Taking care when things go wrong
Emergency preparedness and public health
I’m Michael Loehr, I’m the chief of emergency preparedness and response for the Washington State Department of Health. I’ve been here since February of 2014, and before that I was with Public Health Seattle and King County as the preparedness director for about 11 years.
My background is actually in land use planning, a great field, but I found it terribly boring when I first got out of school, and so I had an opportunity at a very young part of my career to jump over to emergency management in the state of Florida. That was really a great testing ground, because there’s a lot of activity, there’s a lot of disasters that were occurring, so I learned quite a bit, and then I decided to pack up and move out to Washington state, and I’ve been in emergency management in Washington state since the beginning of 2001.
[on screen text] So, you traded “boring” for…?
It’s interesting, it’s a high-pressure job. There’s a lot of stress at times, but it’s incredibly rewarding, because we know what we’re doing is saving lives, and that’s really at the heart of it. Everything you do has an effect on someone who’s lost their home, who’s gotten sick, who’s lost a family member, so that’s what kind of drives us forward, is we know that the benefits of our work is to all seven million people in the state, and it’s helping them heal, it’s helping them recover, it’s helping them survive.
[on screen text] If you could meet one person?
My grandfather on my mom’s side. I never met him. He grew up in the poorest part of Ireland, was an immigrant, just had an incredibly tough young part of his life, but survived and excelled and thrived, and I would love to have known him, and I’d love to get to know him.
[on screen text] If you could have one superpower…?
I would want the ability to read minds.
[on screen text] Your one food on a deserted island?
Dark chocolate.
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