Having grown up in a
military family that at one time lived overseas, Paul Purcell grew up with
preparedness being a generally accepted fact of life. He went through two
earthquakes in Turkey, a couple of hurricanes in Florida, a severe ice storm
in North Carolina, a HazMat incident in south Georgia, and an F-4 tornado
and a blizzard in Atlanta, Georgia.
Currently, Paul is the
co-owner, Vice President, and lead security analyst for InfoQuest
Investigators in Atlanta, Georgia.
Coming from a background in
the hospitality industry, Paul began his early investigative career in
restaurant consulting which included a strong focus on internal and external
security, and general risk management. He was approached in 1996 by an
Atlanta area investigative agency to come on board as their security
analyst. His early cases included an informal security analysis of the 1996
Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta conducted for a member of the Olympic
Security Council.
In 1998, he, along with
partners Frances Carter and Ben Willis, opened InfoQuest Investigators,
Inc., and has been performing security analysis for corporate and industrial
locations ever since. As an investigator, Paul created
"The Case File", an in-the-field investigative case management system in
use by Private Investigators, Law Enforcement, and Attorney firms across the
country. He also served as the Legislative Committee chairman in 2002, and
state Secretary in 2003, for the
Georgia Association of Professional Private Investigators.
As a post-9/11
contribution, Paul voluntarily submitted numerous vulnerability studies
concerning the FAA, the CDC, the 2001 World Series Games, the 2002 Winter
Olympics, and the 2002 Super Bowl. Copies of these studies were shared with
an agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and two weeks later, Paul
was invited to join the DeKalb County Office of Homeland Security as a
volunteer civilian security analyst. His duties included vulnerability
studies of some of the county's sensitive infrastructure locations, the
contribution of terror attack scenarios, and meeting attendance as a panel
member at large.
During this same time
period, he authored a regular civil-defense and homeland security issues
column entitled "Paul's Corner" which appeared on Col. David H. Hackworth's
"Soldiers For The Truth" foundation website (the column's archives are
at
http://www.sftt.us/paulscorner.html), and he served as an SFTT board
member. This column caught the attention of associates of Ross Perot's who
invited Paul to attend a small homeland defense / civilian volunteer
planning meeting in Baltimore, MD, in July, 2002. Shortly after that, Paul
was privileged to assist the director of the Savannah area Public Health District
in the formulation of emergency first responder protocols in preparation for
the 2004 G8 Summit taking place on Sea Island, Georgia.
The culmination of these
experiences led Paul to embark on his personal quest to create a detailed
training guide aimed at improving the emergency preparedness and protection
of the average civilian. While good information was to be found through FEMA
and the Red Cross, Paul felt that a great deal of detail, desired by a very
intelligent general population, was missing and needed to be added. Hence
Disaster Prep 101.
Since the completion of this
book, Paul has been traveling, lecturing, consulting, and continually
contributing to public safety whether through counter-terrorism planning or
pandemic influenza preparedness. His goal, like yours, is to make this
world of ours a safer place for all.
