On April 8, 2024, a massive influx of visitors will descend on Indiana, joining Hoosiers as witnesses to history: a solar eclipse with 60 Indiana counties in its path of totality.
“We’re going to be the adoptive parents of hundreds of thousands of new Hoosiers during this event,” says Jess Kindig (BSPA’04, MSCJPS’12), the Indiana Department of Homeland Security’s North Region Exercise Program Manager. “Their lives are in our hands, so we’re very concerned with making sure everyone is safe, has a good time, and hopefully comes back to visit Indiana in the future.”
As is often the case during large events, O’Neill faculty, alumni, and students are playing an integral part in keeping native Hoosiers and visitors alike safe during the eclipse.
In addition to working at IDHS, Kindig serves an adjunct faculty member for the O’Neill School in Indianapolis. So does Melanie Pattenaude, the IDHS Logistics Section Chief and State of Indiana Emergency Management Assistance Compact Coordinator. She leads efforts to acquire and allocate resources for local leaders during emergencies.
For the past several months, she’s been working with state agencies and local partners to address resource gaps. That includes developing plans for what to do if communications go down or if local agencies run out of resources—things like fuel, water, food, road signs, barricades, even portable toilets.
“Our top objectives are always life safety, life sustaining, and property protection,” Pattenaude says. “But we have to weigh where the impacts are because if we give something to one location, we may be taking it away from another. We have to push resources to the right place at the right time and in the right quantity.”
Kindig also has been helping leaders around the state prepare for the eclipse for the past several months. She’s traveled to communities across the state to conduct practice exercises that focus on communications, traffic management, crowd control, cybersecurity, weather, and other public safety issues.
“We want to make sure everyone’s thinking not only about the eclipse but also about the many other things that could happen when their resources are stretched,” she says.
In public safety management, those are known as cascading effects.
“People trickling in over several days is one thing, but when hundreds of thousands of people all try to leave a place at the same time, things are going to get backed up,” Kindig explains. “Some drivers may pull off and block the shoulders on highways and interstates. Others may try to escape the gridlock by diverting onto country roads, which aren’t built for that kind of traffic.”
Those decisions can impact both main and alternates routes for emergency responders, increasing response times for emergencies—costing precious minutes in potentially dangerous situations.
But Kindig says local teams have spent more than a year putting plans in place.
“Our local emergency managers, first responders, and public works folks are pretty smart and quite clever,” Kindig says with a smile. “They’ve talked about turning ATVs into mobile off-road ambulances or relying on motorcycle officers to be the first line of defense for basic medical care.”
She says some counties are leaning into mutual aid agreements to support each other before turning to the state for assistance.
Calls for additional support from the state will go through the IDHS Emergency Operations Center. Both Kindig and Pattenaude will be there during the eclipse, along with O’Neill students who are interning with IDHS Logistics. Thanks to their connections with O’Neill faculty, they’ll get to experience the eclipse in a way that few others will while gleaning lessons through on-the-job experience.
“We listen to what’s happening on the ground with our liaisons and Emergency Management Agency directors to make sure we’re anticipating and weighing where those resources need to go,” Pattenaude explains.
While Pattenaude and Kindig are at IDHS monitoring requests from local agencies, O’Neill alumna and Director of Safety and Security for the Indiana State Fairgrounds Jennifer Esterline’s (BSCJ’12, MSCJPS’15) team will be in the middle of the crowd at Indiana’s largest eclipse campout.
“We have a unique space with open sky,” she says. “We know people are looking for places to camp, which we have the space for. We also want to share the science related to the eclipse and create a fun family event.”
The fairgrounds has hosted similar events in the past and is planning for nearly 1,000 campers to arrive for the eclipse.
With a crowd that large, Esterline shares Pattenaude and Kindig’s safety concerns and has been working with IDHS to prepare for the big day.
“This event is unlike any other,” she adds. “This isn’t your standard concert or sporting event, so it provides a unique opportunity to think critically about resources, planning, and security.”
Those are all lessons Esterline plans to share with O’Neill students in her class this semester and in the future. Like Kindig and Pattenaude, she also teaches at O’Neill. Their day jobs mean these women can provide students with firsthand knowledge of what it’s like to be in the trenches making the difficult decisions that keep the public safe.
“As a practitioner, I can provide tangible stories that sometimes paint a really sad, desperate picture—but one that’s honest,” Kindig says. “Sometimes the hardest lessons we learn come from the biggest mistakes we make. In our line of work that can mean lives and property are lost. If we don’t do something right, someone could suffer because of it. Our students need to understand that.”
Pattenaude adds that being able to help students connect what they read in their textbooks with the real world is a critical step in them fully understanding the lessons they’ve been taught and the career options available in public safety management.
“A lot of people don’t realize these kinds of positions exist,” she says. “These aren’t magic things that just happen. Each state has an Emergency Management Agency working behind the scenes every day to help protect its citizens.”
She even pulls back the curtain for her students, providing an EOC tour at the end of the semester. She says that experience has served as a launchpad for student internships and careers.
Having a direct pipeline to information and experience is one thing Esterline says she appreciated about having practitioners as part of the faculty when she was an O’Neill student. Now, she’s proud to have come full circle and provide those same insights for her students today.
“As practitioners, we are teaching because we want to share our knowledge with the next generation,” she says. “We can talk about the ‘real world’ in a way that complements the more theoretical side of teaching, and we have strong relationships with other agencies that can help our students.”
Kindig says her journey through O’Neill helped her become the leader she is today.
“My public affairs courses as an undergrad helped me develop the ability to be a chameleon and speak the language of the different communities that I go into,” she says. “They taught me how to build relationships and garner trust within those communities.”
Her graduate-level public safety courses took those skills one step further, combining them with ways to keep communities safe before, during, and after a crisis by prioritizing goals and working as a team.
And while she credits her O’Neill education with building a strong educational foundation for her current career, Kindig says she walked away with an even greater lesson—one she is passionate about passing on to the students each semester and one that she carries with her every day in her work at IDHS.
“O’Neill’s programs will change you, if you let them,” Kindig stresses. “You might not feel like you’re the bravest person in the world, but you are willing to stand up for others who need your help.”
