Learning From Katrina: How Disaster Shaped A Resilience Mindset

Blog Post
Staff and crew members of the Portland Water Bureau pose for a picture in a field in New Orleans
Outgoing Water Bureau Director Mike Stuhr was the bureau’s Chief Engineer in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit and spearheaded our relief efforts in New Orleans.
Published

Hurricane Katrina changed how we operate. Worst-case scenarios weren’t hypotheticals to be debated over a disaster preparedness conference. Seventy bureau employees saw some American neighborhoods become unrecognizable. “What we got out of it was a huge amount of training. When we came back, we had people who absolutely understood what it was like to respond in a disaster,” Stuhr said. They came back to Portland with a renewed focus. Building a truly resilient water system would require historic investments in infrastructure and establishing regional partnerships.

The Advent of ORWARN

Bureau staff waited six weeks before they could travel the two thousand miles to New Orleans. Stuhr was itching to go himself. The retired

Former Water Bureau Mike Stuhr at a laptop under a tent

Army officer was fluent in deploying. “Pack everything up in trucks and buses and airplanes and go,” Stuhr jokes. “But it’s more complicated than that.” For two months, bureau staff rotated in to fill work orders throughout New Orleans. They slept in tents at their Algiers base camp, getting notes like “Portland rocks!” from appreciative locals.

It was a morale booster to be a part of such a historic relief effort. “We have this powerful sense of mission,” Stuhr said. Stuhr knew water utilities in Oregon needed to create their own mutual aid networks to provide immediate relief. Oregon Water/ Wastewater Agency Response Network was created, as Stuhr puts it, because “we needed to help ourselves.” It was based on a program developed by the American Water Works Association and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Portland Water Bureau’s efforts in New Orleans kicked off a national movement to create WARNs in every state. Prior to this, there were only WARNs in the Gulf Coast and in California. “That started immediately after Katrina. I called up five or six of my friends and said ‘We need to do this.’ There was no formal mechanism for ordering help from a neighboring agency in an emergency.” ORWARN has steadily grown since Stuhr made a few phone calls in late 2005. It now has 146 water utilities from across Oregon. 

Seismic infrastructure

Portland’s proximity to the Cascadia Subduction zone leaves our water system vulnerable to a major earthquake. “We’ve chipped steadily away at making our system more resilient,” Stuhr said. “Resiliency is not just infrastructure. It’s a state of mind, it’s about community and our utility being adaptable.”

Damaged building after Hurricane Katrina
Most of New Orleans experienced at least some damage in Hurricane Katrina

One of the biggest landmark achievements was the completion of the Interstate facility in 2015, which better protects our workforce, equipment, inventory, and resources from an earthquake. Instead of having to dig out of wreckage, Bureau crews will now go instantly into emergency response.

Another key project was replacing our old temporary EOC trailer with a new state-of-the-art Emergency Command Center building that meets current building codes for critical facilities. This was completed in 2014. Building reservoirs at Powell Butte, Kelly Butte, and Washington Park was key to replacing aging infrastructure and providing in-town storage designed to be operational after major earthquake. The west side of Portland will also benefit from our planned Greenleaf Pump Station Upgrade, which will deliver more water for a growing population and fire suppression. It will also be able to withstand an earthquake.

The Bull Run Filtration Project aims to provide further flexibility from turbidity events and climate change. Last month, Stuhr toured the Willamette River Crossing Project while a geoprobe surveyed the soil underneath the river. The data gathered by the geoprobe will help determine the best route for a seismically resilient pipe to carry water to the west side. “In my mind, I wanted our city to not have to go through what we saw in New Orleans,” Stuhr said. “Anything to do with public infrastructure involves large amounts of money. There’s no doubt about that. It’s like climbing a mountain, how do you do it? One step at a time. We’ve made substantial progress and I think we have done a lot since 2005.”

Other memories from New Orleans

“It was more than just the people who went down to New Orleans. In some ways, that was almost the easy part. There were people back here,

Thank you note to the water bureau written in red marker

we were short the number of crews you usually had to do our daily business. They all picked up the load back here. It was really fantastic; it was a huge team effort,” Stuhr said. “What we accomplished versus the total amount of damage: well, it wasn’t that big. There were other people there helping, but you’re also functioning as an ambassador to this town. The message to the residents who had stayed is ‘Help is coming, help is here,’ and that’s a really, really important message in any kind of disaster,” Stuhr said.

“We assessed damages to water, sanitary and storm sewer, power generation, fleet and buildings providing New Orleans Water and Sewerage Board documentation they needed to get reimbursement from FEMA for several hundreds of millions of dollars, said Chief Engineer Teresa Elliott, who was a leader in our emergency response and damage assessment efforts in New Orleans. "It helped us refine our damage assessment program, emergency response, and emergency preparedness that have helped contribute to our resilience today.”