your sense of smell can decrease as you get older, so you might not even smell the wildfires and things as much. I remember one delightful older woman who had lived alone in her house, and her family was starting to realize that maybe great grandma wasn't doing as well as they thought. And so they were all in the Er. With me, and I asked her, man, what would she do if you smelled smoke in the house? Smoke? I don't smoke. We'll be just fine. okay, so she wouldn't be able to respond to a fire alarm or an emergency. Well, and this is about time that she needs an assisted living or some other type of care. But it's hard to make that decision as a family because obviously, we all want to stay in our own homes as long as possible. But, visual problems, too, tend to get worse as we get older. And so your ability to drive to a new place, maybe somebody is buying it into the grocery store, to their doctors or things around town, but then you're telling them to evacuate town around new routes, and that's incredibly difficult for somebody who's 85.
Matt Holiner: Yeah, and that's kind of what I want to focus on, because I'm sure that the ideal situation is that younger family members are nearby and can help in these emergency situations when there's a possible evacuation needed. But, my concern is for those who are a long distance away from their older relatives, and they can't quickly get there to assist them in an emergency situation, say, a landfalling hurricane or possibility of a big, severe weather outbreak. So what recommendations do you have to help those family members who can't always be nearby and get to their older relatives quickly? What can they do to help prepare them to handle that situation and make them better prepared for a situation like that? If they can't get to them to actively help them, what are some of the things maybe they can buy or contacts, people, a different kind of person they can contact who might be able to assist? What kind of recommendations do you have for those who are farther away from the relatives that can't actively help them?
Lauren Southerland: Matt, I think you just answered your own question, so, yes, you need to make a plan with them and talk through it. Talk through different scenarios with your parents. Okay. If this were to happen with tornado warning, what are you doing right now? What can I install to make it safer for you and have a separate contact so that you know not only your loved one, but also a neighbor's number or someone else in the city who is there and can stop in and check on them.
It can be more difficult to navigate new situations, especially with dementia
Kirsten Lang: I want to ask about even the kind of emotional or mental state of older patients, too, that may maybe have been through, some sort of emergency weather, situation, say a tornado or severe weather, some storm that came through, knocked down a tree in their yard, something like that, to where it could have emotionally scarred them. And do you notice that those elderly patients tend to hold on to those types of things a little bit more than those that are maybe younger in age? Is that something that you see that changes as we get older?
Lauren Southerland: I don't have much knowledge of, honestly. My guess would be that that's a person to person issue. Some of us move on more easily. I, have four kids. One is very much like, oh, that was a piece of paper given to me by somebody in kindergarten. And it has great meaning. I'm like, do you remember the kid's name? No, this is all I have left of him. And then there's like, man, I know what that is. Let's just move on more easily. some do not. But it can be more difficult to adjust, to change. It can be more difficult to navigate new situations, especially with things like dementia. There are many different kinds of dementia, but the most common Alzheimer's dementia, the first thing you lose is what's called executive function. Executive function is your ability to weigh risk and benefits, your ability to do complicated calculations in your finances. And that's why one of the reasons why older adults are more likely to get scammed, someone says, oh, I've got this great idea for you, and we'll make tons of money together. Oh, that sounds good. You can't weigh the risks and benefits as well with more complicated situations. And so I'm certain that probably applies to disaster management, too, and weather disasters. They're thinking, this house stood through six storms already. Nothing can be thrown at me that hasn't been thrown at me before. You're shaking your head, Sean, like you've heard this from your parents'we.
Sean Sublette: we hear this a when in weather and media, after every storm, ever since we begin our careers, right after college, we hear, I've never seen this before. And you hear that every time there's a storm everywhere you go, because these are unique events in someone's life, whether it's a Sandy in Jersey, whether, ah, it's a Camille in Virginia like we had in 1969.
One of the issues older adults are most concerned about with weather is flooding
Sean Sublette: But to expand on that point a little bit, are there particular types of weather disasters that you see kind of coming? Like in a shorter term forecast? Like, say, oh, there's a winter storm that's coming, or maybe there's a hurricane that's coming, an ice storm, a potential tornado outbreak. Are there types of events that every event has its bad in its own way, but are there particular kinds of events that are worse than others? I hate to say what's the top ten worst ones, but are there things that you see on a weather map? Or when one of us are talking about, ah, a particular kind of weather one or two days from now that really gets you overly concerned?
Lauren Southerland: I think one of the ones I'm most concerned about with older adults, it is extreme storms and flooding. Because the flooding takes out transport, m, and so it makes it so much harder to get to them, to evacuate them, to help them. And as you've seen extreme storms and flooding, it can take days, months to clean things out. You can have long term damage to your homes, to the air quality of your homes from the mold and things. So a tornado comes and it's terrible, but it's almost easier to pick up the pieces afterwards. I think also the extreme heat we've been seeing, especially this past summer, where there was just weeks and weeks of extreme heat, that has to be very difficult for older adults to deal with.
Sean Sublette: One of the things that we've tried to do better as a community of weather communicators is to emphasize the risks with flooding. Whether that's flash flooding along streams and creeks, or oceanside, bay flooding, coastal, flooding, because they each really cut down on transit and make it difficult for people to get where they need to go should they need to evacuate. But as you said, the tornado comes and goes, but flooding does long term damage. I want to say I'm glad to hear you say that, but it is something that I think emphasizes the work we need to do as a community to really emphasize the risk from flooding. Because flooding isn't always one of these sexier things you see on TV. Tornado is very visual, ice is very visual, snow, is very visual. Flooding as an onsense isn't necessarily a very visual thing. but of course, when it comes at night, it's especially dangerous.
We have an aging population and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent
Sean Sublette: So thank you for sharing that.
Matt Holiner: I kind of want to look at the big picture because it seems like we're headed towards the wrong direction. Because we got two things working against us here. One, we know the weather is becoming more extreme. These extreme events are occurring more often. And two, we definitely have an aging population. Ah, that baby boomer population isn't getting any younger. And so we have a growing amount of senior citizens. So I'm thinking as we go through the next 1020 years, what do we need to work on as a society to get people better prepared? We know we can't control the weather. I mean, obviously we could work on climate change and trying to reduce for extreme events. But from a society's perspective, let's plan on the preparation. If we know that there's probably going to be more extremely weather events that we've got this aging population. What do we need to work on to prepare those older adults? Like, what should we be working on collectively as society? What do you see as the biggest issue, the biggest thing that we need to work on to be prepared for the future?
Lauren Southerland: I think we are, as you said, getting a growing generation of older adults that are living longer and staying in their own homes longer. And we could have a whole nother discussion on weather disaster plans for, nursing facilities and other group home facilities. But I'm kind of focusing on the community dwelling older adults because I think that's where we as individuals can have a little more impact in our own communities. And as I said, not every EMS agency has a list of vulnerable older adults in their community. They don't even know where to go. We don't even know who's capable of getting out of their homes and evacuating and who's not. Probably not even in your own neighborhood. There's probably some neighbors you've seen like, oh, that's Betty. She looks a little weaker today. You know, her garden is not as pretty as it normally is. I think I heard she was in the hospital, but you don't really know if there was a storm, could Betty get out? Should you go check on help on her? Check on her door and help her or if she has a plan? So I think one of the great things that the National Center for EMS and other big EMS agencies is doing is trying to really up our game on disaster preparedness across the US. But it's difficult because every disaster is a new one, right? But there are some things like trying to make lists of vulnerable people. There are other things. So EMS agencies can put lockboxes on your doors where they can get in and out, but nobody else can. And so that's really helpful for older adult. So if they have to call 911 or they fall or something, then EMS can get in and get them without someone else having to be there to open up the door. Or as I've seen people drag themselves with a hip fracture across the floor to the front door to reach up and hit the lock button. We can be better about knowing who needs help and getting them the help they need. Emergency response systems. Not everybody has a cell phone. Still are. there other ways that we can communicate with people about local disaster plans and ensure that people have local disaster plans. That's hard on the national level, because so much of this needs to be community by community. What Kirsten sees in a big city like Tulsa might be different from somebody. Imagine if you're in a rural situation. You're a rural EMS agency that covers so many miles, and how are you even going to get to all the people and check up on them? I. Need, like what my dentist has. Did you know you have appointment tomorrow? respond yes. If you're aware and you have a plan. If they can text me 800 times for a dental appointment, we should be able to set up something where we can send out an alert and get a little response from people who need help.
Matt Holiner: Yeah, I think it all comes back to preparation and planning and that we always talk about this when it comes to these weather events. But there's a reason, I think when you bring senior citizens into it, it's even more important to do the preparation, do the planning, so that when the emergency happens, you know what to do. You have a plan, you're prepared for it. So do the planning ahead of time to get prepared for these events.
Lauren Southerland: so if everybody that listens to this calls a couple older relatives or checks on people's in the neighborhood and, make sure they have a disaster preparedness plan and a weather preparedness plan, we've done a good thing today in New Jersey.
Joe Martucci: We have something called Register Ready, which, identifies seniors who need special assistance. It was started kind of, in the wake of Sandy back in 2012, really just on the county level, first in one of the counties, and then spread it statewide. But I want to end with this because we kind of just touched on it before. I've heard just kind of over the years that as you age, it's better to be in a city as opposed to a suburb or a rural area. I want to know if you feel that's better for people's health as they get older, and why or why not, and how that could parlay into getting assistance when a disaster hits.
Lauren Southerland: I think you can age gracefully and have a great life in a rural setting or city setting, but you need to be someplace where you can access health care well, which is not every place in the US. There's some places with a lack of primary care doctors, a lack of hospitals, a lot of rural hospitals closing. What does that do to our disaster management when we have so many rural hospitals closing? So you have to consider the risks and benefits to the person. And if they live far out, where you don't have a lot of neighbors or be hard for someone to even get to you to check on you, then it's going to be difficult to make sure people are okay. But I love the, Jersey response system.
Joe Martucci: I want that mean, you know, can't all be New Jersey, but others try. Most fail to replicate. Well, I'll leave it off with that. I think that's a good note to leave it off on. But, Dr. Sutherland, we really appreciate the time. Thanks for, coming on and sharing your insight about this. And, we hope everyone that's listening got a good taste of her expertise and her words about how to, always stay safe and stay prepared in both, any kind of weather that we have, particularly the significant, extreme weather that we have. So thank you again for coming on.
Lauren Southerland: Thank you as well.
Joe Martucci: And we want to thank Dr. Lauren Sutherland again for coming on the podcast. And if you're keeping score at home, because I know I have, that is two of our last three podcasts where our guests like something that New Jersey does. So there's that.
Matt Holiner: The New Jersey connection keeps showing up.
Joe Martucci: Listen, often replicated, never duplicated.
Sean Sublette: The State University of New Jersey.
Joe Martucci: That's right, Rutgers. The State University of New Jersey at New Brunswick. If you want to go a step.
Sean Sublette: Forward, because that is where that's a lot to put on a sign.
Joe Martucci: Man yes. That's why we just put the little block R. We hope people get, that it's Rutgers at that point. So what'd you guys think? What'd you guys think?
Sean Sublette: No, it was good. My mom is starting to get older as well. So these are things that we have to start thinking about as she continues to get older, to maintain good quality of life for her and to be sure that she is in a safe place when the weather is threatening. She's at a good place now, and we want to be sure and keep it that way. But these are things and also, as people who the four of us, we message severe weather, right? Whether it's the classical damaging individual storms, a hurricane, a flood, an ice storm, to remember these important messages, to share with those who can't go somewhere, because sometimes they just can't.
Matt Holiner: Yeah, one of the things that stood out to me is when we're talking about severe weather coverage and what to do during a tornado warning, hey, get to the lowest floor of your home, get into the basement. And then you think you're telling people to do this, but there's some people that physically cannot do it. They might be watching you or listening to your report to take Shell shelter, and they're on the second floor of their home in a wheelchair, and there's nobody else in the home with them. And how are they going to get down to the first floor? How are they going to get down to the basement? So some people not being able to physically do it, and, that's a scary thought that you could be telling people to take action, they just can't do it. So making sure that to prepare those people and make sure that again, I think it's all about the plan and preparation. When you know there's a potential for a severe weather outbreak and there's going to be a chance to rain, that's paying attention to the forecast, then making sure that that person who cannot physically who may have to take shelter and can't physically do it. Making sure there's someone in the home with them to make sure that they can get to that safe spot. They can physically carry them down if need be. If they're not physically able to do it, they have someone with them who can help them in an emergency situation. So, paying attention to the forecast. And if you don't live near your older relatives, finding someone who can help them out, a close family friend or another family member, someone who can have access to help them out in case the worst should happen and a tornado is on the ground headed towards yeah, all good stuff.
Joe Martucci: And we appreciate her coming on, and especially as we're getting into winter weather, you have your blizzards snowstorms where you might actually be trapped in the house for a day or something like that. it was real good information. So we thank Lauren for coming on again here. Looking forward.
We have an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson coming up
Joe Martucci: Sean, I'm going to turn it over to you because we got, a big podcast coming up next Monday, don't we?
Sean Sublette: Yeah. So I'm getting ready to have an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, as he likes to say, your personal astrophysicist. he's launching kind of a book tour. A new book came out called To Infinity and beyond, talking about humans moving up through the atmosphere and beyond into the stars. the book tour is going to bring him down here through Richmond, so I was fortunate enough to score a 15 minutes zoom interview with him ahead of time. That interview we are actually doing, on, the 7 November. So we should drop that into the podcast, after that. So we'll talk about the importance of science and science communications, in an era of misinformation, which the four of us working in media, I know we've seen a lot of. So I'm very much looking forward to having him, do the interview and parlaying that into a podcast, coming up.
Joe Martucci: Awesome.
Matt Holiner: Yeah.
Joe Martucci: And we got plenty more episodes after that. I'll, pat ourselves on the back, our across the sky podcast team, because we have episodes lined up pretty much until the end of the year at this point. I think we're missing one at this point, one empty slot. But we got a lot coming up for you as we go forward in time. If you want to have a question or leave a question for us, you can on our, Voicemail Hotline. I should say 609-272-7099. Again, 609-272-7099. We did have a question a, couple of weeks ago, of course. So if you want to leave a question, we're more than happy to answer it. or you can email podcast@lee.net. So for Kirsten Lang, Matt Holiner and Sean Sublette I'm Joe Martucci. And thanks again for listening to another episode of the across the Sky podcast.