Ray Trombley:  A guru for Disaster Preparedness

By Joni Johnson

The depth of background of so many of our residents never ceases to amaze me.  Ray Trombley is another example.  When I first met him, he mentioned that he had been a customs officer for the Air Force in Korea.  But actually, that is just the tiny tip of the iceberg.

Ray joined the Air Force (AF) just out of high school.  So, this story is really about the evolution of a teenager growing into a law enforcement career and ending up as the head of the disaster preparedness program (now called “business continuity”) for a $20 Billion bank in Hawaii, with operations from New York City to Singapore.

Although Ray started his AF career as a high school graduate, he had earned an Associates Degree in the Administration of Justice and a Bachelors Degree in Behavioral Psychology before his seventh year of service; and then six years later, a Masters Degree in Public Administration, and somewhere in that 25-year career, he was selected to attend the FBI National Academy in Quantico, VA.

Ray was born and raised in Northern Maine – only the St. John River lay between his house and Canada.  Being the youngest and the first in his family to attend college, his parents were very disappointed when after one week into his freshman year at the University of Maine, he decided he needed to see more of the world. He quit school and called the Air Force Recruiter.  His AF career began with an assignment to the Philippines as a Military Working Dog Handler.  During his tour, he was promoted to Staff Sergeant and became the Kennel Support Supervisor for the largest MWD Kennels in the Air Force.

In his follow-on Stateside assignment, he was the on-the-job training administrator for security police squadron at Loring Air Force Base in Maine.  While there he went back to U of M (night school) and got his bachelors degree and was subsequently accepted for the Air Force Officer Training School.  He was now a Mustang (military slang for an enlisted person who becomes a commissioned officer).  Because of his experience, he was reassigned to the Philippines  as a Law Enforcement Watch Commander with 350 security police officers under his supervision.  One year later, he was assigned as the liaison officer helping to solve problems between the military airfield and the local government and citizenry During this tenure, he responded to several military aircraft crashes within 50 miles of Clark Air Base, often being the first on scene.  He also responded to three major pipeline fuel spills, and coordinated relief supplies for hurricane and flood victims.

In Korea he was the US Forces Customs Officer supporting the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Republic of Korea.  There, the US military and UN Forces were (are) bound by the SOFA to abide by Korean customs laws, but it was the US military’s responsibility to enforce those laws. This was his responsibility.

After Korea, Ray was assigned to the Pacific Air Forces Command (PACAF) in Hawaii..  There, he was head of training for the security police throughout the Pacific, including Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, Korea and Alaska.  This job included managing the only Stinger missile program in the Air Force.  After the training gig, he  became the PACAF Security Police Inspector General for four years.  His last assignment was in Guam as an International Geopolitical affairs officer. The four officers assigned to that office monitored events in South Asia, East Asia, Oceania and Australia and speculated on the impact of events for the AirForce commander. He and his two office mates gathered evidence and exposed a spy – their boss.

After Guam, he returned to Hawaii in 1995 to retire.  His first civilian job was as the Director of Safety and Security for a 100 bed hospital with 17 satellite clinics. There, he developed a number of emergency response plans over the two years he worked at the hospital. And finally, in 1998, his career path took him to a Hawaiian bank that had offices in New York, and subsidiary banks in Arizona and throughout the Pacific.  He was the Disaster Preparedness Manager and the first order of business was to prepare for Y2K.  The goal was to be able to continue banking operations without computers.  While a tech team worked on the computers, Ray and his team worked with people developing manual banking procedures.  Together, over $40 Million was spent on mitigation and planning.

After dealing with potential fallout from Y2K (which if you remember, never happened, primarily because of the mitigation efforts around the globe), Ray continued in his job developing disaster plans for all of the bank’s 504 operating locations.  The plans prepared them for hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, mass shootings, and political unrest in third world countries where they had operations.  This could require the evacuation of expats using mercenaries they had on retainer.  When the Department of Homeland Security was created after 9/11, FDIC and FRB Bank examiners requested Ray send his best practices  to them for their use. And believe it or not, he developed a Pandemic Response and Recovery Operations Plan in 2006. His CEO at the time encouraged the sharing of their plan templates with competitors. His edict was “shame on us if we gain an advantage over our competitors because of a disaster.”  Ray was certified a Business Continuity Professional by the Disaster Recovery Institute International in 2002, and then as a Master Business Continuity Professional in 2006.  He currently maintains that certification.

Early in his tenure at the bank (2000-2001), Ray was the founder of two not-for-profit professional associations in Hawaii. One was the Contingency Planners of the Pacific, which included planners from government agencies, businesses, public and private schools, and religious and cultural organizations.  The second was the Financial Industry Liaison Team, which focused on mutual support agreements between banks in Hawaii during disasters.  The FILT concept was adopted by the FDIC and FRB and became known as the Financial Industry Resilience, Security & Teamwork (FIRST) plans in 2003, i.e. ChicagoFIRST and 11 others throughout the country.

Ray’s opinion is that there are really only two serious disaster concerns here at the Manor.  The first is fire and the second is earthquakes.  But then, Ray adds that we are in the airport’s flight path.  In a major earthquake, people might be caught in buildings and with the fire department responsible for the city, it might have trouble reaching us for a while.  One option might be to provide selected staff member with special training for emergency response.  Another idea would be for PRS to provide Emergency Planning services to all of its CCRC’s by hiring a certified planner to work with each CCRC for a month on a rotating basis to develop contingency plans   Once the plans are in place, the PRS Planner could conduct refresher training, annual reviews and facilitate exercises for RVM and PRS properties.

Ray is impressed with our READY group and the interest of our community to learn more and be more involved.  While it is each resident’s responsibility to be prepared for emergencies, the role of READY resident coordinators is limited to providing  communications to their assigned apartments and cottages. Right now, many floors/neighborhoods have only one coordinator.   He would love to see two coordinators per floor/neighborhood.  Having two would increase the likelihood of at least one being on campus during an emergency.

Totally aside from his involvement with our community in a number of ways, how lucky we are to have Ray’s expertise here at RVM.