Whether battling wildfire blazes, monitoring seismic tremors or lending a hand – and paw – with K9 search and rescue efforts, Terrence Joseph Lerma is the epitome of service before self.

Especially as the military treatment facility emergency manager since 2007 for the Defense Health Agency’s Naval Hospital Bremerton.

“Emergency management is all about making sure all the staff are ready to respond on our worst day so we can support and care for our warfighters, eligible beneficiaries and keep our active duty and civil service staff safe,” said Lerma, a Claremont, California native and 1997 graduate of Damien Catholic Boys High School.

After retiring from active duty as a senior chief hospital corpsman, Lerma worked at Harrison Hospital – old and new – in Bremerton as a lead multi-disciplinary technologist. A co-worker mentioned a new position at NHB, which

“I could bring all those skills and experiences to the job to benefit NHB and Navy Medicine,” reminisced Lerma, who became the first civil service emergency manager at NHB.

From mass casualty drill to decontamination exercise to earthquake response training, he has been a constant fixture in his chosen career path. He is also much in demand to share his expertise, routinely teaching and demonstrating emergency management principles on how to respond to calamities and catastrophes – manmade or natural – at other military treatment facilities across the country.

“For emergency management, we are the force multipliers. We use our imagination on what those worst-case scenarios would look like and how to respond based upon our capabilities and capacity. As General Patton once said, “Don’t tell people how to do something, tell them what you want done. Their ingenuity will surprise you.” We give options, along with ideas,” said Lerma.

Towards the end of NHB’s continual effort to help stop the spread of COVID-19, Lerma’s valuable position was part of a seismic shift in military medicine.

The Defense Health Agency was formally established to oversee, manage, and support all Army, Navy, and Air Force medical and dental assets. The transition of all administrative and management functions at NHB to DHA was completed in 2022.

The conversion process also officially shifted many civil service staff members like Lerma to become DHA civilian employees, with active duty personnel assigned to Navy Readiness Training Command Bremerton.

“The DHA concept make sense. Medicine is medicine regardless of the uniform. There are some services that do certain types of medicine better than others. Example, Air Force does aviation medicine best; the Army does forward deployed/force of occupation medicine best, and the Navy does underway, undersea and diving medicine the best,” stated Lerma.

The entire alteration was part of a congressional mandate to merge military hospitals and clinics to the DHA to create a resilient, cohesive, and connected military health system. DHA priorities are to enable combat support to the joint force in competition, crisis or conflict; build a modernized, integrated and resilient health delivery system; [with] dedicated and inspired teams of professionals driving military health’s next evolution.

All of which is right in Lerma’s wheelhouse as evidenced by his track record in resourcefully tailoring and coordinating such demands as decontamination norms, mass casualty measures, and disaster response efforts to protect patients, staff and visitors.

“I am fortunate to stand on the shoulders of giants, people I was smart enough to listen to who made emergency management at NHB one of the most successful programs for BUMED and DHA. I am also fortunate that I could bring my volunteer firefighting and K9 Search and Rescue experience to this job; and able to speak to and have good working relationships with all those first responder agencies which has brought variety to our full-scale exercises and helped develop our emergency management and public health community relationships. All that came to bear at the beginning of COVID when the Pacific Northwest was ground zero. We had planned and prepared for a pandemic although COVID was the World Series, Stanley Cup, and Olympics all rolled into one for all DHA emergency managers.

Even during the pandemic years when it was all hands on deck to help stop the spread COVID, Lerma was always on call responding as a volunteer firefighter, emergency medical technician, and as a Search and Rescue Canine handler and instructor assisting in locating, assessing, treating and transporting lost, missing and injured subjects out of any wilderness area.

Lerma’s Navy career of 20 years included assignments on flattops USS Midway (CV 41) and USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), naval hospitals in the Far East and West Coast, duty with several Marine Corps air stations and squadrons and various instructor and teaching positions.

“That service time, especially being a retired senior chief, bode me well in this job as I have always been welcomed in the chief petty officer mess. If you want to get something done, go to the mess. Navy chiefs will make it happen,” stressed Lerma, who has also squeezed in the necessary demands to achieve his Bachelor of Science of Health Sciences from Old Dominion University, May 2004, Master’s in Health Sciences with a Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management and Disaster Preparedness from Trident University International, June 2011.

When asked to sum up his experience at NHB being part of Navy Medicine and also DHA in one sentence, Lerma replied, “Who knew that it wouldn’t be until I was almost 50 years old to find my dream job that would bring my entire skill set all into one job that I love,” shared Lerma.