SEAOC Volunteer Safety Assessment Engineers were deployed to St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to assist the local jurisdiction in their evaluation of hurricane and flood damaged buildings.

On October 5, SEAOC was asked by the State of California Office of Emergency Services (OES) to provide volunteer engineers to St. Bernard Parish. On October 9, an evaluation team consisting of 26 members of SEAOC, ASCE, AIA, ACIA, and CALBO, departed for St. Bernard Parish via Baton Rouge. The ten SEAOC members on the initial deployment included Julie Birtcher, Larry Cofer, Donald David, Jim Elmlinger, Max Famalaki, Jeff Haight, Sam Mengelkoch, Tom Ramskill, Dave Schafer, and Gregory Wong. A second group of SEAOC volunteers arrived on October 16 to relieve the first group. These included Matt Barnard, Justin Capp, Jim Casper, Steve Chambers, David Cooper, Dale Hendsbee, Doug Litchfield, Adam Nye, Samantha Walker, and David Wolfson. Jim Elmlinger refused relief and stayed two weeks. A third group of SEAOC volunteers arrived on October 23 to relieve the second group. These included Marguerite Bello, Lester Meu, and Mark Okamura, who also served as a coordinator.

The evaluation team was tasked to perform rapid building evaluations using a modified ATC-20 methodology. With a full 26 person team during the first two weeks of the deployment, the team was able to complete evaluations of over 1,250 buildings per day. It is interesting to note that over 90% of the buildings we evaluated were green tags. Also note that our evaluations were purely structural and did not address issues of habitability, such as mold.

Thank you to all the volunteers for their efforts and commitment. In addition, thank you to the regional coordinators, including Mike Fretz, Steve Lew, Brenda Guyader, Steve Hiner and Tod Martin, for their effort and support before and during the deployment. Finally, thank you to the SEAOC Board for their tremendous support during the deployment.