MANAGING THE 2019 FLOOD EVENTS: DIVISION HIGHLIGHTS BY LOUIE WEIN, USACE Headquar ters
2019 was the wettest year on record in the 124 years since the United States began tracking precipitation trends. Thus far this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has dealt with record interior spring flooding in the Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas rivers’ basins, in addition to the Great Lakes basin to the north, as well as Hurricane Barry in July, as it struck the Gulf Coast and moved inland. Collectively, these events caused significant damage to levees and other structures, and affected the daily lives of thousands who live and work in these areas. This record-setting year has followed the trend of continuously escalating storm events in both frequency and severity dating back to 2016, thus prompting Ray Alexander, USACE’s director of Contingency Operations and chief of Homeland Security, to deduce that “as this has been the reoccurring pattern for the past several years, it appears that long-term missions in response to large catastrophes may be the new normal.” The 2019 and 2018 storm events occurred on the heels of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Nate, and Maria in 2017, which occurred less than a year after the catastrophic Louisiana flooding in 2016 – at the time, categorized as the worst U.S. disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012. USACE was fully engaged in long-term recovery missions for each of these events, often simultaneously, which has forced USACE to continuously increase, mobilize, and reallocate internal resources and personnel to meet the mission requirements and recovery needs of the affected populations. USACE is one of the nation’s leaders in storm damage reduction infrastructure, managing 50 percent of all federally owned dams nationwide, to include Puerto Rico, and owning and operating of six of the 10 largest U.S. reservoirs. USACE will continue to work closely with federal partners, key stakeholders, and the states in advance of, during, and following events such as these. “Collectively, we need to identify and consider viable long-term options for reducing risk that include investments in more resilient infrastructure and smart planning on the part of state and local governments as they work with communities vulnerable to both coastal and inland flooding,” said Alexander. Though the common theme of these events has been extensive storms with prolonged rainfall followed by widespread flooding, USACE routinely responds to all-hazards contingency events ranging from hurricanes to tornadoes, and from wildfires to periods of prolonged drought. In this capacity, USACE exercises its own response authorities under Public Law (PL) 84-99 (Flood Control 18
and Coastal Emergencies) and under the Stafford Act in support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as part of the National Response Framework (NRF). Each event is uniquely complex and resource intensive in both the response and recovery phases. Therefore, in 2018, Congress passed a $17.4 billion emergency supplemental bill to begin the long-term road to recovery; and in 2019, Congress passed an additional $3.6 billion in emergency supplemental funds to bring relief to those states affected by hurricanes Florence and Michael as well as to the territories struck by typhoons in the Pacific.
SOUTH ATLANTIC DIVISION Since 2017, the South Atlantic Division has continuously been directly affected by catastrophic events. Less than a year after sustaining severe impacts from hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Nate, Hurricane Florence made landfall on Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, in September 2018, bringing 20 inches of rain over several days. As tributaries conveyed the rain inundation to the Waccamaw, Black, Lumber, Lynches, Pee Dee, and Little Pee Dee rivers, the river elevations gradually rose to unprecedented heights as the water attempted to work its way to the coast. In anticipation of the potentially devastating affects, the USACE Charleston District, along with several partnering agencies, collaborated on efforts to reduce impacts to the population at risk. The district provided 10,000 linear feet of Hesco barriers, 26,000 linear feet of plastic sheeting, 5,000 sandbags, and 1,000 supersacks to successfully keep Highway 501, the main corridor to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, open as the Waccamaw River did indeed flood as anticipated. The district also provided 300 linear feet of Hesco barriers that were installed around the Pawleys Island pump station in order to continue to provide clean water to the island. Utilizing resources available from other USACE districts, the Charleston District was able to provide 20,000 additional sandbags via the Louisville District’s sandbagging machine. As a result of this series of hurricanes, South Atlantic Division Commander then-Brig. Gen. Diana Holland shared a similar assumption to that of Alexander: “In 2018, after everything we had been through in 2017, we were in such a better position to respond. Given everything the region and nation have faced with those storms, these are not normal times.”
