That information was relayed to FEMA a masters in public administration from As a branch chief in FEMA’s recovery
headquarters and the state emergency Virginia Tech. division, Walke’s supervisory role has
agencies. grown considerably since the days of
“I knew I would be in a management delineating flood zones. FEMA provides
“We were looking at information coming position some day,” he said. “I didn’t grants to state and local governments,
from the National Hurricane Center envision myself as a hard core designer. I and non-profit agencies, to remove debris,
every six hours,” he said. “With that was interested in water issues and water perform search and rescue missions,
information, we could identify various management, and worked for public enti- and replace infrastructure damaged by
critical infrastructures that were in harms ties in dams and reservoir management.” disasters.
way, and plan accordingly.”
In 1979, he was working for an engineer- When Katrina passed, it fell to Walke’s
Lawson’s GIS team set up a staging area in ing firm trying to identify 100-year flood staff of about 20 people – half of them
Jackson, Miss., and fanned out with port- plains for FEMA, when he was asked to engineers – to determine what was eligible
able computers to assess the damage and join the federal agency and oversee the for removal, arrange for local govern-
update the information network. Lawson mapping project. ments to handle it, or contract with firms
left the regional offices in Atlanta and to do the work.
flew over Biloxi, Miss. “We were mapping all of the flood prone
communities throughout the country,” he “If we have a bridge that needs inspec-
“My emotions were very low,” he recalled. said. “FEMA developed a national flood tion,” he explained, “we call on a com-
“When I looked out and saw the size of insurance program for people at flood pany with that expertise. The same holds
barges from the casinos that had been risk, and adopted a flood plain manage- true for water treatment plants and
shoved inland and crushed on top of what ment plan. It was our attempt to force the schools – the contractors go in and esti-
had been a home, it was a very serious American public out of the cycle of mate what it costs to return the facility to
moment for me. Katrina had a 31-foot damage, repair, reconstruction in the pre-disaster condition, and we make our
storm surge – you’re talking about a three- flood plain, and more damage and repair grant based on that.
story building. and reconstruction.
“Our engineers don’t do the typical, hard-
“It made me want to press on and achieve core design work. We need some familiar-
what we can for the people affected by the “Delineating the ity with the subject matter to know what
storm.” is involved in the operation. We defer to
flood plains was a our engineers for the technical aspects of
The arrival of Hurricane Katrina also the inspection.”
sent James Walke (CQ), chief of FEMA’s way to get out of
public assistance branch, into overdrive. In a typical year, he said, the agency’s
The wall of water and 150-mile-an-hour that vicious cycle. engineers handle the clean up chores
winds roared through the Mississippi, following 55 disasters, including floods,
Alabama and Louisiana coasts, leaving an We moved several tornadoes and hurricanes. There is a
unprecedented wake of destruction. separate program for fire management on
towns after the 1993 non-federal land. “If you do not consider
There were millions of tons of debris Katrina,” Walke said, “the average value of
from uprooted trees, destroyed homes, floods.” the contracts is about $1 billion a year.
wrecked cars, mud and boulders, which
needed to be collected and removed. And “But then there are the special circum-
these could not simply be burned – if “Delineating the flood plains was a way stances. Katrina in Louisiana alone was
not properly disposed of, the smoke from to get out of that vicious cycle. We moved more than $7 billion in grants, and there
those pyres would blanket the region. several towns after the 1993 floods.” was a smaller amount in Mississippi -
There was infrastructure damaged and say a couple of billion. I get stuck on
destroyed – bridges were down, roads To develop the flood plan, Walke became numbers that big from time to time.
were torn up, schools were smashed, one of several FEMA engineers who It’s a long way from Norfolk.”
hospitals were flooded, treatment plants had to oversee the work of hundreds of
were under water – and someone had to engineers throughout the country who —By Roger Witherspoon
make assessments of what could or could were defining a new factor to be used
not be fixed. in local land use planning. Those flood
plain surveys became part of FEMA’s GIS
A lot of that responsibility fell to Walke, database.
a self-described “country boy from
Norfolk”, who earned a degree in civil
engineering from Howard University and
28 USBE & Information Technology I January/February 2007
http:www.blackengineer.com
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