11:58 AM EST on Sunday, December 18, 2005

BY AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writer

CRANSTON -- Robert J. Warren said the statewide evacuation plan was weighing heavily on him.

Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

Robert J. Warren, director of the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, says that "the last year has been very eye-opening for all the coastal states."

It wasn't just because the governor ordered it, or because The Journal was in his office at the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency every week asking about it, he said.

"I personally believe it needs to be done," Warren said last week. "I understand what can happen."

It was the first order he got from Governor Carcieri, who appointed him to the executive director's post in mid-August. Warren, 50, had just retired as Cranston's fire chief after 27 years in the department. He was also the city's EMA chief for six years, during which he'd won director of the year.

Warren knows firsthand how bad hurricanes can be.

He has been a hurricane buff since he was five years old and saw rain cascading outside his family's home in West Warwick from Hurricane Donna. As a teenager, he helped pull boats out of the water in South Kingstown ahead of impending tropical storms.

In the summer of 2004, Warren led a statewide delegation into Florida to help after Hurricane Charley. What he saw has stayed with him -- buildings destroyed and people lost, a county without a single standing utility pole.

In February, he joined a hurricane preparedness session at the National Hurricane Center. Six months later, as the new director of the Rhode Island EMA, he watched with the rest of the nation as Hurricane Katrina drowned the Gulf Coast. "I think the last year has been very eye-opening for all the coastal states," Warren said.

In Rhode Island, Warren has the backing of Carcieri, who approved hiring five new full-time employees, getting an outside consulting firm to work on local hurricane plans, and building a new emergency operations center. "I want to have a crackerjack operation," Carcieri said.

Warren is restructuring the agency and hiring two more planners, an auditor to review spending of federal funds, an equipment specialist to maintain the new equipment bought with those funds, and a liaison to work directly with the local communities.

He's meeting with an architect this week to look at remodeling a building at the John O. Pastore Complex in Cranston for a new emergency operations center. The current one is antiquated and located in a small room at the National Guard.

Warren is the first state EMA director with public safety experience in almost two decades. Carcieri said a public safety background was his first priority. Warren "is professional. He's competent. He understands what needs to be done," Carcieri said.

Providence deputy fire chief J. Curtis Varone, who heads the state's search and rescue team, said Warren's experience was important for the EMA.

While bureaucracies tend to foster a wait-and-see attitude and a fear of decision-making, the fire service trains its leaders to make split-second decisions.

That's Warren, he said.

"Bob has a history of being a decisive leader," Varone said.