Jerome M. Hauer, who as the first director of the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management oversaw New York City’s response to floods, manhole bursts, mold outbreaks, building collapses, water main breaks, blackouts, hurricanes , sink holes, fallen trees, terrorist threats , vermin and the uncertain digital impact on computer networks of Y2K, the turn of the millennium, died on August 11 at his home in Alexandria, Va. He is 71 years old.
The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Traci L. Hauer.
Working under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani from 1996 to 2000, Mr. Hauer “won extensive cooperation” from other city agencies and from the state and federal governments, writes urban historian Fred Siegel in “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the American Genius Life” (2005). He was “a big, articulate and knowledgeable guy,” added Mr. Siegel, who died in May.
Mr. Hauer developed an early and comprehensive response to the threat of a bioterrorism attack and the spread of the West Nile virus in the city, rallying relevant agencies to the cause. He later took what he learned working for the city and applied it to emergency and risk management work for New York State and for the federal government, both during and after major crises — including terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the subsequent threat of anthrax and Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“He was a unicorn, a real individual, a man for all time crises,” said William J. Bratton, who as New York’s police commissioner worked with Mr. Hauer in city government, in a telephone interview.
