PB Disaster Services Provides Recovery Services for Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee
PB Disaster Services Provides Recovery Services for Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee
As a result of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, PB Disaster Services was tasked by FEMA to provide inspection services for 9 new individual assistance disaster declarations. PB established field operations in Puerto Rico, Pennsylvania (2 declarations), New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
Hurricane Irene was the…
- first hurricane of the 2011 Hurricane season
- first hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Ike struck Texas in 2008
- first hurricane to make landfall anywhere along the U. S. East Coast from Florida to Maine since 2005
- first significant hurricane threat to the northeastern U.S. in two decades
Satellite Image of Hurricane Irene Making Landfall in New York
Though Irene made its final landfall as a strong tropical storm, Irene was still large in size and severely impacted many highly-populated locations at the coast and inland from North Carolina to New England. Hurricane Irene wound up by most estimates as one of the top ten most destructive and deadly hurricanes to hit the United States since 1980. Irene caused widespread destruction and some of the worst flooding in centuries. At least 55 deaths are blamed on the storm with 45 fatalities in the U.S. The damage estimates in the U.S. exceeded $7 billion.
Hurricane Irene was quickly followed by Tropical Storm Lee which dumped 10" rainfall totals in 10 states from the Gulf Coast to New England causing severe flooding in the Mid-Atlantic States. Additional and multiple declarations resulted.
Readiness Action Plan for Standby Inspectors
While these storms were developing, PB Disaster Services notified hundreds of disaster housing inspectors for standby status. While waiting for the storms to pass, the damage to be assessed, and the disasters to be declared, PB Online Services continually communicated detailed standby updates to over 2000 inspectors. These communications included storm track updates, damage assessments and inspector readiness action plans. These pre-deployment readiness action plans enabled standby inspectors to complete a combination of over 14,000 eLearning modules, webinars, virtual inspection exercises and readiness drills.
Field Quality Assessors Attending 2011 Quality Control Readiness Meeting
Field Quality Assessors
Because of the expanded scope of the multi-state declarations, the services of newer and lesser experienced inspectors were needed. These inspectors were tiered and deployed based on their experience level and completion of readiness resources. PB Disaster Services provided every newly deployed inspector with a detailed onsite disaster briefing and inspection exercise. Each new inspector was also assigned to a seasoned and highly skilled disaster housing inspector also known as a Field Quality Assessor (FQA). The FQAs were tasked with providing in-the-field mentoring to these newer inspectors with the goal of helping these inspectors to be successful. Five hundred forty eight inspectors were divided into teams and assigned to FQAs. The FQAs accompanied each new inspector on initial inspections, shared best field practices, reviewed inspections, and served as an in-the-field resource to answer questions. The FQAs helped to make a new inspector’s first deployment a positive experience. The use of field quality assessors is a best practice and a proven success for significantly improving the quality and timeliness of the inspections delivered from the field by new inspectors. The FQA program is recognized and valued by PB as an important and necessary component of field operations management.
A New Milestone for PB Disaster Services
PB Disaster Services has completed over 98,000 disaster inspections for the Irene and Lee declarations. While meeting these challenges PB serviced 21 active disaster declarations and had field operations in 16 states including Puerto Rico. These declarations not only included hurricane and tropical storm, but flood, wildfire and earthquake. This activity is the most open declarations that PB has been tasked with at any one time in the 16 years of servicing the FEMA Housing Inspection Services contract
PB Disaster Services would like to extend its gratitude and appreciation to all who demonstrated the willingness to prepare and respond to so many declarations over such a wide geography to large numbers of disaster survivors who needed assistance. The success of our collective efforts are acknowledged and praised by the FEMA Individual Branch Director for DR 4021 NJ who expressed the following … “I can’t thank you all enough for the job well done. I have not deserved the compliments that I have been given, it really has been all of you that have made this a stellar example of what FEMA can do, and the assistance that can be provided. As a team, you have been one of the best that I have worked with in the many disasters that I have been deployed to. It has been a privilege to work with all of you, I REALLY hope this will set an example of how an IA operation can be run smoothly and effectively, and how a GREAT team can produce superior results. Thank you all for your professionalism and efforts.”