Sanford Ross Bender

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.