DISASTER RECOVERY EXPERTS

Charles Rabamad

CEO

Charles is a disaster recovery assistance expert with more than 30 years of field experience handling disaster response and recovery in California. During his 25 years with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), he was involved with every state and federally declared disaster since the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. Governor Jerry Brown appointed Charles four times to lead disaster recovery efforts at the highest level of state government.

Between 2003 and 2019, Charles served a significant role in more than 283 disaster declarations. He was designated as the State Public Assistance Officer for 162 of those events, which includes 10 presidentially declared major disaster declarations, 146 fire management declarations, and 115 state-declared events. For the remaining 121 events, Charles served as the Governor’s Authorized Representative and as the State Coordinating Officer. Disasters during this period included the South Napa Earthquake (2015), Valley and Butte Fires (2015), Oroville Dam (2017), October 2017 California Wildfires (2017), Thomas Fire and Montecito Mud Flows (2017), Camp Fire/Woolsey and Hill Fires (2018), Mid-February Storms and Late February Storms (2019).

In more than 30 years of professional experience, Charles brings a vast spectrum of knowledge and practice in disaster mitigation, response and recovery as well as infrastructure, disaster housing solutions, debris removal, environmental and historical preservation processes, project monitoring, project management, and federal and state procurement processes. He has testified before the California Legislature and other governmental bodies on behalf of Cal OES and the California Department of Water Resources.

Highlights of Charles’ career include serving as Co-Lead of the Governor’s Tree Mortality Task Force, charged with finding solutions to the bark beetle epidemic that decimated California’s forests and increased fire risk; serving as a lead state official for development of the Recovery component of the revised Bay Area Catastrophic Plan 2016 and for the California Disaster Recovery Framework and its six Recovery Support Functions in 2019; leading the effort to establish project closeout procedures in California to ensure reconciliation of projects that will withstand audits; and assisting in the development of the FEMA Grants Manager and Grants Portal tool, which helps states, local governments and tribes to manage their projects.