{"id":8909,"date":"2014-12-04T09:56:32","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T16:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=8909"},"modified":"2014-12-04T15:03:48","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T22:03:48","slug":"peak-profile-iain-hyde-06","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2014\/12\/peak-profile-iain-hyde-06\/","title":{"rendered":"Peak Profile: Iain Hyde \u201906"},"content":{"rendered":"
O<\/span>n June 22, 2012, Iain Hyde \u201906<\/b> was offered a new job. A mitigation specialist with Colorado\u2019s Office of Emergency Management for almost three years, he was promoted to the state\u2019s interim recovery manager position.<\/div>\n

On June 23, the Waldo Canyon Fire hit just a few miles from Colorado College \u2014 evacuating more than 30,000 people, destroying 347 homes, and killing two people.<\/p>\n

Looking back, Iain, who graduated with a degree in political science, says, \u201cIt was certainly no rest at all at the beginning. . . . What\u2019s interesting is that once you get into this [work], you don\u2019t really even have the time to pause and think about it. You just gotta keep going. It really is about the people who are impacted in the local communities at the end of the day, so you stay focused on them. You come out of it afterward wondering how the heck you got through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waldo wasn\u2019t the only disaster in the state at the time. Media bantered around the phrase \u201cstate on fire,\u201d as communities evacuated thousands from homes and businesses across Colorado, from Boulder and Fort Collins to Grand Junction and Lake George.<\/p>\n

By January 2013, Iain was promoted again to state disaster recovery manager, and the challenges continued to grow. In June, the Black Forest Fire north of Colorado Springs claimed two lives and more than 500 homes \u2014 now considered the most destructive fire in state history.<\/p>\n

And then the rains began.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn September 2013, we had the worst natural disaster the state has ever experienced,\u201d he says, referring to catastrophic flooding brought on by the extreme rainfall in Boulder, Larimer, and El Paso counties, among others.<\/p>\n

According to Iain, total damages across the state are close to $3 billion in housing, infrastructure, and economic impact. Part of his most recent promotion, in May to deputy chief recovery officer in Gov. John Hickenlooper\u2019s Colorado Recovery Office, is to help maintain a sense of urgency about the recovery process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe local communities have made incredible progress, but it\u2019s going to take years and years to fully recover. Throughout this entire process we need to work collaboratively with federal agencies, other state agencies, and our local communities on any number of different issues,\u201d he says. \u201cAs an example, [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] has provided the state with about $262 million to support recovery efforts \u2014 another $58 million will be forthcoming soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been coordinating with our state partners to put an action plan for those funds together, and done a lot of intensive public outreach to make sure the plan meets local needs. The funding is helping to rebuild or fix damaged housing and infrastructure, provide grants and loans to businesses impacted in places like Manitou Springs, and support watershed restoration efforts from Colorado Springs all the way north to Fort Collins.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother thing that we\u2019re working hard on is trying to identify ways that we can make our state and our local communities more resilient in the future so that we don\u2019t witness the same impacts the next time it rains like it did last September or the next time we have another wildfire like [what happened] in Colorado Springs.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big job, and Iain laughs when asked if he saw himself doing this kind of job while a CC student.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had absolutely no clue at all when I graduated that this would be the field that I would work in.\u201d<\/p>\n

He does credit one experience in particular with setting his career course. Hurricane Katrina hit during his senior year and, with support from then-President Dick Celeste and Dean of Students Mike Edmonds, Iain led a service trip to the Gulf Coast in January 2006.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was just one of those truly formative experiences for me,\u201d he says, \u201cthat even afterward I didn\u2019t necessarily think, \u2018Oh gosh, I\u2019m going to work in emergency management or disaster recovery,\u2019 but every time something happened after that first experience, you feel a desire to help out and it really calls to you.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that CC had a huge role in moving me in this direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iain serves on the Alumni Association Board of Directors<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 22, 2012, Iain Hyde \u201906 was offered a new job. A mitigation specialist with Colorado\u2019s Office of Emergency Management for almost three years, he was promoted to the state\u2019s interim recovery manager position. On June 23, the Waldo Canyon Fire hit just a few miles from Colorado College \u2014 evacuating more than 30,000…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-8909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-december-2014","tag-alumni-profiles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2014\/11\/Hyde-talk.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8909"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9164,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8909\/revisions\/9164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}