Erica Schachne, Editor of The Jerusalem Post Magazine, speaks with Larry French, a student in TAU’s Master’s program in Emergency and Disaster Management. The program is the first and only program of its kind offered in Israel and helps students become leaders who will protect their communities and help make them more prepared and resilient in today’s challenging times.
French, who hails from North Carolina, is a solution-focused certified disaster manager with over twelve years of experience in disaster response and team management in the United States. He arrived in Israel with his wife on October 5, just two days before Israel itself was confronted with one of the most challenging disasters in its history – the Hamas terror attacks in Israel’s south.
On the morning of October 7, French and his wife were staying in temporary housing and were awakened by the sound of sirens. Initially, people assured them that nothing serious had happened. Soon, they realized that events had taken a more ominous turn. They found a nearby shelter and tried to follow news reports to learn what had happened as the sirens sounded repeatedly in Tel Aviv.
“We started looking at what the school was saying, what the Israeli government was saying, and what the US Embassy was saying, and no one ordered us to evacuate,” recalls French. “My wife and I are both disaster responders, and we feel that we can trust ourselves to know when it is not safe to be somewhere. We decided to stay until we reached a point where we felt that we were not safe here.”
French has remained in Israel and divides his time between attending school three days a week, volunteering with TAU’s Task Force, sharing information around the world about what is happening in Israel, and exploring Tel Aviv and its environs with his wife and their dog.
He is delighted with the Emergency and Disaster Management program at TAU and appreciates the different perspectives that he is receiving, both from the Israeli instructors and from students who come from other countries. “Since there are students from around the world, we get different perspectives on how different countries handle disaster management. Israel is a country that has a long history of experience in disasters and emergencies. If I was going to learn how to do it, it should be in a country that could teach me many things that the United States could not teach me. It will make me more well-rounded when I go back to the US.”
He is similarly satisfied with the Israeli instructors in the program. “Many of the professors here have lived it – they served in the IDF or the public health field and have a great deal of experience,” he reports.