Raymond DeMichiei has been responsible for the City of Pittsburgh Emergency Management Agency since 1988, and is directly responsible for preparing and updating the city’s Emergency Operations Plans and coordinating all intragovernmental and intergovernmental planning, mitigation, response and recovery efforts.
As part of these duties, DeMichiei has been designated as the Weapons of Mass Destruction Coordinator. He is the point of contact with federal and state agencies responsible for Department of Homeland Security programs. As part of that effort, he also coordinates the city program that assists in the development of an All Hazards planning effort in buildings taller than seven stories. That program has been recognized by FEMA with its “Best Practices” designation.
DeMichiei is also the project manager for two hazard mitigation projects — the purchase of 22 properties and relocation of the occupants from a flood plain area and a $22 million flood mitigation project that will protect 150 residential and commercial occupancies.
DeMichiei has been responsible for three Presidential Declarations of Major Disaster, bringing millions of dollars of federal relief funds to city government, business owners and residents.
“I attempt to address or use, as a decision-making model, two general concepts in the work that I do,” says DeMichiei.
Those efforts or projects, he says, must serve the public interest and satisfy the mission of “making a little piece of the world a better place to be in than it was at the start of the day.”
