Agency partnership provides housing relief efforts

Teamwork has a special meaning for a group of employees from the St. Paul District, and employees of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, or USBR, who deployed in support of Hurricane Ida recovery efforts in Louisiana last summer.

The St. Paul District’s housing planning and response teams received a call to support the recovery efforts following Hurricane Ida’s landfall Aug. 29, 2021. A month later, the team departed home station for Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The team’s mission manager quickly realized they were going to need assistance to handle the workload assigned to them and reached out to the USBR for assistance.

“A strong partnership like this speaks to the level of support the Corps of Engineers provides in emergency relief efforts with FEMA,” said deployed mission manager Andy Huffman.

In November, the bureau deployed a six-person team from across the United States that marked the first of six, 6-month rotations to the deployed location.

“The USBR personnel were a great addition to the housing team and integrated quickly with Corps’ team members. Their efforts, along with the other team members’ efforts, were vital to the success of this mission,” said the St. Paul District Readiness Operations Chief Kristin Kosterman.

Hurricane Ida impacted landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150 mph. Ida then churned inland with a life-threatening storm surge along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, bringing catastrophic winds, heavy rainfall, tornadoes, and flash and urban flooding.

Huffman said the joint USBR and Corps team exceeded expectations. During the six-month deployment, the joint team completed more than 2,200 private-site inspection reports, 140 commercial park-site inspection reports and 1,100 ready for occupancy reports.

The reports are used by FEMA to determine whether a location is feasible for the placement of a temporary housing unit. Then, if eligible, the homeowner would receive a temporary housing unit on the property, while the homeowner makes necessary repairs to the home.

Wesley Shaw, assigned to the Boulder City Nevada Lower Colorado Region, served as the USBR agency representative for the six-person team, he said that he is always amazed at the bonding the planning and response teams develops during a disaster mission and reminds him of the camaraderie he experienced while in the U.S. Army.

“The temporary housing mission comes in waves,” Shaw said. “You always need to be ready to adapt.”

Adapting is exactly what the team did, Huffman said. They learned from previous housing missions that you need a lot of equipment to effectively complete the housing mission. These missions often keep the planning and response teams away from their homes for 30 to 60 days. He said the packing list for the extended mission includes everything from safety equipment, to clothing and tools, because you never know what you might run into.