12 minute read
USACE Emergency Management: At an Inflection Point
from America's Engineers: The People, Programs, and Projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers '24-'25
BY CRAIG COLLINS, AMERICA'S ENGINEERS
At 1:28 am on March 24, 2024, the Dali, a 980-foot container ship departing the Port of Baltimore, lost power and collided with a pier on the Francis Scott Key (FSK) Bridge; it was the first moment of a disaster that’s still unfolding along what remains of the I-695 Baltimore Beltway – a bridge once traversed by 35,000 vehicles every day and more than 11 million commuters annually – and throughout one of the East Coast’s largest and busiest ports.
The bridge’s main span and three approach spans collapsed within seconds of the impact, resulting in the deaths of six road maintenance workers. Some of the 50,000 tons of wreckage lay on top of the Dali , but most of it lay at the bottom of the river, blocking transit through the Port of Baltimore’s primary deep-draft navigation route, the federal Fort McHenry Federal Channel. It presented a daunting task to the team in charge of cleaning up.
While USACE has been tasked with maintaining safe, reliable, and efficient navigation for 200 years, the FSK Bridge collapse presented challenges that required a very particular skillset, said Stephen Hill, who when interviewed for this article was USACE’s director of contingency operations and chief, Office of Homeland Security. “The complexity and the magnitude was greater than what we routinely work with,” he said. “Our authorization to keep navigation channels clear is generally more intended for routine debris, or that left by storms.” The bridge wreckage was far from routine, and its removal required great care and respect: The bodies of four of the six people killed – the last of which would be discovered six weeks after the collapse –were somewhere beneath the wreckage. It was also incredibly dangerous work: The cold and murky channel waters made it difficult to see the tons of concrete, asphalt, and twisted metal. “The wreckage presented some significant safety hazards,” Hill said. We didn’t want anybody impaled on steel they couldn’t see. So they had to move in a very measured way.”
Fortunately, USACE has a long-term relationship with underwater debris removal experts: The U.S. Navy Supervisor of Salvage (SUPSALV). The joint USACE/SUPSALV effort was set in motion within twelve hours of the collapse, and used tools brought to the scene by the Corps, the Navy, and industry partners. Areas were surveyed using standard sonar techniques, such as light detecting and ranging (LiDAR). “While the sonar couldn’t detect everything, all of the systems combined were able to determine what was the best approach to go ahead and remove the steel, the concrete and the debris and completely clear the navigation channel.”
USACE experts in controlled demolition broke the huge steel structures into pieces that could be hauled away on barges, said Hill: “We had engineers precisely cut portions of the steel structure using small charges that could separate the sections to manageable enough pieces that they could be lifted and removed out of the channel, off the empty Dali, and floated off to open up the navigation channel.”
Size and complexity weren’t the only two factors considered: The clock was ticking. Every day the waterway was closed meant an estimated loss of $15 million and threatened the jobs of 8,000 people.
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On June 10, 2024 – 80 days after the bridge fell into the channel – the team removed the Dali and the bridge wreckage and restored the Fort McHenry Federal Channel to its original operating dimensions, 700 feet wide and 50 feet deep. “A pretty successful effort,” Hill said. “In this configuration, with such an urgency to get the channel open and have this done in less than 80 days – a phenomenal mission that demonstrates the readiness capability the nation has set up.”
Innovative Disaster Recovery
The Corps’ ability to quickly apply specialized skills to a disaster recovery effort shows how much the agency’s – and the nation’s – emergency management capabilities have evolved into today’s whole-of-government effort targeting what Hill calls the “life cycle of risk.”
USACE’s official role in emergency response and disaster relief began in 1882, when it supported the Army’s efforts to rescue people and property during massive flooding throughout much of the lower Mississippi Valley. For several decades, it honed its expertise in responses to repeated destructive floods in the Mississippi River Basin. But it wasn’t until 1955, with the passage of Public Law 84-99, the Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies Act, that USACE’s role in emergency management was codified.
The law assigned the Corps of Engineers to help prepare for and respond to floods and coastal storms. By this time, the Corps’ response mission had already expanded beyond flood fighting to include other hazards, like debris removal, but it wasn’t until after the establishment of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1979, and the beginnings of what has become the National Response Framework (NRF), that USACE established its own formal emergency management program. Under the National Response Framework, which establishes guidelines for domestic emergency response, the Corps of Engineers is the lead agency for Emergency Support Function (ESF) #3: Public Works and Engineering.
Today, the Corps’ emergency management expertise is gathered into more than 50 Planning and Response Teams (PRTs) and functional cadres, composed of civilian employee volunteers trained and credentialed for their team’s specific mission. These specially-trained individuals are the backbone of the Corps’ domestic emergency response: assessing the soundness of infrastructure for emergency access; providing temporary roofing, housing, or critical facilities; assisting with search-and-rescue operations; removing debris or floodwaters; and providing – with the help of experts from the Army’s 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) – temporary emergency power to critical facilities.
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As of October 2024, USACE and its partners were still on the Hawaiian island of Maui, working to help Lahaina and surrounding communities recover from catastrophic wildfires that killed more than 100 people, burned more than 2,200 structures, and caused $5.5 billion in damage in August 2023. The Corps led the massive debris removal operation in award-winning fashion, recognized for its speed, thoroughness, and cultural sensitivity. Cultural observers and advisors helped responders build trust. Responders also regularly engaged with community members and leaders.
The Corps was involved in multiple recovery efforts in and around Lahainia, working with FEMA and Maui County to provide temporary housing units at a site just outside of town. “We’re trying to get innovative,” said Hill. The temporary units formed an off-site community during initial recovery efforts, but now that the debris has been substantially removed, Hill said, “We’re thinking: Could we take some of those temporary housing units and put them on the sites where those homes were destroyed, now that the debris mission is done, and the sites are clear? Could we let people live in those temporary housing units on their own property while they rebuild?”
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“It’s just new thinking,” Hill continued, “a different approach. There’s an awful lot of work being done to make sure we do this the right way, to ensure we’re improving the scenario as much as possible, as those people try to put their community back together.”
Hill is particularly proud of USACE building a temporary replacement for the 110-year-old campus of King Kamehameha III Elementary School, which was burned beyond repair. In ensuing visits to Lahaina, Hill watched the community and the recovery team pick a site near the Kapalua airport, clear it, and build a new campus out of 38 temporary buildings – all within 95 days of the original school’s destruction.
“Thirty classrooms for 600 students,” Hill said. “It was a huge effort. But those kids were worth it. I hope they’ll always remember that people cared and came to support them and get them back in their school.”
Future Emergencies
The size, scope, and frequency of natural disasters, many fueled by climate change, have increased recently. Since 2020, when Hill came to work for USACE, the
federal government has responded to 150 significant events, amounting to $2 billion in federal funding. “We’ve had close to 6,000 Corps of Engineers employees participate in those events,” Hill said. “And those people have touched nearly 450 major FEMA mission assignments.” Those assignments have generally involved providing temporary “blue” roofing, debris removal, providing critical infrastructure, and installing generators.
Recovery efforts for these climate-related disasters are increasingly long and complex, and FEMA is currently asking USACE and other interagency partners for input on a rewrite of the National Disaster Recover Framework. The NDRF, a mechanism built to complement the NRF, was created by FEMA in 2011 to provide greater coordination and structure to the nation’s recovery efforts. A more comprehensive framework, Hill said, can help federal emergency responders meet the challenges ahead: “If you look at the wildfires we’ve seen in New Mexico and California, everywhere in the West, the damage from those burns is very lasting, and impacts every aspect of a community.”
USACE’s Office of Contingency Operations is working on its own adjustments to meet these challenges. A recently established Caribbean District, headquartered in Puerto Rico, will project more USACE capabilities into a region devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017. The primary motive for standing up the new district is to enhance flood control in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Hill said, but “Because the region experiences so many storms, permanently locating expertise, equipment, and personnel there significantly enhances our response capability.”
The Corps is also transitioning to upgraded equipment better suited to today’s longer-term recovery efforts. The current generation of vehicles that USACE responders use to enable communications and connectivity in devastated areas – the Deployable Tactical Operating Systems, or DTOS – rely on hard line or cell connections. But today’s storms and wildfires can disable those communications systems for days at a time. In partnership with the Defense Logistics agency, the Corps is rolling out a third generation of DTOS that will connect with commercial Starlink satellites. The Corps has been considering ways to ease demands on its most valuable emergency response asset: its people. Responders are USACE employees who voluntarily leave their day jobs to participate in response and recovery efforts – and sometimes multiple events in sequence.
Hill and other USACE leaders are looking for ways to expand and augment capacity, so that these responders can devote more time to their mission-critical tasks.
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An obvious starting point, said Hill, would be to rely on the type of arrangement USACE entered with SUPSALV on the FSK Bridge recovery – a rapid-response capability enabled by the Corps’ Advanced Contracting Initiative (ACI), which allows it to call up resources from existing contracts with providers of equipment and services. “We want to get to the point where we could write a task order and say: We need ten people in Maui, because this project is going on for a year. It’s now in the recovery stage. We need a task order, through an existing contract, that sends ten of our industry partners out there, and releases ten of our Military Programs, Civil Works, or ERDC staff back to their day jobs – or maybe to respond [elsewhere]. Our goal is to have sufficient capacities so we can be scalable.”
Beyond the demands of any given emergency, Hill said, this is one of the most urgent needs for USACE’s emergency management program. “I can see a world that’s slightly different,” he said. “I’ve been around, in the business for 42 years, and I recognize an inflection point when I see one. And I’ve been seeing it over the last three or five years.” The Corps’ role in emergency management is about much more than simply cleaning up messes. Hill continued, “It’s understanding what we can do to reduce disaster-related suffering, getting all the technical expertise the Corps and its interagency partners can bring to get the job done. In the end, it pays dividends. It’s well worth the investment.” AE
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