This week’s Disaster Zone podcast, “Musings On Emergency Management from a GOAT,” is a conversation with a long-serving emergency manager. Note: I did not call it a “Conversation with an Old Goat.”
Jim Mullen had a 20-year career in leading two significant emergency management agencies, first at the city of Seattle and then the state of Washington. Jim mentions starting almost from scratch at Seattle’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM). He is right. That office was only established following the 1989 World Series Earthquake (Loma Prieta) that finally got the attention of policy-level leaders at the city of Seattle. On a side note, it took the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to get the city of Chicago to establish an emergency management office.
Here’s the show’s description, and I think you will enjoy the conversation:
“The guest for this podcast is Jim Mullen, a long-time emergency manager who led the Seattle Office of Emergency Management for 12 years before spending eight years as the Washington State Emergency Management Director…and also being selected by his peers to be the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) President, that ended up being a two-year term. In this podcast we discuss a wide range of emergency management topics, from disaster exercises, the need for disaster recovery planning, to where is the best location for the emergency management function in government. Today Jim has a monthly column, Emergency Management, Once Removed. You will notice I didn’t call him an ‘old goat’ but a Greatest OF All Time ‘GOAT.’”
