PITTSBURGH -- As heavy rain hit the Pittsburgh region, waters flooded homes and carried debris across roadways that blocked emergency routes. Quickly, local resources became overwhelmed, and county leaders requested additional aid.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers activated a Crisis Action Team in Pittsburgh to respond to the scenario. The team set up an emergency response center with monitors displaying weather maps, flood zone diagrams, operational graphs, and tracked information that changed by the hour.
Thankfully, the above scenario was just a training exercise planned by the Pittsburgh District to increase their response readiness in case of a local disaster.
“Every year we do a tabletop exercise, which is more administrative, but this year we wanted to do a functional exercise with realistic scenarios and injects,” said Julie D’Annunzio, an emergency management specialist and the lead exercise planner for the Pittsburgh District.
The training tested the Crisis Action Team and incorporated staff and leaders from across the district’s other offices. The Crisis Action Team members are corps employees who volunteer for the position. They train annually and must be ready to respond to a disaster in just six hours.
It takes a lot more work than people realize,” D’Annunzio said of her team’s effort in organizing the exercise. “It could be easy to just pretend and make up numbers or scenarios, but we tried to make it as realistic as possible.”
The team prepared to host the event for months, researching specific water levels and writing scenario scripts to assemble a custom-made exercise. Each “inject” in the exercise updated the scenario based on real-life data or historical events, creating new stressors and demands.
“The injects included everything from weather mapping and high-water events to receiving phone calls and emails requesting assistance from various stakeholders,” said Al Coglio, the chief of the Emergency Management office. “They help us evaluate how the staff responds.”
The training highlighted the importance of refining the team’s response process regularly. The district encourages local communities to do the same. They want more local communities to engage proactively with their emergency office before disasters happen.
“The best time to engage with us is not in the middle of an emergency,” D’Annunzio said. “We want our local communities to prepare their emergency plans, or revise their plans, so they know well in advance our authorities and limitations for funds and technical assistance.”
It is important for communities to understand that the Army Corps is a federal entity. It is authorized to respond to certain scenarios only at specific emergency-declarations levels. The district wants more communities, first responders and partners to understand the authorities guiding the corps’ ability to provide certain services.
In some cases, the governor must declare a state of emergency before the Pittsburgh District can provide local support. When federal support is activated, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can provide generators, remove debris and protect damaged roofs from ensuing rain after the disaster.
At the lowest level of emergency, the Pittsburgh District can provide sandbags, flood barriers, and a sandbag machine, as well as offer liaisons to advise and support local responders. In some severe cases, if a storm causes damage to the protective infrastructure, such as levies or river channels, the corps can deploy engineers to assess damages and advise on repair plans.
The exercise highlighted the importance of coordination with county emergency operation centers, the Department of Transportation impacted cities, and community leaders.
Yet the Pittsburgh District’s most significant effort against flooding happens quietly behind the scenes year-round.
“We have a flood risk management mission,” said Col. Nicholas Melin, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District commander. “We are on the job 24/7, 365 days a year, monitoring water levels in our three rivers to ensure our reservoirs keep the region dry.”
Since the Pittsburgh flood of 1936, the district constructed dams and reservoirs that reduce flooding throughout the region. Thanks to its reservoir system, federal projects helped prevent more than $914 million in flood damages throughout the district’s footprint in fiscal year 2022. In their lifetime, the district’s reservoirs and dams have prevented more than $14 billion in damages.
However, floods in the Pittsburgh region still happen. Floods can occur due to extreme rain in a short period of time in targeted areas away from the reservoirs, or due to distressed communities not having sufficient rainstorm drainage systems.
Looking ahead, the Pittsburgh District hopes to involve a real town in future exercises to synchronize emergency response efforts. They encourage communities to engage with their emergency response team now to refine their response plans and understand the services the corps can provide when time is most critical.