Engineering News, September 19, 2005

September 19, 2005 Vol. 77, no. 4F

SOLEMN MEMORIES: CEE professor Bob Bea shares his own experience surviving Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Behind him is a photo from the recently flooded New Orleans area. He spoke at a town hall meeting that was called to organize faculty and students who are interested in recovery and rebuilding efforts along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. (Photo Credit: Aaron Walburg)

CEE professor Robert Bea and others mobilize UC response in Katrina research and recovery

Long before Bob Bea was a CEE professor and risk-assessment/management expert, he was a hurricane survivor. “It was September 1965,” he recalled. “I was chief engineer of offshore operations for Shell Oil, stationed in New Orleans, Louisiana. Hurricane Betsy was headed to Florida, where my wife and four-month-old son were visiting. They evacuated, got on a plane, and met me in New Orleans. Well, Hurricane Betsy turned on a dime and followed the tail of that plane. We retreated to our house; it was too late to get out of the city. By midnight, the winds were 140 miles per hour. We decided to leave the house. So we wrapped our son in a blanket and got in the car and drove through the storm to my Shell office.”

“We rode out the hurricane under an office table,” he continued. “We escaped with the clothes on our back and some baby formula. The levees broke. I could just see the top of our house. It was under 12 feet of water. Everything was lost. There was no FEMA, no flood insurance. For the next month, we lived in my office, pinching food from vending machines. What is unfolding today . . . I guess the clock was ticking.” He shook his head.

Bea shared that story at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS)-initiated campus meeting on September 8 in Sibley Auditorium. He was there with CEE professor and Earthquake Engineering Research Center director Nick Sitar, BioE/EECS professor and CITRIS director Shankar Sastry, and other UC faculty who made presentations related to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The purpose was to initiate discussion on how UC faculty and students, particularly engineers, could make academic contributions to reconstruction efforts.

“I think we need to evoke the Netherlands as a model,” Bea said, after finishing his personal tale. “They have some marvelous engineering, and I think there’s a great deal we can learn from them.”

Bea says the CEE department is organizing an effort to study the damage and support Gulf universities, industry, and government agencies in recovery efforts. Other faculty present urged a focus on human systems as well as infrastructure. Several connected the disaster back to California’s potential for major earthquakes and levee failure in the delta.

Bea offered some final advice to the audience. “Don’t criticize or politicize,” he said. “These are the times to pull together. When the water drains, learn everything you can. Think ahead to the future.”

To get involved, e-mail bea@ce.berkeley.edu, sastry@eecs.berkeley.edu, and sitar@ce.berkeley.edu. Or, go to www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/09/katrina.shtml.

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