Treanor Talks: Architecture, Planning & Design

Responding to Disaster: How Architects Can Help Communities Rebuild

• TreanorHL • Episode 8

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As architects and designers, we’re often asked questions about creating new spaces and buildings or preserving hundred-year-old buildings. It’s less often that our role in rebuilding after disasters is discussed in classrooms and newspapers. But this is a critical role we can play to help families and businesses recover after their lives and livelihoods are upended.

On this episode, we catch up with Pendleton's Country Market owners Karen and John Pendleton to discuss their experience recovering from an EF-4 tornado that ripped through their farm in Lawrence, Kansas, in May of 2019. Joy Coleman, principal and architect at TreanorHL, assisted the Pendletons with assessment and renovations after the tornado and joins this episode to talk more about the project.

Architects have the opportunity to serve as emergency second responders by certifying as disaster assessment professionals through the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, which is the national standard for certifying architects, engineers, and code and safety professionals to provide assessment reports. Will Robarge, an associate principal and architect at TreanorHL,  is one of just a few certified trainers through Cal OES, and he is currently serving his third term on the AIA National Disaster Assessment Committee, which is tasked with educating architects and engineers to be able to prepare and respond when a disaster occurs. Will joins us on this episode to share more information about these initiatives.

Resources:

TreanorHL is a national architecture, planning, and design firm located in the United States. The company holds a firm belief in sharing resources and insights with professionals, clients, and building users to shape the space we use to live and grow as people. For more information, visit treanorhl.com.

Megan Brock:

Welcome to TreanorHL Talks, a podcast about architecture, planning, and design trends, as well as current events and noteworthy topics in the field. I am your host, Megan Brock, introducing today's topic, disaster preparedness and the role architects play in assessment and rebuilding. Let's look at today's topic through the eyes of someone who has lived it. Karen and John Pendleton are business owners who run a successful family farm in Lawrence, Kansas. For over 70 years the Pendleton's Country Market has provided the Lawrence area with local harvests of a variety of vegetables, herbs, and over 100 varieties of flowers. The Pendletons are well known in the community seen all over town at farmer's markets and delivering bags of produce when they're not working at the farm. They love the work, they love the community and most importantly, they love the farm. Kansas is known for its agriculture, but it's also known for its weather. Lawrence sits within Tornado Alley, an area in the central United States that has been defined by climatologists as experiencing frequent tornado activity. Tornado Alley extends from Texas north through Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Over the last 10 years, Kansas has seen over 760 tornadoes touched the ground, with four of them rated as EF-4s and EF-5s which are the deadliest tornados rated on a scale of one to five based on wind speeds and potential level of destruction. One of those tornadoes was an EF-4 tornado that ripped through North Lawrence in May of 2019, devastating several homes and businesses including the Pendleton's farm,

John Pendleton:

There was 100-year-old dust raining down on our heads from the house shaking so much.

Megan Brock:

As architects were often asked questions about creating new spaces and buildings or preserving 100 year old buildings. It's less often that our role in rebuilding after disasters is discussed in classrooms in the newspapers. But this is a critical role we can play to help families and businesses recover after the lives and livelihoods are up ended. The Pendleton's story is one of thousands occurring every year as natural disasters shake our foundations and destroy our shelters. As members of our communities, we simply show up and help. And as architects, we have the unique ability to perform condition assessments, which both help keep others safe and begin the process of repairing or rebuilding.

Will Robarge:

What can we do to take our knowledge and our expertise and apply it in a direction that would help people? We recognize that when a big event or multiple events might hit a state or even a region, the availability of people to help is limited.

Megan Brock:

Will Robarge, an architect at TreanorHL, knows all too well the Pendleton's experience growing up in Central America will experienced severe weather events that changed his perspective and ultimately inspired him to become an architect. He is currently serving his third term on the AIA National Disaster assessment committee, which is tasked with educating architects and engineers to be able to prepare and respond when a disaster occurs. He is also one of just a few certified trainers through Cal OES the national standard for certifying architects, engineers and code and safety professionals as emergency second responders. It's critical to have a certified professional provide assessment reports in order to be able to receive FEMA funds for rebuilding. FEMA stands for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, an agency under the US Department of Homeland Security. According to Will, we really need more certified professionals to help with this effort. Will has joined me today for this episode, along with Karen and John Pendleton and Joy Coleman, who worked with the Pendletons on assessing and renovating after the tornado in May of 2019. Thank you all for joining me today. Let's get started with some introductions. I'm going to go ahead and let Karen and John start us off.

Karen Pendleton:

I'm Karen Pendleton, and John and I own a Pendleton's country market which is a farm market here at our home. And we started this 40 years ago raising strictly asparagus. People would come out and they would buy $10 worth of asparagus and pay with a $20 bill and ask what else they could buy. So we then quickly would scramble and we found other crops we put in greenhouse we raised hydroponic tomatoes. We started putting in more plants that we could harvest during April in May, which is asparagus season and then we now eventually are open from March until December with raising everything from bedding plants, and produce and fresh cut flowers. We also do I'm full service weddings and event flowers. We do work with agriculture, agri tourism a little bit. We have people come out and do pick your own. And we have a small pumpkin patch in the in the fall. And this is John

John Pendleton:

John Pendleton. And the farm that we're on is actually the farm that I grew up on. I tell people that one of the best things that my dad gave me was the fact that he was a first generation farmer. He actually was a city kid in Lawrence, Kansas growing up and in a beautiful old house and Old West Lawrence. And but his his dad ran, owned and ran the canning factory. So my dad was around agriculture. So when he started farming, he was the first Pendleton really to do so and developed a row crop and livestock feedlot. So growing up, I was around cattle and growing corn and soybeans and harvesting that sort of thing. And when we planted our first half acre of asparagus in 1980, we were still in the cattle business. But we started to joke that someday we would turn the feedlot into a parking lot. And lo and behold, it wasn't very much long after we were joking about it that we actually did that we turned the feedlot into a parking lot and slowly grew the Pendleton's captured market up to what it is today.

Karen Pendleton:

Pendleton's country markets like per se, it started in 1980, which was the beginning of the farm crisis. And at that time, there were very few positive farm stories. Many families were losing their family farms due to either overextension of ground that they had purchased. Banks calling in notes, because of high interest rates. It was a horribly hot summer in 1980, we had over 21 days, we had 21 days of over 100 degree temperatures. And so the crops weren't very good. And prices were extremely low, because us had put an embargo on all Russian imports. And so we weren't or

John Pendleton:

export. We lost our market. In the world market,

Karen Pendleton:

was a grain embargo, and we were not able to there sell grain to the Russians. And so the prices went way down, as well as poor crops that year. So that was the beginning of the Ag crisis. And a lot of families lost their farms. And we were one of the bright, positive stories in agriculture at the time. So we really benefited I guess, actually, because media would come out and it was something other than, Oh, we're going to lose the farm and we were doing something about it that was changing the farm in a way that would be a little more positive.

John Pendleton:

And that's one of the things that we realized early on was that anything that we could do to attract media in a positive way would would actually end up benefiting us whether it would be a newspaper or a magazine article, it just seems like there was always something else that would come out of that that would be added publicity for us and through our through the years there have been things that didn't go so well. Our way the the micro bursts being one of the the tornado being another one. And there's actually a not well known story about Karen being shot at with a bank robber. And when the media asked, Do you want your name publicized and her response was oh, no, that's a that's a waste of good publicity. You know, we, we want, we want positive publicity, not something that like a bank robber shooting that we don't we don't want that.

Megan Brock:

Alright, so this got far more interesting. Now. We're talking about bank robbers. Well, gosh, I'm glad you were okay. Wow,

Karen Pendleton:

it's a long story. You really don't want

John Pendleton:

some some other Yeah, it's it's it's a very interesting, very interesting, very long story, but but the, the the end ended up with a positive.

Megan Brock:

Well, let's see. Could you tell us about what a typical day looks like for you on the farm since bank robbers and tornadoes

Karen Pendleton:

so the first thing you do is you turn on the TV and look and see what the weather is going to do that day because not only do we have the the projects that we need to get done during the day, but it has to be done around the weather. And so I just this morning, it's going to be extra almost 100 degrees this afternoon. And so, right off the bat, we know that we have to get as much done in the mall. morning as we can, because the afternoon is going to be indoor or in the shade type projects. And our employees arrive around eight o'clock in the morning. And we have a team meeting first thing to kind of get everybody on the same page, because we have some people who are working in the market, some are working with flowers, some were working with vegetables, we know what they need to know what everyone is doing, because we may have to pull in some of the flower pickers to go pick okra or something just depending on what needs to be done on that day. So it's important that they're all on board. And so that team meeting has become more and more important through the years. And of course, first thing in the morning, you're going to do everything it has to be done out in the heat, that the hardest work in the heat gets done first thing in the morning. And then throughout the day, we try and go through the list, we have a whiteboard that lists all the vegetables that need to be picked or the flowers that need to be picked, what rows need to be weeded and hauled,

John Pendleton:

throwing away inventory that we know we won't be selling, we try and figure out okay, who can we donate it to if it's

Karen Pendleton:

late in the season, and there's some plants that just aren't going to survive. So you have to get rid of those

John Pendleton:

and try and do it quickly and efficiently. And yeah, get on her get her on her way. Well, and Karen brought up the weather and that is probably the one thing that affects us more than anything. And and we constantly keep track of what's the forecast, one and two and three and five days out. It's gonna that's going to affect whether we are heavily irrigating, maybe we don't need to irrigate, if there's a 100% chance of rain in a few hours. What needs to be certain flowers don't do well if they get wet. So we're gonna pick those real quick and other vegetable. Yeah, just everything we do. Just is affected by the weather, whether it's planting, harvesting, weed control, everything and customer numbers, if it's if it's raining on a Saturday morning, and I've said this hundreds of times, if not 1000s of times, even in the worst drought. We don't want rain on Saturday morning. And the reason why is because that's farmers market. That's also when a lot of people are out on the weekend, coming to the farm to buy bedding plants to pick their own vegetables, whatever it is, if it rains on Saturday morning, that means payday is affected. We don't need rain, even in a drought Saturday morning.

Megan Brock:

So now thinking in parallel, take us back to 2019 when that tornado came through, can you walk us through your experience on that particular day?

Karen Pendleton:

It was a Tuesday and Tuesday for us means that it is a CSA day. CSA stands for community supported agriculture where people pay early in the year to get a bag of produce each week. And on that Tuesday, you had five or six drop off appointments delivering about 100 bags of produce around town. And John was away doing that later, late in the afternoon. And I was here and at six. You got home about 530 And I was in the market and I had some customers that it was right after six o'clock when we closed and there were still customers there and

John Pendleton:

I was out in the field, hand fertilizing cabbage. So I'm throwing a little bit of fertilizer out on top of cabbage because you knew it was gonna rain, you know, there was a good chance for rain and it'd be nice to get the fertilizer down right before the rain. And it was about five minutes after six. No wind kind of dark in the West. Not not ominous dark, but it was dark in the West. And I could hear the tornado sirens coming out of Lawrence. And that's something you don't hear out here this far, very often at all. So I very quickly called Karen on the phone and and said Do you hear the tornado sirens? And she said yeah, I've got some customers and and I think Karen explained to them that we have a kind of a scary basement and they were welcome to it. But looking on the radar, it looked like the worst weather was several miles away and that they'd have plenty of time to be able to get to wherever they're going. And so we got them on their way I came in. And then then we went through the process of looking at several Kansas City.

Karen Pendleton:

We would go through six different stations and watching the weather because they were all kept Bring it. And we were holding the phone in our hand watching the radar on the phone. And we could see that it was coming our way. But if I would add that day I remember thinking, well the tornado goes a little bit more Northeast, and then that just usually goes to the northeast.

John Pendleton:

So like any good Kansan, at that point, we jump up, run outside

Karen Pendleton:

to look and we also knew that it was about 12 miles away. Yeah,

John Pendleton:

yeah. But But you wanted you wanted to see it in person. And sure enough, and I've seen I've seen photographs of the storm and it looks exactly in the photograph is what I remember. This huge gigantic rain shaft off to the west with with just a mushroom top right to right above that, and then clear sky everywhere else and, and still rodents and and Johnny roelens From Channel Nine, and his helicopter was right above us. And there's a certain amount of calm that alright, if there's a helicopter that's watching the storm right there near you. Things must be okay until he left. And we realized, well, maybe we better and at

Karen Pendleton:

that point there still wasn't any wind. Yeah, it was just a calm, calm day.

John Pendleton:

It was Karen that suggested we probably already have some flashlights. Wow, that's a good idea. So I ran out to our market area where the flashlights were the batteries for the flashlights were rechargeable batteries were in the shop. So I ran to the market got two flashlights ran to the shop got two batteries.

Karen Pendleton:

By this point. I am in the basement. Yeah,

John Pendleton:

she's already and and I'm heading towards the house and I realize oh my goodness, the wind has picked up. I go through the garage door into the house run through the house to get to the cellar door. Out the window. I see a huge tree blowing in the wind like I have never seen it before. Got downstairs real quick. And it was probably only about 30 seconds after that that the noise picked up the electricity was turned off. Turn on our flashlights thank goodness and and I realized that there was 100 year old dust raining down on our heads from the house shaking so much.

Karen Pendleton:

And but I don't remember shaking. It just it was coming down.

John Pendleton:

There was noise you could hear you could Bree hitting the house.

Karen Pendleton:

But you couldn't you didn't hear glass breaking.

John Pendleton:

And it was not the tornado. It was not the freight train sound that everybody talks about. And we've asked a couple of other neighbors. Did it sound like a freight train? And and pretty much everyone that I've talked to that was right in it's no, it's just There was noise. I'm thinking maybe the vast amount of rain helped muffle the noise.

Karen Pendleton:

So then the question is, When can you when is it safe to come out? And so we hadn't heard anything for a while. hadn't heard anything for a while? Well, let's go up. And we went up in the room we come out into from our basement. It was just a massive, we have a piano and all of our music things are in there was there was music strewn, just you know, sheet music all over the floor. There was some broken figurines and there was an American flag hanging on that fell over. And I mean, it was just it was just kind of real messy

John Pendleton:

and water, water and glass everywhere. And my initial thought was, darn it, broke a window, went to the next room, realized, again, There was debris throughout the house, and darn it broke another window. And then you tried to get out the front door. And there were the sign or Pendleton's country market sign had speared the screen door. And it had blown from several 100 feet from off the road and into the house into the door. And then there were tree limbs that were up onto the porch where we couldn't get out. And for some reason, I still didn't quite grasp everything. Went to the garage, went

Karen Pendleton:

to the living room and the windows were allowed in there and there was a sheriff's deputy out there. You don't remember this. I never saw it. But there was a sheriff's deputy out there just yelling Is everybody okay, and I yield back. Yeah, we're all fine. And that's the I never signed that. He went on to the next house I'm sure but anyway, so that was a family room and then to get out we thought we needed to go to the garage.

John Pendleton:

Well I got there first opened up the garage door stepped out into the garage and realized that our shop was damaged, wait a minute, the garage doors not just the garage door missing, but the wall of the garage is missing. And I could see that the shop had been destroyed. And then the greenhouse was torn up and then walked outside and it was It was still raining

Karen Pendleton:

and you shouldn't be able to see those things from inside the house.

John Pendleton:

Yeah, we're missing a wall. And I think it finally started hitting the realization that Yeah, we were hit by a tornado. It took me a while to finally figure out what actually happened.

Karen Pendleton:

It you know, we were hit by a microburst in 2006. That took the shop that was there then. And we had 260 foot tall, concrete silos right next to our market. And, I mean, it did a lot of damage. But anyway, we had these silos, and that it took them down, they fell down.

John Pendleton:

And even though there were utility poles knocked down into the road, a car drives up immediately, and a guy gets out and said, looks like you guys could use some help. And Karen loves to remind me that my comment was No, I think we got this

Karen Pendleton:

because lace was a mess. It was

John Pendleton:

a horrible, because I just I couldn't envision, you know, imposing on somebody I don't know, to, you know, to, but I didn't have any idea of what to do. And luckily, after soon, soon after the microburst, just like soon after the tornado, we had people just started arriving. And I jokingly say that the microburst was a good way for us to get ready to know what to do after the tornado. Very, very fresh, some good friends of ours.

Karen Pendleton:

So I found this out with a microburst. And so I knew exactly what to do the first thing after the tornado, like John says to friends of ours, drove up what can we be in short, what could they do to help? And I knew the first thing I needed to do was have somebody in charge of the food, food and water was more important than aid because I knew people would be coming after the tornado because they had come after the microburst that we needed food and water for all these people who were going to show up to help us. I guess the fact that they showed up didn't surprise me at all the numbers that showed up. It was what shocked me.

John Pendleton:

It was two solid months. We fed people twice a day.

Karen Pendleton:

We've fed breakfast and lunch every day, for two

John Pendleton:

months. And with it being a FEMA disaster. So restaurants and franchised fast food joints, get credit from the national corporation helping to donate to FEMA disaster.

Karen Pendleton:

Believe it or not, that was the number one thing in my mind. I know there was a lot of other things but in my mind, the the hospitality part of it and making sure everybody had enough water, you know, they had, we had the realtor's Association donated a huge cooler, and they had it already filled with Gatorade. Keeping all of that straight was very important to me to keep everybody because I needed to keep the army going, you know, that was cleaning up. So Wednesday, we had our we had another CSA day where we had to deliver produce in these bags. And John actually delivered CSA bags that next day, and our customers. I mean, they cried when he arrived, but nobody could believe that he was actually doing this. But we had enough volunteers come that we were able to actually have our crew take care of of a lot of that. So we also did a wedding the next weekend. We didn't miss a farmers market. We didn't miss a wedding. We didn't miss miss an event that we had already planned, because of volunteers and our crew and being able to keep that sense of normal normalcy. Oh, that's was very important.

Megan Brock:

Let me just say being a Lawrence native. That's just the people who live here. And while it amazes me, it's so powerful to be able to say that it doesn't surprise me. What's even more impressive is that you were able to keep those commitments right after that happened.

Karen Pendleton:

We had a farm from north of the river so they had to drive 15 miles with a tractor to get here, brought all their tractors and cleaned up the yard that first day and took down. Well three trees that were over 100 years old, and a couple more that were probably 50 year old that had that had broken and so and they just jumped in and didn't even ask they just came and did it.

John Pendleton:

With with their own chainsaws and with front end loaders on the tractor and just got started early in the morning, and by the end of the day they were finished.

Karen Pendleton:

And all while this was going on texts and Facebook, our daughter took over our Facebook page because there was just too many people trying to read. I couldn't respond to any of that. And then joy you. You texted me offering architectural services from trainer. And I remember looking at it, but I completely forgot about it until about two months later. And I went back and looked at it. So I mean, there was a lot of things going on that I It wasn't just wasn't going through the brain very well. Only emergencies got done.

Megan Brock:

So Joy Coleman from TreanorHL also joins us today who assisted the Pendleton's after the 2019 Tornado. Could you share a little bit about that joy?

Joy Coleman:

All right. Hello, I am Joy Coleman and I am a principal with Jr. HL and in the preservation studio. So everything I do is on older and historic buildings, which I love. And sometimes, as happened with the Pendleton's house and the other structures in the path that the tornado in May of 2019, they get kind of damaged, and twisted about if not blown over. So that tornado in 2019 was something that we heard about, obviously, through the news and everything. But then a couple months later, after, you know people started talking with their insurance companies and and talking with the local builders. We heard from Don Taylor with the Kansas City Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, she reached out to us and let us know that there were two structures closer to Lawrence than Eudora but but out in the country that were hit and needed some assistance. The Pendleton's house and market, they weren't in such a rush, which was nice. And they also had in mind some changes that they wanted to make. So what Don had asked us to do was to go and look at the market and the changes that they wanted at the entry area in the site, kind of the front of the marketplace building and help them out with that and also look at their house. So the marketplace you know obviously was higher on their priority priority list because they wanted to get that back open and ready to resume their CSA program and the growing of the plants and the open market retail area. So our landscape architects took a look and did some sketches for them that they were able to implement with local contractors that redid that entry and made it just a really nice welcoming open porch area, and integrated parking and a new route for those vehicles to get around the building.

Karen Pendleton:

It was kind of confusing before where to park, you couldn't really see the market very well. And now we have a lovely entrance that we can decorate and change with the season and people really really enjoy that.

John Pendleton:

So Landon harness or contractor that that initially worked on the garage first but he said he'd be interested in working on the rest of the house. I'm walking him through talking about the two storey old part of the house maybe we should just lop it off make it go away build a one story addition in its place because narrow stairway hit your head halfway up ungrounded wiring windows that are painted shot horrible insulation just all these different problems and and Landon goes wow what I could do that with this structure if it was in East Lauren, joy comes out I'm walking her through the house. Here's the two story part of the house. The rest of the house that was built in 1970 Not too bad. But maybe we should just lop off the old part of the house and ungrounded wire horrible insulation narrow stairway hit your head halfway up. And enjoy goes. Let's let's let's talk about it.

Joy Coleman:

Yeah, well, it's a it's a fantastic house. And really, I mean, you had some problems but

Karen Pendleton:

and then the insurance company came and said, Well, if you cut it off, this is all you get there was they would get we would get a depreciated value of the house and they would give us no more money. So the only way really then to maximum maximize our insurance money was to go ahead and rebuild. And then you came up with plans that just made it completely wonderful.

John Pendleton:

Such a tremendous improvement.

Joy Coleman:

So what happened during the tornado is it hit on kind of the corner of the oldest part of the building and this house had been added on to over the years. And there were some one storey low additions on the east side. So the tornado hit on the west side. And the original house is a two storey house, and it is a balloon frame. So the exterior studs go all the way from the foundation up to the roof. And those kind of twisted a little bit, twist to the top of the building, away from the bottom. And, and when that happens, you don't know what the floors are connected the roof is, is connected, right. And so the insurance company went through and made their assessment and had their structural engineer look at it and they said, you know, you could try to fix it, or you could tear it down and start over, they were unsure of which to do so we walked through and loved and had a detailed list from the insurance company saying if you did rebuild it, here are the things that we think probably should be reviewed and rebuilt. So we looked at those things. And that was the exterior siding, the interior plaster, the floor connections to the exterior wall, the windows, I mean, it was kind of a list of all the parts of the building. So incomes a builder that had been helping on the garage area of the house, which was one of the newer additions. And that garage area on the opposite side from where the tornado originally hit the building it it was gone, and has sucked out the wall, the corner of the garage where the door meets the side of the garage. So this builder was working on the garage to stabilize it and rebuild it and put in a new door. And he came over to the older house and looked at it with us. And he thought you know, what if we get rid of the plaster, which was falling apart anyway, and then we can, you know, look at the at the framing and see if it damaged. And John thought, You know what, I have some labor standing around needing something to do. So we'll get them on that and and then if we could fix again, you know, take this as an opportunity to fix some some things that they didn't really enjoy about their house, they had a very tiny master bedroom, that was another addition to the original house, we can redo that and solve the problems, then I think we'll have a house that we want to live in.

John Pendleton:

Oh my goodness, yes. After we got back into the house, it was oh my gosh, this is phenomenal. And, and, you know, we we just we just so enjoy this was an old farmhouse that that had had had seen its better day and it seems better day and and the fact that we were able to strip it down to the bare bones and come in with with brand new electricity and good insulation and good windows that weren't painted shut. And just everything about the house now is new and fresh and up to date. And we're enjoying it.

Megan Brock:

What would be your device to others to be proactive in case of future severe weather or other unplanned events.

Karen Pendleton:

One thing we did do was to invest in a high quality generator. That before we had an all farm generator that was run off of

John Pendleton:

a power takeoff, so I had to hook it up. If we were going to use it to the biggest tractor that we had. And interesting thing when you have a power outage, it's either during an ice storm, or it's during a severe thunderstorm, or high wind

Karen Pendleton:

and none of which you want to go out and actually,

John Pendleton:

I'm out hooking up while it's raining and there's lightning and I'm hooking up this gigantic generator to run. And so yeah, the one of the big improvements was to go ahead and and we've got more of the electrical. We have electrical lines buried already. But one of the things that you really don't think about is ensuring the buried electrical lines because they're buried. What's gonna hormone Well, if the building that they're hooked to blows away and rips those lines, no electrician is going to hook that back up. So Having having a good quality generator and it has come in handy. Over the last couple of years when we've had, we had the rolling blackouts. Yeah. When when

Karen Pendleton:

they said the black, we'd have rolling blackouts, but it would be no more than 15 minutes at a time. But it was 20 below zero that day, and we had tomatoes in our greenhouse that even for 15 minutes without heat, they would have would have died. Our generator went online like two weeks before that. So we were able to save an entire year's crop just with that. But one of the best things we did after the tornado was contact our attorney and have him read our insurance policy because you get this packet of stuff. And you're not sure how, how. Yeah, and so we paid for our attorney to read through our insurance policy, we didn't have him do any contacting of insurance people or anything, but he would just tell us the questions that we needed to ask and show it highlight things that we may want to look at. And we learned a lot about insurance that we wouldn't have before. But that was money well spent to have him read through it.

John Pendleton:

In an old house, there is a writer that you can have on your insurance policy, I believe it's called codes and law, which would cover something, if it's not up to code are ungrounded electrical wiring was not covered. Because the tornado did not cause ungrounded wiring. But there's no electrician that would hook that back up, we had to replace all the electrical wiring in the old part of the house that that was the ungrounded the two strand wire.

Karen Pendleton:

So same way with the staircase, it would not be to code because it was so narrow and steep. You know, because because there was damage to it, the insurance company would replace it, but you couldn't upgrade it. You couldn't put it back, you couldn't put it to code, what current code is

John Pendleton:

in charge insurance for it?

Megan Brock:

Well, I'm going to read my insurance policy after this because you're right, it sits there until you need it. But when you do, it's everything.

Karen Pendleton:

And of course, we all know this, but you need to take pictures of everything.

John Pendleton:

And ask for help. Just know, know that there's somebody that has expertise. And if there's some way that that you can ask for advice after the fact on how to deal with things. I think the fact that we have been involved with community activities. And I think that that I was I was on the Zoning Board of Appeals for the for Douglas County. And so when when they came out and said, you might have a problem with zoning, the zoning administrator knew who I was and wanted to do everything she could to help us. And, you know, if

Karen Pendleton:

if you have an adversarial relationship to begin with, that's going to be more difficult.

John Pendleton:

And I think that that then created the fact that we've been that way for so long that created the public response of people coming out to help us. I think volunteerism helps, and you don't know when it will, but it just it will someday.

Megan Brock:

So I also mentioned that will Robarge is joining us on this episode to talk about his experience as a certified safety assessment trainer. We'll Could you introduce yourself and just give us a little bit of background. For example, what got you interested in disaster assessment?

Will Robarge:

Will Robarge, I work at TreanorHL I have been working on disaster assessment committee for started back in 2006 2007. And that goes way back to my pops being military. So he you know, he was life career military guy did two tours Vietnam. He was a ranger over there. He came back he got into military intelligence with Latin American specialist angle to it. And so as a result, our family kind of moved all over Latin America. You know, I've lived in Panama, Dominican Republic, little bit in Puerto Rico, Guatemala, visit Mexico, you know, and I've lived or visited for extended period of times, all these countries that I mentioned. And being down there, you get to see those crazy events that come through. I'm talking hurricanes and tropical storms, you know, the ones with the really high winds and that just really devastate areas. You know, we get a taste of it here in Kansas with the tornado goes, you know, and then the hurricane is just, you know, on another level. So, you know, one in particular, I can't remember the year it was in the early 90s. We were in the Dominican Republic, at the time living there in Santo Domingo and the hurricane was coming through. And it actually ended up devastating Puerto Rico, but clipping Dominican Republic, so we didn't end up getting the full, full force, like they thought we were going to, which was lucky. But I remember being in our home, we had lots of glass, ours was a tropical type style home. So it was very open glass in some places, no glass and other places. But we were going through with my dad and I, and putting duct tape x's, and duct taping all over the windows that we did have moving boxes of food and big, you know, glass bottles of water into his radio room, which was the lowest room in the house as a concrete structure. And then we go down there for we went down there for almost the whole week, when the storm was hitting, and he had his ham radios, you know, we didn't have internet, then we didn't have, you know, cable TV, Weather Channel, nothing, none of that effect, the power was out. So all we had was a generator outside. And his ham radios and he was he was talking to guys and gals in Puerto Rico and in the Virgin Islands and all over to make and they had this network going reporting, what's going on and talking about giving assessments, you know, okay, this is happening in this town, and this is this building here. And they were touching on the important buildings and just neighborhood globally. But that interests me, you know, just hearing this network of guys. And they had their own system of how they'd catalog, you know, what the information they were getting. And then they would, they would somebody had a net setup, or a meeting time, it's like a Zoom meeting, but for ham radios, and they go there, and they they each take their turn, and they go through and read their reports and say, Okay, this is what's going on here. This was, and that was how information that I saw was getting relayed back to, you know, HQ, you know, to assess the damages. The governor's I'm sure were of the not only the individual countries, the presidents, but also governors of like Florida and things were kind of paying attention. So that kind of introduced me to networking, got people networking, doing disaster and damage assessments, being down there in the middle of that. So, like I said, I got interested in this in this disaster assessment program by event back then it was run by Stan Peterson. He's a longtime AIA guy here in Kansas. He's a fellow now. And Eva Christie was another person instrumental involved, and they were actually, Kansas was one of the first I think it's the first state but I don't want to say that without qualifying it, one of the first states to have this type of program in our state. So it was kind of a flagship idea. And Stan was at the forefront of that. And he's done a lot of traveling to get programs started. In other states. In fact, there's a handful of states that would credit, Stan, with helping them to get their assessment programs up and running as well. So it really started with that need for or that desire for for the AI to serve, you know, to what can we do to take our knowledge and our expertise, and apply it in a direction that would help people. You know, the whole concept of our program is to get bodies get trained people out into the field immediately after disaster once the search and rescue efforts have kind of concluded we don't go in and we don't. We don't search for people. And we don't rescue people. We don't do that. That's all first responders were essentially second, maybe third responders, but get bodies out there so that we can very quickly assess the damage in the areas and report that in a logical way back to the state in this case, the Department of Emergency Management and the governor so that he can then get money released. And in this case, FEMA money as quickly as you can within 180 days is typically when it happens back out to the areas that are affected. I actually serve on the AI National Disaster Assessment Committee. And that's built out of obviously, people all over the nation. We actually have a member who lives and works out of the Virgin Islands, who's on our committee. And so we kind of get together and we we write bulletins, technical bulletin, sometimes we write recommendation papers on new studies that probably should happen or new ways new programs that we could probably implement implement to not only helped with the disaster assessment and recovery, but also there's a lot of talk about disaster mitigation. You know, especially when we're, you know, along the same common lines of conversation of climate change. You know, with everything changing in our climate, we're seeing more disasters, more things going on with the weather and other other things. So all the more reasons is to step back and say, you know, what can we do to mitigate disasters? You know, how can we recommend good design, so that it's more robust? You know, back in the day, I'm thinking of a good example. You know, there were houses built along the shoreline, I think it was in Florida. And they had a bunch of, and I could be off on the, on the location, but coastline, and they had houses that were kind of on piers. And, you know, the floodings came and these houses got destroyed. And so there was some funding that was, you know, the government or somebody decided, oh, let's give them some funding. And so then we can help them build their houses further up on stilts, so that way, the flooding won't get to them. So they funded them. And bunch of people took the free money from the government, and they built their houses up on higher stilts, will, that helped with the water, but then now you you've got heavy winds that are really, you know, the higher up you go from the ground, the faster the wind velocity is, and I don't know if nobody thought that would be a factor. But the wind became an issue. And so these homes are just getting blown around on the stilts and underneath, and the uplift would is insane. And nobody really accounted for that everywhere. So now you've got a different problem. So I think the whole conversation is, well, how can we, instead of doing knee jerk design reactions like that, that nobody's thought through all the ramifications of what do you do when you do this to a building? Let's step back and really look at things that we can do to mitigate disasters? And how can we recommend those to our communities, and get those implemented in our communities. So there's a real push to do that now. And we're talking about that, at that at that committee level. And we have monthly or bi-monthly teleconferences where we invite all the disaster coordinators in all the states across the nation to join and share their ideas. So it's really a collaborative effort. It's not a national committee that's in there saying this is how it's going to be, then we're going to roll it out. And here it is. No, we're we're really making the effort to get everybody in the room and, and make comments. So that's cool. At the local level, I've been on the Kansas State disaster assessment committee. Well, I've been a volunteer since around 2007 2008. And did I've done a few deployments of flood to a couple of tornadoes. And then I decided to get on the board. So that I could help kind of organize and manage teams as we go out into the field and get deployed. The idea of being a trainer kind of Stan approached a couple years ago, and he's like, man, I'm out. I want to go fishing more, you know, this, that and the other. I was like, okay, so he talked me into going to getting trained, he didn't have to pressure me very hard, because I was kind of excited to do it. So. So yeah, so I just became a trainer. And then as soon as I decided to do all that, and all this was coming together, the pandemic happened. And this was really weird for our committee, because, you know, everybody's locked down. So we're not doing any training. We're not doing any assessments, the disasters that did happen, luckily, we didn't have very many around our area. But the disasters that did happen, they were being very careful on who they called out to be deployed, obviously, because of safety and insurance and liability concerns. So they didn't want just volunteers showing up. So that kind of affected things. So our committee at the national level, kind of shifted gears, and we focused on writing a book, and we published it, and it's called the RE occupancy assessment tool. Today, we made three versions of it. So there's 3.0, that's out there in the world now. And we published this in in July of 2020. And that is essentially it's kind of a we, as architects, you know, we we felt that we're in a unique position to coordinate a range of mitigation strategies to reduce the risk of of transmission of COVID while everybody is kind of re occupying their buildings, so you know, once a pandemics kind of slowed down, and the call comes for everybody to kind of reoccupied their places of business and we came up with this assessment tool to help them depending on their building type. Give them guidelines on what to do you know, for example, don't use a public drinking fountain use a bottle filler, you know, if you're going to have seating in a restaurant, we recommend that you seek people this way with this much space apart, allowing for this type of circulation, etc, etc. And we did that for a wide variety of We're building type tools. So that was kind of cool. And we got that out there during COVID. And then once COVID started, things started opening back up again, we were able to pull back our focus. And we wrote and re issued our disaster assessment handbook for the national and we just published that last last year. So so we really, you know, when when the pandemic hit, we took advantage of that time, and we put our heads to paper, and just wrote and published a couple things. And now we're our feet are back on the ground, trying to get the assessments and things going again,

Megan Brock:

What does the response process look like after a disaster?

Will Robarge:

So it's all predicated on a specific format on how to do it. There's rules governing, okay, we have a we we get called up, we organize ourselves, we establish who's going to be the Command Center team. And that would be the person who's going to lead the effort, and then the people that are going to help him or her, and then you figure out who all is going to come and then you all show up and you divide up into teams, you're usually working with your local government, who we recognize as the authority having jurisdiction. So whether that's the Kansas Department of Emergency Management Coordinator, or whether that's a local county, Emergency Coordinator, Kansas has a setup, such that the state disaster coordinators are not going to tell the counties how to run their assessments and their post disaster processes, they'll advise, and they'll offer support, and they'll process the fee net theme applications. But the county emergency management guy has the authority to call and who he wants to, as long as they're, you know, trained to do is they're assessing and then report and then manage how well that's going to flow. So once that all that hierarchy is kind of all established. And typically, we like to have that all organized ahead of time in something called an MOU method of understanding, if you have an MOU in place, it's all laid out, that tells you, you know, who are the players, when a disaster happens, these are the steps you follow. These are the guys and gals you call in. Yada, yada, yada, who does what and it really lays that out. So you have that in hand, you go out there, you get your teams together. And then the teams go out in twos or threes. And they are given zones on a map and affected area maps and we go through and assess individual buildings very quickly, it's it's called a rapid response for a reason. You We don't try to get bogged down in touring, walking through the building. At at length we go through quickly, we usually try to stay outside, until we've assessed that the building safe to enter. A lot of cases, buildings aren't safe to go inside. So you can just poke your head in the window and look and make your assessment. In some cases, we do need to go inside and look at some things Joi mentioned, you know looking at cracking and things that happen inside that tells you a little bit about what's moving around. And then you get you fill out these very quick rapid assessment reports. And then the post a we call them placards, it's just eight and a half by 11 colored sign and they have you know, green, orange, yellow and red. And obviously red is the risk is really bad don't come in here you're gonna fall on top of you type of sign versus the green, which is we deem the safe to go in. However, we recommend that you have a you know, an assessor look at it in more detail just to make sure. And there's placards for in between. So you want to log all the information on your form, you put that sign up and you just keep going and you canvass the entire neighborhood. And then you take those reports back to the central command, and they compile it all and give it to the county emergency manager who then fills out his report back to the state and to FEMA and that they tally up the damage, they put numbers to it and decide, you know how much if any, is FEMA money going to gonna come in? So that's kind of the process. So it's all about speed, you know, doing them very, very quickly, accurately getting that information back as quickly as possible so that they can get the money to the people that need it.

Megan Brock:

So how can someone become a licensed disaster assessment professional? What are the steps that they should take?

Will Robarge:

We trained through Cal OES it's the first program in the nation to do this sort of program, officially to end to train for it would be it was California, and it would be the California Department of Emergency Management. And so all this the net, the Federal FEMA has now recognized them as the standard of training. And so now all the states in the United States go through training that's certified by Cal OES. The same for being a trainer, actually to another level. So once you get trained, if the need is there, and you have the desire, you can go and we only have one trainer class a year. And you go and take this training class to be a trainer and you learn a whole bunch more stuff. And then you have to teach a class and you have to be deployed a few times. And then once you've got that under your belt, then you become a trainer. And there's not very many, very many of them to cover, the US last account is probably 28 or 29 trainers in the US. And that could have grown, that was couple years ago. Last talking so.

Megan Brock:

So can you tell us a story about a time that you were deployed?

Will Robarge:

You know, I went to did an assessment in the Miami County here in Kansas, they had a flood. But yeah, it was it was a two day or, you know, I went down one day, and then went back up, went down the next day. And the majority of the buildings that were or homes that were looking at, a lot of them were mobile homes, and those things just melt. I mean, they're like bath bombs when you get floodwaters on them, because it's just the materials are made out of just dissolve and turn to mush. So we're touring through a lot of those, I remember being with some guys, and they would, I don't know why try to step inside some of these and the floor would be motion, their foot would go through the floor, you know, and, and so we had to be really, really careful. Well, this is one of those, you know, trailer communities down there, I don't know if that's the case, everywhere, but they had a lot of animals, a lot of feral cats, you know, dogs, and we found a lot, there was a lot of drowned animals, they just get crawl up underneath, and you know, natural instinct is to crawl underneath a car crawl underneath the building for safety. And they do that and they get trapped. And so that I mean, just, you know, the smells and the and the sights, and then you get on and the radio back or you call back, you know, let them know where the find remains of things, and they come out and get it and then see and people upset because their animals, you know, are sad. That was a particularly it was a very emotional deployment. And they they tell you, you know, don't try not to get too deep a conversation with the homeowner. I mean, they're in shock. A lot of things are going on in their life. Right now. And, and you might get sucked into a conversation for two, three hours that, you know, will take away from your ability to get assessments done and really get things moving. So they tell you, you know, don't get engaged too much. Be where, you know, be kind. And give them all the information that you can and move along. Yeah, it's depending on the level of disaster. You just, you know, Stan did Katrina, and his stories with that are just mind boggling, boggling, you know, and they would find they would find human bodies, in addition to animals. And then on top of that, the devastation was just on another level. He said, and they you know, they had them all sleeping in a big tent, you know, cots all the damage assessors. So they would go in and have their own caught. And it's like they're militarized, you know, just doing things. And so yeah, it depending on the level of the disaster, it can get pretty hairy.

Megan Brock:

Yeah, that's tough. I really admire what you all in the committee, and really all responders do to help. Well, for anyone who really has a passion for this and wants to help, who should they get in contact with to get involved in the program?

Will Robarge:

They should definitely reach out to their if they have won their, their AIA disaster assessment program. There's a lot of times called SAP programs SAP, and if they don't have one, they can reach out to the national. And there's a website for them as well. And they have contacts on there. And I think there's a contact link on there that says if you're interested, email us and let us know. And yeah, I'd highly recommend that, you know, as an as an unlicensed professional. The obviously for liability issues and we we train young professionals. However, we don't allow them to deploy on their own, if that makes sense. We allow them to come out to a deployment but they're, they're shadowing a team. They don't unnecessarily fill out the forms, they just kind of walk might take some pictures but just kind of watching so they do a lot of shadowing so it's so it's an internship, which is great because not only do you It's like being in the field, when you're built constructing a building, you know you when you're on a project and you go visit it during, you know, every month you go out and look at everything that's changed and write your field report. It's Just kind of the same thing, you get out there with experienced professionals along your side as a young professional in there, and you're hearing their stories, you're walking buildings, and you're looking at things, you know, or they tell you don't go down there because of this and that, and then you start seeing dangerous conditions that then you'll never forget that going forward. So it's, it's valuable in the field experience, that actually translates well over to their profession. Because then, you know, they see, catastrophically how buildings can perform, or not perform. And so they're aware of that. And in their mind, you know, I find myself when I'm designing buildings now, you know, where's the safe room? You know, where's the structural stable area of this building? And is that good enough to be a shelter for these people? If not, I might have a conversation with one of my, with my structural engineer and say, Hey, can we beef the structure up a little bit in here, we're not going to make it an official shelter. But keep in mind, this is probably the only place people have to go if a tornado or something hit. So there's design decisions that, that all that I've made on projects based on field experience with this program. So it's, it's it's invaluable. My opinion, the national committee right now is actually looking something they've not done in the past, they're looking to have one or two young professionals, unlicensed professionals, join the committee in a capacity as a as an intern, you know, so they, they they're on the committee, you know, they're there to learn, but also to give their input because we feel like, you know, the younger generations got some really good ideas, you know, every young person coming in, it's got crazy ideas that no one's ever thought of before. And so if we can capitalize on that, and get that, as part of the program, get those ideas coming in, it'll just make us better.

Megan Brock:

What can we as citizens do to be more prepared for a disaster?

Will Robarge:

Definitely understand your state and your communities plan for a disaster. No, that goes first. No, the disasters that can happen in your area, you know, here in Kansas, obviously, tornado flooding is another one. And then, you know, we can get ice and snow pretty heavily. So there's a few that we know, that were exposed to so understand those, and then know what your community and your state plans are. They they all have websites they're supposed to have. And I think they all do have a emergency management plan, posted the details out, okay, when this disaster happens, this is what these are the steps we're going to take. And it just lists everything out and lists out who the players are. And, you know, just get familiar with that. If it were me, I would just know that not to memorize it. But just understand, you know, if if this sort of hit my house, these are the people that are going to know what's going on and, and this is the process that's going to happen. There's a lot of things that homeowners have to track or renters, you know, when they're, you know, they got to deal with your insurance companies, and you got to deal with any medical things that might have happened. I mean, there's just so much. So getting familiar with that plan ahead of time. It's just one less thing you don't have to scramble and find out about later.

Megan Brock:

Thank you for joining me today, Will, and thank you to Joy Coleman from TreanorHL and Karen and John Pendleton for their time sharing their stories with us. While you may be listening to this podcast with blue skies and weekend plans on your mind, it takes only five minutes to find and save helpful information that can be invaluable in the time of a disaster. As Will mentioned, you can be proactive by looking up your county's disaster manager and by asking for information about the county's disaster plan. Create and practice a safety procedure with your loved ones so they can also be prepared. Review the show notes for this episode to find helpful resources from FEMA, the AIA Disaster Assistance Committee, and more. If you are a prospective or practicing architect, you can learn more about how you can help by visiting the Cal OES website also linked in the show notes. And for anyone listening to this podcast, you can call FEMA at any time at 800-621-3362 if you have questions or if you want help creating a plan. That's 800-621-3362. As I edited this podcast, Hurricane Ian swept through Florida as a category four hurricane, bringing with it wind speeds of up to 150 miles per hour. There have been only 15 hurricanes of a category four or five on record to ever hit the state of Florida. You can find the latest news coverage as search and rescue efforts are still underway. Will tells me he hasn't received word yet about if or when disaster assessment deployments will happen, because as I mentioned earlier in this episode, they are only second or third responders. A big issue with hurricanes, he says, is that street signs and landmarks are demolished. And with so much wreckage and potential exposure to harmful elements, assessments may have to be done digitally via drone. He says that the digital mapping database is also helpful for reporting to FEMA. Right now the best thing you can do to help the citizens of Florida is to donate to relief efforts. I will provide a link in the show notes for the Red Cross where you will find immediate information on how you can help contribute directly. Until next time, thank you for joining us on this episode of TreanorHL Talks, stay safe, take care of each other and be prepared. Trainer HL is a national architecture planning and design firm located in the United States. The company holds a firm belief in sharing resources and insights with professionals clients and building users to shape the space we use to live and grow as people. For more information visit treanorhl.com That's t-r-e-a-n-o-r-h-l.com.