Greetings from the OEM Director
Jack Brown is the Director of the Arlington County Office of Emergency Management, which is responsible for the County’s strategic emergency priorities. Specifically, OEM plans and coordinates County emergency services, including operation of the County’s Emergency (9-1-1) Communications Center and Arlington’s Emergency Operations Center during crises and major incidents.Jack Brown’s public safety career includes 29 years with the Fairfax County, Virginia Fire & Rescue Department, where he retired as Assistant Fire Chief of Operations and served as a Planning Section Chief and Task Force Leader for the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Task Force. He deployed to Nairobi, Kenya as Plans Chief in response to the 1998 embassy bombing and led the task force on a deployment to Taiwan in response to an earthquake in 1999.
Upon his retirement from Fairfax County in 2000, he became the Assistant Chief for the Loudoun County Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Management, where he led a team of firefighters to the Pentagon on 9/11 and assisted the Arlington County Fire Department as the initial Planning Section Chief for the incident. Jack served as Planning Section Chief on a Northern Virginia multi-jurisdictional emergency management task force that reestablished the New Orleans Emergency Operations Center just after Hurricane Katrina. He retired from Loudoun County in 2006.
He retired from the Coast Guard Reserve in late 2008 as a Chief Warrant Officer, specializing in Port Safety and Security. From 2003-2007, he served a total of 15 months in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star medal.
Brown holds 2 associate degrees from the Northern Virginia Community College, a bachelor’s degree in Fire Science Administration from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in Quality Systems Management from the National Graduate School, Falmouth, Massachusetts. He is a 1997 graduate of the National Fire Academy’s Executive Fire Officer Program at the National Emergency Training Center, Emmitsburg, Maryland where he is also an adjunct instructor in fire prevention programs.
