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At only 39, Glen L. Woodbury ’85 is the top emergency management official in the second most risky state in the United States. “We have the second-highest disaster rating, next to California,” he says.
As director of the emergency management division for the state of Washington, Woodbury’s primary responsibility is to see that Washington’s six million residents are protected in case of natural or man-made disasters, including domestic and international terrorism.
Woodbury has been president of the National Emergency Management Association for the past year. He has been intimately involved in building a national defense against terrorism. His anti-terrorism interests extend beyond the nation’s borders as a member of the International Association of Emergency Managers.
Though anti-terrorism efforts had been in place prior to Sept. 11, 2001, Woodbury says, the pace quickened after terrorists rammed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “It’s like somebody stepped on the accelerator,” he says.
Woodbury’s interest in the nation’s defense began as a sophomore at Lafayette. He came to College Hill with an eye toward engineering and joined ROTC. In 1984, he was president of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity; in 1985, he commanded the ROTC Cadet Corps. He was named distinguished military graduate and earned the George C. Marshall Award.
After receiving an A.B. in engineering, Woodbury went directly into the Army as an officer in the Signal Corps. After a four-year tour of duty in Germany, he was assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, as a company commander.
Fresh from a nine-year stint in the Army, Woodbury went to work for Washington’s Emergency Management Division in 1992. Emergency management is part of the Washington Military Department, which includes the Washington Army and Air National Guard. He reports to Major General Timothy J. Lowenberg, who commands the state’s military department.
Woodbury rose quickly through the ranks from communications officer to emergency operations supervisor. In 1998, Gov. Gary Locke appointed the then 35-year-old as head of the state’s emergency management system.
On Feb. 28, 2001, Woodbury led the state’s emergency response to the Nisqually earthquake, the worst natural disaster since Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980. The quake, whose epicenter was 20 miles south of Seattle, registered 6.8 on the Richter scale. One person died and 407 were injured. Damages were in the half-billion-dollar range. The state’s infrastructure alone sustained $200 million damage, and the King County Courthouse, an 80-year-old landmark, took a $2.6-million hit.
With earthquakes the state’s primary natural disaster threat, Woodbury is vice chair of the Washington State Seismic Safety Committee and a board member of the Western States Seismic Policy Council. He is the emergency management representative to the national steering committee of the Advanced National Seismic System.
Some 1,000 quakes are recorded annually in Washington, though only five to ten are felt. Looming over Washington is the threat of “the big one,” an offshore quake that studies suggest would hit the 8 to 9 range on the Richter. Woodbury predicts such a quake would trigger a tsunami, or tidal wave, destined for Washington’s shores.
The stakes are particularly high, Woodbury says, since Washington sits across the Columbia River from the nation’s largest stockpile of chemical weapons. The U.S. Department of Defense stores some 12 percent of its arsenal of chemical weapons in Oregon.
In cooperation with the Washington State Association of Broadcasters, Woodbury developed the guidelines and message format for the state’s Amber Alert system, which went into operation in April 2002. In announcing the alert, Gov. Locke credited Woodbury’s expertise and commitment in bringing the system online.
As NEMA president, Woodbury is intimately familiar with President George Bush’s proposed Office of Homeland Security. The association supports the President, as long as the new agency doesn’t hamper the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s ability to provide disaster relief.
The key issues in the nation’s anti-terrorism initiative, Woodbury says, include its inability to share intelligence between and among federal and state agencies. The nation’s public health system needs to be updated in order to respond to the threat of bioterrorism, says Woodbury, who spearheaded a national teleconference on the subject last August.
A native of South Orange, N.J., Woodbury lives in Olympia, the state capital, about 60 miles south of Seattle.
Woodbury learned valuable leadership and communication skills at Lafayette, and he uses them every day on the front line of the nation’s defense against terrorism. “I really enjoy what I am doing,” he says. “It’s an incredibly exciting field and a very rewarding one.”