HUNTINGTON BEACH : Ex-Fire Chief Paid for Florida Disaster Trip

Former Fire Chief Ray Picard donated $1,000 of his own money to pay for the city’s emergency services coordinator to go to Dade County, Fla., last year to learn how to plan for recovery from a disaster, city officials disclosed this week.

“My five kids and I live in this city,” Picard explained this week. “I want officials to be prepared.”

Picard, 65, said he was watching coverage of Hurricane Andrew on television last year “and I could see that things weren’t going right between the county, state and federal officials. I didn’t want that to happen here.”

So Picard donated $1,000 to send Glorria Morrison, the city’s emergency services coordinator, to Florida so she could learn from the recovery efforts.

Picard believes that his investment has been returned tenfold because Morrison is sharing the lessons she’s learned with emergency services coordinators from other cities.

Picard said there are a number of potential disasters for the city and the rest of the county to reckon with--earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, plane crashes and oil spills.

Morrison and Anaheim Emergency Coordinator Bob Berg, who paid his own expenses to Florida, have held about 15 seminars with emergency service workers. They’ve also put out a 45-minute videotape on lessons they learned.

Morrison, who spent a week in Dade County in September, said she could not have gone to Florida without Picard’s contribution because the trip wasn’t covered by the city’s budget.

“He’s my hero,” she said.

One of the things she learned is that officials have to do a better job of communicating with one another, Morrison said.

For example, the National Hurricane Center ordered mass evacuations in Dade County, but the effort was stalled when workers on a state toll road insisted on collecting the 25-cent toll from the fleeing motorists.

Picard was honored this week by the City Council.