Mac Gagné, a lifelong weather enthusiast, had always dreamed of serving with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“My first day of work began on Monday, February 5,” says Mac Gagné, a national John A. Knauss Marine Policy fellow with Sea Grant. “I remember walking into FEMA HQ and receiving my badge for the first time. The big red banner of ‘Federal Emergency Manager’ at the bottom of my badge made me prouder to wear each day.” 

But Gagné couldn’t have anticipated what the experience would entail. “It remains one of the most remarkable years of my life.”

An Early Encounter

Gagné always had a strong interest in weather. Having grown up in suburban Ohio, she remembers a small tornado impacting her hometown of Worthington — a lasting memory, especially given that her family history already included facing a catastrophic tornado in Xenia, Ohio, decades before. As a result, Gagné wanted to understand everything about these natural phenomena, which she found both horrifying and intriguing.

It wasn’t until college, though, that Gagné discovered emergency management as a career choice. But her graduate classes and course readings could only prepare her so much for work in the field. “What’s required is a very human understanding. That doesn’t entirely show through the academic literature and research.”

Her interests manifested in an internship at the National Weather Service (NWS) and Gagné’s eventual decision to pursue a doctorate in computer science at NC State, where she specializes in narrative artificial intelligence. This branch of generative AI focuses on developing better technology for emergency managers. In Gagné’s case, this means creating better auto-generated Wireless Emergency Alerts for hurricanes.

In 2024, the time of Gagné’s Knauss fellowship, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was creating a new generative AI pilot to assist with hazard mitigation plans. Gagné’s personal interests and academic training were a natural fit for a role with FEMA’s RAPID team in its Resilience and Risk Management Directorate.

“In a lot of ways, I’m glad my onboarding at FEMA started during a disaster off-season, as the toll natural hazards would take during my time there would only continue to increase as the year went on,” says Gagné.

Not long into the fellowship, Gagné visited NOAA’s National Severe Storms Lab (NSSL) in Norman, Oklahoma. 

“I knew visiting the NSSL during May was going to be intense,” Gagné says. “I chose that month because I wanted to see what the Lab and the Storm Prediction Center was like during peak tornado and convective storm season.”

During her time there, she watched the center track a near-record-setting EF4 tornado in Greenfield, Iowa — a storm spanning over 40 miles with peak winds between 175-185 mph, according to the NWS — and also rode along with NSSL’s tornado intercept project to observe a more moderate EF2 tornado outside of Hollis, Oklahoma. While the latter storm resulted in no fatalities and minimal property damage, the Iowa tornado killed five and injured dozens. 

And for Gagné, as fascinating as it was to watch the storm unfold and see those carefully-crafted weather alerts dispersed in real time, the experience illustrated the importance — and the stakes — of this line of work.

“The Clouds Had Opened Up Over Western NC”

Hurricane season started early in 2024, a possibility that always requires preparation at NOAA and FEMA offices across the country. Gagné says June usually passes by quietly, with nothing more than blips on weather radars. In late July and into August, the NWS readies itself for the real start of hurricane season.

“The calendar of understanding hurricane-related emergency and disaster response is based around Katrina, which happened at the very end of August,” Gagné says. 

Summer passed, but as September neared its end, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida. Without causing too much damage to the Sunshine State, the storm then traveled up through Georgia, South Carolina, and eventually North Carolina, bringing with it historic rainfall and flooding. 

“It was like the clouds had opened up over western NC,” says Gagné, who could only watch FEMA employees leave headquarters and deploy to affected areas. Without the necessary title, she couldn’t join others on the ground in western North Carolina. 

Instead, Gagné performed key analyses of FEMA resources to determine the rates for allocation. Thanks to a computer science background, she could conduct immediate calculations and provide necessary algorithms to inform logistics on the ground.

But Gagné also says FEMA’s rescue and recovery efforts were not always met with thanks in rural Appalachia. Instead, FEMA agents encountered hostility and a growing number of threats — in some cases, at gunpoint. 

Gagné, who has family in rural Ohio and friends with ties to Appalachia, understood the response and helped on-the-ground FEMA agents by redirecting their efforts to local support and relief groups that could distribute resources as needed.

“I’m really passionate about specializing our emergency management and response to specific areas,” says Gagné, adding that “specific areas have different needs, different ways of communicating things, different channels of distribution for materials.”

At the end of the day, an “empathetic and understanding” approach to emergency response is Gagné’s goal, which necessitates catering efforts rather than applying a one-size-fits-all solution.

After the Storm

Following Hurricane Helene, Gagné was surprised to feel the emotional toll of their response work, even though she was physically disconnected from the impact of this natural disaster. But she quickly realized that sensitivity is vital to emergency management work.

“We shouldn’t hide the fact that we’re all impacted by these events because, in many ways, the most healing thing in the face of a crisis is human connection, sharing those emotions and those feelings,” says Gagné. “At the end of the day, these crises, they unite us in a way.”

Learn more about the John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.

More from Coastwatch on hurricanes.

Mac Gagné is a Ph.D. student in computer science at NC State University and serves in Northrop Grumman’s SSSD Chief Technology Office. Read more here. 

Carrie Clower is a science communicator for North Carolina Sea Grant and contributing editor for Coastwatch. She has a master’s in communication studies from the University of Alabama.

More from Coastwatch.

This story was originally published in Coastwatch.