FMA Board Agency Report NOAA/NWS

19

Figure 2.

New Service Coordination Hydrologist Selected

Brett Whitin has been selected as the new Service Coordination Hydrologist (SCH) at the California Nevada River Forecast Center (CNRFC). His selection leaves a Senior Hydrologist vacancy at the CNRFC. The SCH is the primary external liaison for the CNRFC, serving as part of the management team. Brett has a great background, having worked for the USACE Sacramento District over a decade ago. He came to the office conference room as a USACE employee attending early Yuba-Feather F-CO meetings. He worked for about three years as a hydrologist at the Southeast River Forecast Center. Upon arriving at the CNRFC in 2010, Brett quickly immersed himself in the new Community Hydrologic Prediction System (CHPS), which forms the National Weather Service framework for hydrologic analysis and modeling. Brett quickly became the office leader, if not one of the national leaders, in operationalizing improvements to the Hydrologic Ensemble Forecast Service (HEFS), a probabilistic hydrologic forecast service which accounts for short-term weather forecasts up for up to two weeks lead time, and which uses climatology for periods beyond two weeks out to one year lead time. HEFS is quickly becoming one of the major tools for Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO). Brett has much depth and experience with hydrologic modeling and HEFS, and he interacts very well CNRFC partners and users, as well as CNRFC and CA Department of Water Resources staff. He holds both BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from Clemson University.

KARL MOHR WAS EXEMPLARY

Michael Nowlan

The Karl Mohr Distinguished Service Award for National Activities recognizes individuals who, through their long term efforts, have clearly influenced the realm of national floodplain management policies or activities, such as education, government, research, litigation, outreach, implementation or other actions. If you search online for Karl Mohr you will need to add some additional identifiers to his name, as there are numerous Karls, even one in Davis currently working on land use issues. It goes to show how big of a world we live in when there are prominent individuals with the same name. I am now even more motivated to write about the namesakes of our FMA awards, to preserve the history of our association and the people who have made it great. Karl Mohr made his career in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a project officer dealing with a myriad of often thorny floodplain mapping issues associated with the National Flood Insurance Program. Some people think that floodplain issues are generally boring, and that may stem from the technical details of these issues, but when money and property values are involved, discussions can get quite “energetic”. FEMA officials know this truth better than most, and Karl was right in the thick of it, on the front lines, during his tenure with FEMA. Notably, Karl had the pleasure of dealing with ten Southern California cities in the 1990s when they found out FEMA was going to map them into the high-risk floodplain. The cover story of the Los Angeles Times in January 1995 reported the story with the headline titled “Citing risk of a devastating flood, the federal government wants Southeast residents to get costly and unpopular insurance against…HIGH WATER”. And who do you think willfully bore the brunt of these cities’ protests? Karl Mohr. I can feel for Karl. The floodplain management profession often involves being the bearer of unpleasant news. Couple that with individuals who distrust government and believe they will have to pay money for a flood that “hasn’t happened yet.” It’s a recipe for political disaster. One local Councilman at the time actually called it a “fund-raising scam for the federal government”. Talk about walking into the lions’ den!

Karl was a father of nine children which gave him the fortitude to stand strong in the face of public adversity for the need of sound floodplain management. He is widely known for his leadership in the use of LiDAR in FEMA mapping, working on the Airborne and Light Detection and Ranging Systems section of FEMA 37 Appendix 4B. For those readers who are younger, FEMA 37 was THE document to have on your desk as a floodplain manager and mapping consultant. Karl also was instrumental in dealing with national flood mapping issues, being involved in the Technical Mapping Advisory Council and the production of documents on alluvial fan flooding guidance and the flood hazard mapping modernization plan. Karl’s passing was a tragedy having happened shortly after retiring from FEMA, but the bottom line is that Karl was in it for the long haul and clearly did not back down from addressing extremely important issues related to developing accurate flood hazard mapping. Tough love is tough for both the giver and the receiver, but it is absolutely necessary to protect our communities and neighbors before catastrophe strikes. As members of FMA, we should all relate to Karl and applaud those like him who stand in the breach.