infrastructure assessment, urban search and rescue, subject matter experts, and commodities technical assistance.
In 2016, USACE had 1,096 personnel deployments in response to 33 disaster declarations to perform a wide range of public works and engineering- related support missions.
The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season is in the record books.
“It was a season to remember,” wrote Dennis Feltgen of the National Hurricane Center. “For the fi rst time in recorded history, three category 4 hurricanes made landfall in the United States: Harvey in Texas, Irma in the Florida Keys, and Maria in Puerto Rico.”
Of all United States hurricanes, Hurricane Harvey (2017) ranks second and Hurricane Maria (2017) ranks third as the costliest storms on record. Katrina (2005) is the costliest. Hurricane Maria is the costliest hurricane on record to strike Puerto Rico and the U.S Virgin Islands.
Hurricane Maria In any disaster, the Corps of Engineers has three top priorities:
• Support immediate life-saving and life safety emergency response priorities
• Sustain lives with critical temporary emergency power and other needs
• Initiate recovery eff orts by assessing and restoring critical infrastructure
After Hurricane Maria, the Corps of Engineers was tasked with ordering critical materials to make up for the shortage of power restoration supplies across Puerto Rico.
By January, the Corps of Engineers Task Force Power Restoration, in a joint eff ort with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, FEMA, and industry partners, had restored power to over one million people.
“Our joint teams have been working hard for months, and this is a signifi cant milestone,” said Corps of Engineers Task Force Commander Col. John Lloyd. “USACE is committed to the restoration of power for the people of Puerto Rico, and we will continue to press forward until the mission is complete.”
Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority coordinated with state and federal
from electric companies throughout the nation helped speed up the restoration.
About a thousand contractor line personnel arrived on the island by February 1 as the Corps of Engineers Task Force increased its capacity to accelerate restoration, bringing the restoration workforce to nearly 5,500. More than 700 transformers essential to restoration arrived and are being distributed throughout the island to complete emergency repairs.
In addition, USACE leveraged relationships with electrical warehouses and utility companies to purchase small volumes of critical material. The Corps of Engineers ordered utility poles, power grid supplies, cable, transformers, fuses, towers, and insulators to fulfi ll requirements and required the use of city land space at sports complexes like Bayamon for storage of materials used in the power restoration mission. USACE works
30 HISPANIC ENGINEER & Information Technology | SPRING 2018
agencies, including the Corps of Engineers and FEMA, and with the electric power industry and electric company contractors to advance the restoration.
Approximately 4,000 personnel worked to restore power to the more than 450,000 customers in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria.
Hundreds of transformers were airlifted from electric companies across the United States, and approximately 6,000 transformers were secured through the Corps of Engineers to help advance the restoration.
Restoration workers and support staff
At the beginning, it was challenging because we were trying to do things that had never been done in our region. Simple logistics, like getting materials to a site, would take us hours because of road closures or gas lines.
through the Defense Logistics Agency to procure materials from manufacturers.
Renewable Energy for a Remote Community For S.U. Matrullas, a K through 9 school that educates over 150 students in the remote town of Orocovis, Puerto Rico, sonnen commissioned a solar + battery storage microgrid. The micro grid, established in collaboration with sonnen’s local energy partner Pura Energía, is paired with a 15kW rooftop solar system.
The micro grid will provide enough energy to keep the school open, enabling the facility to use clean and renewable energy to keep classes going instead of relying on a noisy, gas-fueled generator. During sonnen’s most recent visit to the site in February, students were using the sonnen system to charge their laptops for an upcoming technology lesson.
Restoring Communications Networks Early in March, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai toured Puerto Rico and promised $954 million to restore communications networks knocked out by Hurricane Maria.
At the same time, the National Health IT Collaborative for the Under-served (NHIT Collaborative), in cooperation with HIMSS and HX360, hosted the “Leveraging Health IT to Address Health Disparities: A Leadership Conference,” which brought together national leaders who discussed how to leverage the federal Lifeline program, which the FCC administers as part of a disaster preparedness and response network.
An estimated 550,000 Puerto Ricans participate in the Lifeline program, which was designed to ensure that low-income households in the United States are able to partake of telecommunications advances and all of the benefi ts that they bring, including the ability to fi nd and keep jobs, maintain good health, contact emergency services when needed, and preserve strong family and community ties.
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