McKernan began his new gig this week as head of Fairfax County’s Office of Emergency Management. Before taking the job, he helmed Fairfax’s “strike team” effort to crack down on boarding houses and neighborhood blight.
What are your new responsibilities?
Providing coordination for Fairfax County in case we have a significant incident. We provide the support to the responding agencies, coordinating that through the emergency operations center.
I know you’re new on the job, but do you have a sense right now of areas where Fairfax needs to improve, and where it is strong?
We have an absolutely excellent facility here, it’s brand-new. The staff, I know many of them, and they’re excellent. But you’re right — I’m too new to really determine yet what direction, where improvement needs to be done. We can always improve in our coordination with all the agencies in Fairfax County and the state and of course, the federal government. That goes without saying.
Is your job more geared toward a 9/11-type attack, a natural disaster, or small-scale incidents?
The responsibilities include a national event that occurs in this area. It could be a regional event. It could be just a local event that takes coordination of numerous resources within Fairfax County. It runs the gamut. Hopefully we don’t have any national events like 9/11, but we are prepared.
Do you feel like your experience as a firefighter influences how you go about your job?
In fire and rescue departments throughout the region, we’ve been doing [incident command systems] and incident management for years and years. We’re pretty good at it. We still continue to learn, but it just flows naturally into the Office of Emergency Management position to help the agencies that may not be as familiar with [incident command systems] to fit into that system. – William C. Flook
