Color-Coded Alert System Creator: "No Regrets"

Mike Byrne was with Fire Department of New York (FDNY) for twenty years, a Captain who held the influential positions of Chief Information Officer and Director of Strategic Planning. In 1999, he left FDNY to take a FEMA job as Division Director, Response and Recovery for the FEMA region that covers New York. Little did he know he would find himself managing federal recovery efforts for a terrorist attack that would take lives of so many of his FDNY comrades.

Mike was called into service by a White House scrambling to figure out how to deal with a terrorist assault on the U.S. The administration was likely attracted by his front line experience coupled with an understanding of technology. He was named senior director of infrastructure management at the new Office of Homeland Security (OHS).

In his new book, "The Test of Our Times", the former head of the former OHS, Tom Ridge, wrote it was Mike who came up with the idea for the color-coded alert system. (I've known Mike for several years and didn't know this until I read Ridge's book - recommended reading, by the way.)

Although the system has been the punchline for many a joke, Mike told us this week that he has "no regrets" about the recommendation. He said it was the right thing to do at the time. "It's hard to remember how the public safety community felt at the time. We genuinely felt we were at war and under attack at home", said Mike. He said a system was needed that would clearly communicate to both public safety professionals and the general public that a different level of diligence was needed at different times.

Mike admitted the system is not perfect, and needs modifications. In fact, he said it was never fully used the way it was conceived. "It was supposed to be sector specific with more geographic impact", he said.

The current administration is considering changing the system, now called The Homeland Security Advisory System. Among other things, the Homeland Security Advisory Council has recommended reducing the number of colors from five to three. Mike thinks reducing the number of levels is appropriate. He said, "One thing I hope they don't do is move away from something that makes it easy to understand which one is bad." He doesn't like the thought of going to a numbered system, too easy to forget which number is bad - 1 or 5, particularly with adrenalin pumping.

Now Senior Vice President of ICF Consulting, Mike is looking ahead at emergency communications. He's becoming quite the maven on use of social media for emergency communications, and looks for opportunities to engage the broad communities of interest in the discussion. (More on that later.)



Oh, by the way, we asked Mike about the controversy that developed over the chapter in Ridge's book we blogged about earlier where Ridge talked about being lobbied to raise the threat level on the eve of the 2004 Presidential election. Mike replied, "What!? Politics in Washington, of course not!" (We think he may have been putting us on.)


All the best,



Rick