John Mealia has over 33 years’ experience in risk, firefighting and emergency management; specifically working in the areas of fire operations, fire safety and protection, building and dangerous goods risk assessments and compliance, risk and fire engineering and is considered an expert in building and bushfire fire behavior and its impact / effect and emergency management planning.

John commenced his career with CFA in Victoria as a professional firefighter working his way up through the ranks to give him an excellent knowledge and practical understanding of all aspects of fire and emergency management across the prevention, readiness, response and recovery continuum including legislative and policy requirements and the compliance challenges in the built, dangerous goods and bushfire risk environments. He has represented CFA on several Municipal, Regional and State Emergency Management Planning Committees as a senior officer and was accredited Level 1, 2 and 3 Incident Controller and Regional Controller with CFA and Emergency Management Victoria (EMV).

John completed his fire service career after a 3 year secondment to EMV where he was appointed Chair of a Panel of Experts in 2012. The Panel’s primarily role was providing technical and operational expertise and solutions on complex building and bushfire issues including development of design and construction standards for community fire refuges and reconstruction of homes lost during the Christmas Day Wye River/Separation Creek bushfire.

Since leaving CFA and EMV, he started his own company called My Emergency Management (http://www.myem.com.au).