Splendor
Disaster Recovery for the Society of American Registered Architects by Sanford Ross Bender, SARA, CFM
Architects can bring an intuitive and comprehensive understanding to the purpose and workings of a public facility with awareness of the consequences of health, safety, and welfare while determining hazard mitigation measures.
The architect’s role in disaster recovery is essential for stressing the importance of how a restored facility maintains and improves its specific purpose to serve the public. Often the zeal for armoring a beach or riverbank from storm-driven waves or overflowing rapids precludes safe public access for boating, fishing, and swimming. Locating utilities in a basement below grade by a stairway or descending loading dock in flood-prone areas is not practical. Maintenance personnel must maintain and operate active (and even passive) flood gates at any time and preferably upon early notices and predictions.
Prior professional experience with architectural, engineering, landscape architectural, and urban planning firms provided discipline, collaboration, and foresight from their interdisciplinary team approach. The difference with disaster recovery work, however, was that infrastructure in the natural environment could be elusive and incidental. Anticipation and preparation for the possibility of an unprecedented natural disaster could extend well beyond the stringent building codes and standards requirements or formalized green design initiatives.
I am currently a “Hazard Mitigation Architectural and Engineering Specialist” reservist in Vermont where overflowing rivers and tributaries had overwhelmed valleys and city infrastructure. Previously I assessed piers, wharves, lighthouses, sea walls, and breakwaters along the northern coast of Maine that were devastated by the worst northeasters the state had so far experienced. The rocky shoreline with its countless inlets and islands presented a different scenario than the hurricane-breached barrier islands that I had visited in New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas.
My role during a declared disaster recovery is to assess in a forensic manner how a natural geological or meteorological event caused damage to infrastructure in the inflicted area. I will then discuss and convey hazard mitigation ideas to the city or state applicants on how their facility could become more resilient in a future event of similar magnitude. Unfortunately, it is not imperative by law that the Applicant implement hazard mitigation measures even though they can receive additional grant compensation up to 100% of the return to pre-disaster conditions cost. Follow-up investigations have indicated that facilities restored or reconstructed by architects and engineers with hazard mitigation measures such as wet or dry floodproofing, resilience to wind forces, or relocation from floodplains, tornado corridors, and fire zones have prevented damage from subsequent natural disaster events.
Recurrence of similar events from the past informs the investigator to identify plausible causes of damage during the current event. The devasting 1900 Galveston hurricane in Texas provides a stunning example of precedent along the Gulf of Mexico. In its tragic aftermath, planners and engineers elevated the entire city infrastructure of Galveston to heights of up to sixteen feet with a monumental sea wall to hold back coastal surge. While being an effective hazard mitigation measure, city officials may not have anticipated that the consequential depletion of the beach may have been a forfeiting factor toward nearby Houston’s civic dominance.
Sea level rise, ground subsidence, the deterioration of coral reefs, mangrove removal, hastened by the construction of harbors, buildings, bridges, groins, jetties, seawalls, and shipping channels threaten the natural coastline and proliferating infrastructure. I experienced this firsthand when Texan coastal engineers explained how the dredging of shipping channels depleted beach sand along the Gulf of Mexico. A proposal to contain the sand between expensive newly constructed groins extending into the sea could also deplete sand from other beaches along the Texan coastline. Beach front architecture may also be at risk when the incoming tide displaces its pilings by scour or if still standing, isolating the structure further out to sea beyond the receding beach.
For example, after coastal surge inundated a city harbor in Maine, engineers proposed raising the height of a stone rubble breakwater that had previously protected a pier and harbormaster’s facility from large wave impact. The unforeseen impact on the undamaged single-story wood-frame structure would have obstructed the panoramic view that allowed the harbormaster to survey incoming and outgoing lobster hauling boats. Furthermore, a raised breakwater (which breaks the wave cycle’s energy and allows the resulting turbulence to pass over and subside) would instead block and deflect smaller waves during lesser storm events and potentially cause shoreline destruction. Elevating the harbormaster facility would not have been eligible from a cost-effective perspective since it had not been “substantially damaged.” Elevating the harbormaster’s building would also require elevated utility connections and construction of an accessible ramp that would infringe upon an adjacent vehicle parking lot.
Often a hazard mitigation solution is literally “around the corner” as when I was investigating roadway landslides caused by torrential rain and rising river levels in the mountainous Appalachian counties of Kentucky. I might discover a section of mountain road that had remained intact by walking along the road in both directions away from the damaged site. The road engineer accompanying me pointed out to me that a concrete channel lined the roadway ditch on the uphill side of the road with culverts extending from the channel under the road to drain down below into the subsiding river. I might also detect that the downhill embankment slope was more gradual and armored with a revetment, embedded with soil anchors, or had installed rails and cribbing that had been successfully preventing road collapse.
These observational skills also play a part while investigating storm-damaged architecture identified on the list of National Register of Historic Places. In one such case, unprecedented straight-line winds (derecho) severely damaged a historical Gothic cathedral-style church in Iowa. A forensic study by architects and structural engineers discovered that neither salient or flying buttresses, or pilasters within the exterior wall were present to transfer the lateral wind loads slamming into the steeply pitched roof. Further investigation also revealed that the roof trusses had been bearing on the exterior stone veneer rather than on the actual concrete masonry unit bearing exterior wall causing subsequent collapse. Wind-driven rainfall that had circumvented the building’s gutter system may also have infiltrated the cavity wall, further exacerbating building failure.
I visited another historic building with a cathedral-like vaulted ceiling in a small river town in New York State. The town’s historic preservation committee had reported that the flooded streets had caused the exterior walls to “barrel out” and the first floor to be on the verge of collapse. Wandering into an adjacent library, I noticed photographs depicting restoration in the aftermath of a fire that had occurred a decade earlier. It then became apparent that the restoration effort had not included replacement of the second and attic floors. Nor had they installed tie rods to prevent the walls from buckling (or barreling), or star anchors to prevent the tie rods from pulling through the walls. I also discovered that the cause of the sagging floor was due to the crumbling stone interior foundation walls that were no longer supporting the timber floor beams. The Applicant later withdrew their claim since the building’s condition was unrelated to the current event declared.
Disaster recovery grant programs are based on reimbursement in which the Applicant must propose how they will rebuild in a manner that will provide increased resilience in a future event. They need to provide a proposed scope of work, a brief narrative of how the proposed hazard mitigation measure will provide increased resilience for a future event of similar magnitude, and an itemized cost estimate indicating descriptions, rates, and total costs for materials, equipment, labor, and architectural/engineering fees. The Applicant must differentiate hazard mitigation costs from code-enforced repair-to-pre-disaster costs so that a ratio between the two can be determined for cost-effectiveness.
Unfortunately, certain communities are unable to prioritize or afford the importance of investing up-front costs in architectural design and construction prior to federal and state reimbursement. Consequently, they forego hazard mitigation implementation and run the risk of experiencing recurring natural disaster damage that is almost inevitable. The architect must consider new building construction and historic restoration with a proclivity for suitability and resiliency pertaining to its geographic location, its interconnection with infrastructure, and its relation to the changing natural environment. Architects can regard this challenge as an exciting opportunity to design accordingly and responsibly with imagination and relevance.
Winding way duet for concertina and guitar
To the fallen and the falling on Memorial Day
Use the morning well
“Use the morning well” composed and performed with guitar and violin by Sanford Ross Bender on December 27, 2024.
She runs through my mind like an apparition
A lull in the battle
My drawings of Cathedrale Notre-Dame d’Amiens from the thirteenth century were drawn while researching Gothic architecture, and how cathedrals in France were being constructed with arches, vaulted ceilings, flying buttresses, and stained glass windows. After drawing the horizontal and vertical lines of the structure with straight edge and triangle, I soon became entranced and astonished by how consecutive arcs drawn with a compass established a rhythm that appeared to dance gracefully across the page. The visual motion of the arcade struck me deeply as being musical, my other passion. The original guitar composition, “A lull in the battle”, inspired by medieval music, is what I imagined as being evocative of an exhausted knight pausing from battle, only to reflect and mourn a bygone romance.
Learning from a River
Although the Delaware River has always had a long history of flooding, the ever increasing population of people living, working, and travelling on its adjacent watersheds has significantly altered the hydraulics of the tributaries and the floodplain itself. While it is absolutely essential to decrease development in this unprecedented time of increased precipitation and rising sea levels, it is also crucial to carefully assess the potential consequences of our engineering proposals beforehand.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, as reported by the Warren Reporter on April 8, 2011, stated: “New York City has agreed to modifications of releases of water from its reservoir system in the Catskill Mountains to better protect the ecology of the Delaware River in New Jersey and other downriver states, and help provide drought relief and flood protection.” The Express Times in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania had also quoted the NYSDEC on June 1, 2011, as contrarily admitting that “reservoirs, which spill into the Delaware River basin when they overflow, have the potential to exacerbate flooding downstream during major storms.”
The NYSDEC’s own website attempted to clarify: “While they are both dams, reservoirs are not flood control dams. Whereas flood control dams are specially designed to remain largely empty to capture major runoff events, reservoirs are designed to remain largely full, reserving water for later uses. However, reservoirs can and do provide some flood protection benefits, because even when full, they reduce downstream peak flow rates during large runoff events.” This assertion might not be true if the reservoirs overflowed beyond their capacity for intentional or unintentional relief from a major storm event.
Organizing a public educational workshop about the risks of building large engineering structures which not only protect, but allow increased development in fragile riparian areas prone to flooding would be a step in the right direction. The Delaware River could be explored from its head in New York State, down past Trenton and Philadelphia and into the Delaware Bay Estuary where it meets the sea. On a field trip, the workshop participants could observe how the land slopes steeply up from the river banks towards the towpath running alongside the Delaware Canal. They would see that while no longer used for mineral transport, the historically preserved waterway is now primarily maintained for flood water containment. Further south, as the land stretches gradually to level out to the shoreline, the workshop participants would see that boat houses close to the water’s edge on stalwart piers must rely eventually on the impermanence of saturated soil in which they are built. Standing as a grim reminder on the high banked roadway are twisted guardrails on their undermined foundations left washed away by recent flooding from hurricanes.
In another location down river, just across from Bowman’s Hill, one can walk in the soft saturated soil along the shoreline and observe uprooted and toppled trees leaning out over the water, while other trees stand just offshore with circular rivulets lapping up against their bending trunks. Plastic debris furling in the high branches again indicates the ominous water level reached by last year’s hurricanes. It soon becomes obvious that if one desires to live in the valley, it is most desirable to reside up in the high hill towns overlooking the river rather than down in the muddy floodplains, in dread of the inevitable rainstorms to come.
While living in view of a dramatic geological phenomenon such as the Delaware River is primarily one of choice to “live on the edge” in order to flourish in an environment of risk and potential change, a heightened awareness of how to build synchronously and sensitively with a potentially wild river becomes essential.
Sustainable Design and Disaster Mitigation
Sustainable Design Awareness might be divided into at least two distinct categories being: 1) Peak Oil/ Alternative Energy and 2) Climate Change which is caused in part by the burning of fossil fuels and other unregulated human involvement.
It is interesting to note that while sustainable building checklists mainly focus on conserving energy and water, recycling materials, and reviving brownfield properties, it is still fair game as to where to locate the building. For instance in LEED 2009, the only prerequisite in Sustainable Sites is ‘Construction Activity Pollution Prevention’ while it is only recommended that buildings are not located in 100 year flood plains or wetlands by offering a voluntary point in subsequent credit portions. One could even conclude that while sustainable guidelines recognize that buildings have contributed the most damage with global warming and energy wastefulness, that a magic checklist will redeem that legacy while still building as much as possible.
Disaster mitigation introduces a different perspective in sustainable design in that it mainly addressed the aftermath of a cataclysmic event caused by a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, flood, earthquake, volcano, or mudslide. Just as Benjamin Franklin stated “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’, preparedness can be brought into preliminary design with the intention of relying less on emergency procedures in order to save countless lives in disasters as a last resort. It is time to re-learn how we can face catastrophes by understanding nature and when, how, and where we build to predict for these inevitable consequences.
We must first delve into the geological nature of shifting tectonic plates that overlap, separate and grind at fault lines where earthquakes, volcanoes and deepening trenches can be frequent. These natural events cause varying major weather interactions between water and air from which result hurricanes and tsunamis causing unmanageable destruction through floods. Secondly, we need to see how human consumption and burning of fossil fuels has created the ‘Green House effect and consequently is causing the melting of glaciers, rising sea levels, wetland destruction, wandering diseases and the extinction of biodiversity.
Ironically, these cataclysmic events have also created dramatic places such as San Francisco Bay where houses perch precariously for exhilarating views. Historically, river deltas attracted people to build cities because of the fertile land replenished by naturally overflowing rivers and the biodiversity of flora and fauna. As the population grew, and port trade activity increased, building sea walls, jetties, levees, and dams seemed to become an obvious if at least temporary solution.
But nature will always find a way to prevail. The devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina can now be viewed as an engineering disaster when it is recognized that the shipping channel walls also funneled the river sediment out into the gulf towards the sea rather than allowing the naturally formed sand berms and wetlands to be replenished. Flourishing mangroves, cedar trees, and marsh grasses which actually slow down hurricanes might have prevented the city’s sea wall levees from being breached and causing unfathomable human displacement and damage to the city neighborhoods with thousands of life lost.
Whereas much research and activism has occurred within scientific communities, legal and political entities, and from conscientious engineers and environmentalists, architects can be proactive as well and know when not to build or if designing emergency shelters and safe havens would be a more useful direction to pursue.
But then, maybe it is not the so-called technically advanced cultures, but indigenous tribes and wild animals that can only sense or detect sounds from the approaching waves long before they strike the shore and head for the hills.
Architects can look beyond paving the globe and take on their most fervent usefulness with imagination and cunning in a shifting universe.
Is a tunnel for automobiles sustainable?
This site’s top image of a tunnel for automobiles may seem to contradict a portrayal of sustainability, but perhaps it is more how imaginatively one interprets the picture’s possibilities. Who is to say that the green colored tunnel is not actually the hollow stalk of a plant and the automobile within is not a miniature model run on alternative energy or even photosynthesis for that matter.
A tunnel is defined by Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary as being ‘a covered passageway; specifically: a horizontal passageway through or under an obstruction’. Tunnels are built to get from one point to another in the shortest distance possible through mountains ranges, underneath rivers or other impasses. Factors such as initial environmental impact, geography, engineering, demolition, construction, labor and embedded manufacturing and transport costs all need to be considered. Inserting a structure into a mountain after blasting may not be as feasible as winding a road around the mountain through its adjacent valleys. Tunnels under rivers may also not be economically justified as building a bridge that spans from bank to bank. A large city such as New York incorporates both tunnels such as the Holland, Lincoln and Penn Station railway access as well as bridges such as the George Washington, Brooklyn and Verrazano which are chosen through engineering criteria and urban fabric entry and exit point availability, despite having perhaps less of today’s increasing environmental conscientiousness.
Tunnels also pose another factor of fresh air ventilation and disposal of vehicle exhaust to consider. Energy must be provided to power the enormous fans that are necessary to blow out the toxic fumes emitted from these vehicles. Although bridges and open highways are not enclosed, utilized fossil fuel exhaust is still not lessened as it disperses into the open air. This however raises the possibility that tunnel exhaust can be captured, directed through filters, and be re-utilized as renewed energy without further contamination of the atmosphere. Once all automobiles are powered by cleaner sources of energy without hazardous emissions, ventilation requirements can focus on the provision of fresh air for passengers for the duration of being transported underground. Ultimately, oxygen could be harnessed from the heavily forested ‘green roof’ of the mountain top above or be extracted from the hydraulic turbulence induced by sluice gated dams and the river‘s tidal currents moving swiftly overhead.