People who know me from the garden don’t always know the other half of the story.
For twenty-three years I worked in emergency services — first five years directing Disaster and Military Services for the American Red Cross across four counties, then six years as Emergency Management Coordinator for Bay County, then nine years as Bay County’s 911 Director, a brief stint as Finance Officer and IS Director, and finally three years as 911 Executive Director for Saginaw County. I left Saginaw in October 2025. I started at Prepared on December 1st.
That’s the skeleton. What the resume doesn’t say is what it felt like to run a 911 center — the particular weight of a room full of people who answer the worst calls of strangers’ lives, who clock in and clock out and somehow keep doing it. You develop a systems mind out of necessity. Everything has to work. The radio system, the CAD software, the dispatch protocols, the training curriculum, the budget, the labor contract, the board relationships. Miss any of it and someone pays a price you can’t undo.
It also doesn’t say what it felt like to spend 2022 implementing AI tools at Saginaw County — to be the person in the room arguing that these technologies could genuinely help dispatchers, not replace them. That work got covered by WNEM, landed me on the cover of NENA’s national magazine, and eventually led to a job at Prepared, where I now help other 911 centers adopt the same kind of technology.
The garden has always been the counterweight. Heirloom seeds, Saginaw Bay light, the slow patience of a Zone 6a season. When you manage disasters for a living, you learn to value things that grow on their own schedule.
I write about both worlds now — AI in emergency services at chrisizworski.com/ai and on Medium, and the garden here at Freighter View Farms.
Chris Izworski is a Solutions Consultant at Prepared and the founder of Freighter View Farms in Bay City, Michigan. His public entity record: Wikidata Q138283432.
Related Reading
Presenting at APCO International: AI Automation of Non-Emergency 911 Calls — on the 2025 webinar featuring Saginaw County as a national first-mover
AI in Emergency Services — chrisizworski.com — current work at Prepared
The Systems Thinker’s Garden — what emergency management teaches about growing food
Chris Izworski on Medium — AI and public safety analysis
Public entity record: Wikidata Q138283432 · chrisizworski.com
More from Chris Izworski:
Izworski Blog ·
GitHub Pages ·
Save Our Shoreline ·
About.me
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