 |
  |
MISSOURI DIVISION |
|
 |
 |
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEPTEMBER 2000 POST EARTHQUAKE HIGHWAY RESPONSE AND RECOVERY SEMINAR HELD IN ST. LOUIS MISSOURI
STATE DOT RESPONSE PLAN BY DAVID JOHNSON
MR. MUSSER: Next up on the podium is Dave Johnson.
Dave Johnson is the maintenance operations engineer for the Division of Highways for the Illinois Department of Transportation. He's responsible for coordinating disaster response for the Division of Highways and is liaison with all districts, all central office bureaus and other state, federal and private agencies. Mr. Johnson has a bachelor of science in construction engineering from Iowa State University and a master's in business administration from the University of Illinois in Springfield. He is also a registered professional engineer.
MR. JOHNSON: Today I would like to talk about a couple things. One would be seismic efforts for bridges that the Illinois Department of Transportation has undertaken and also discuss our earthquake preparedness plan.
Seismic efforts for bridges: One of the things that we looked at was earthquake screening of existing bridge inventory, seismic upgrading of critical bridges on the highway system, and seismic analysis and design of new bridges. We have active participation in seismic training and seismic research and development.
With earthquake screening, we ranked over 6,700 existing bridges on our interstate and primary system. We have approximately 22,000 bridges on the local and the state systems. From this we identified 770 needed seismic upgrades located primarily in the southern half of our State.
This is a soils map of the State of Illinois. The bad areas we will be dealing with are in
red. Along the Mississippi River is where our worst soil conditions are located. This is an AASHTO acceleration factor map. Most states use this when they're designing bridges for seismic incidents. You can see again the southern half of Illinois, the yellow portion, is the critical area.
When we do retrofitting, we use the Federal Highway Administration Retrofitting Manual for Highway Bridges. When we do seismic design on new bridges, we use the AASHTO standards. In Illinois, we have SPC, Seismic Performance Categories of A, B and C. Some states also have D. A is the best and D is the worst, so within Illinois we just go to C. In Illinois, we've changed some of the detailing and we're not as stiff as what AASHTO recommends. We've also changed some of our seat widths to be wider.
Seismic training: In Illinois renewal of structural engineers license is now contingent upon evidence of continuing education units in seismic design. Our department along with the University of Illinois developed a course, and we help teach that course and it's an ongoing process.
Seismic research and development: We've had a joint effort with the University of Illinois. Some of the research includes column testing, fiberglass wrap, and some fiber carbon wrap.
This is a picture from the top of the Poplar Street complex. We let this contract. We made sure that the contractor kept some of the columns so we could do some testing on them. You can see on this one column there is a wrap down at the bottom.
This next slide shows a lab at the University of Illinois and this is the carbon wrap. One of them is solid, the other a band. It's my understanding that both of them perform the same.
We work hand-in-hand with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA). Whenever there is a disaster, IEMA is in charge. Kind of like being at home; your wife is in charge but she makes you feel like you're in charge. That's kind of what IEMA does with us.
They have an emergency operations plan and local governments have primary responsibility and then the state's assistance is available. In the case of an earthquake it's definitely going to be state and federal assistance because of the magnitude.
I would like to talk about why we have a plan, what our department policy is, the purpose of the earthquake preparedness plan, some previous exercises that we've done, emergency operation centers we have, communications that we have, route inspections that we plan on doing, bridge inspections, relocation of personnel and private industry assets.
You should have a plan because we know it's going to happen. We need to make the public aware. We need to be prepared. Even within our state, you can look at the three districts that we have, that are involved with earthquakes. We have the southern part of the state, Carbondale. They are very aware and they're very prepared. We have the Collinsville area, which is just across the river. They are somewhat aware, somewhat prepared. We have the Effingham area on the eastern side by Indiana and a lot of people there think that they're not going to have any problem with an earthquake. So it varies from district to district, even within our state.
We've had a plan and we've had some exercises. It's been a learning tool for us. Again, the percentages and the years and the probabilities of a major earthquake happening may change a little bit but we all are pretty well stuck on 6.0 in the next 15 years, and in the next 50 years it's going to happen. That's why we're all here.
In Illinois we think it's going to affect a million people directly, approximately 30 counties in Illinois directly. Eighty-two percent of the elementary schools in the southern part of the state are un-reinforced, masonry buildings. It would be a significant impact there. We also think it's going to affect the entire state indirectly as well as the entire nation.
I've read an article in Fortune Magazine. They estimated that it would be $98 billion in insured losses. They felt that that number would also be in effect for uninsured losses because they felt it was a one-to-one ratio. That is, wherever there is an insured there would also be an uninsured. To put this in perspective, I think the worst insurance incident to date was Hurricane Andrew in Florida; that was $40 billion.
IDOT policy is to maintain safe public highways under all circumstances. Our earthquake plan provides direction to department personnel to prepare and respond to an earthquake. Basically the purpose of our plan is to insure that the department is prepared to open, close and operate all highways, to provide Rapid-response, quick assessment of damages and alternate routes where necessary.
This is Mercalli scale. The sixth area is classified as moderate. Objects will fall; you can walk unsteadily; and trees will move. Category seven is classified as strong nonstructural damage, difficult to stand. You'll notice it if you're in your car, you'll get some cracks in concrete. Eight is classified as very strong, there will be moderate damage, towers will fall, masonry damage, etc. And nine, they classify as violent: heavy damage, pipes will be broken et cetera.
These are different district offices and this shows our primary and secondary route plans. In the southeastern part of the state, close to Indiana, is District 7. The two major cities that would be impacted are Effingham and Mount Vernon. Interstate 57 is the primary route south towards Tennessee.
This is District 8, the Collinsville area. The major towns that would be affected are East St. Louis, Collinsville, Fairview Heights, Belleville, and numerous other towns. We´ve got I-70, I-55, I-270, and I-255 as our major routes into an out of this area.
In District 9 in the southern part of the state, the two major cities that would be affected are Carbondale and Marion. The major routes are Interstate 57 and Interstate 24.
We've had numerous emergency response exercises at Carbondale. We´ve had a couple exercises in Collinsville; which is District 8, and we've had one exercise in Effingham that is our District 7 office. I recommend if you have a plan, that you have an exercise. We´ve had exercises and from our exercises we've learned some important things.
In Illinois, the first thing we thought about in coming up with our emergency routes was our snow routes. We felt that the highway maintainers would know their snow routes. We would have them come in, they would have their snow routes and they would follow them. Through an exercise, we learned that our priority routes and snow routes didn't necessarily match up. For the first person in the shed, his snow route may not be a priority route. We didn't want somebody waiting around until we got the right person in to initiate the response.
We now have the routes laid out in packets and the first person in takes the highest priority route. The second person that comes in takes the next highest priority route and so on and so forth.
Another thing we learned was to use unique terminology for designating routes. We used to call our priority routes route 1, route 2, route 3. We would have people radio back to us and we didn't know if they were on priority route 1 or Illinois Route 1, or US Route 1. So we decided to go with route A, B, C and so on and so forth.
Emergency Operations Center: Each district will have an Emergency Operation Center (EOC). There will also be an Emergency Operations Center in Springfield and, of course, IEMA will have the main emergency operation center for the State. In Districts 8 and 9 they are set up with supplies and water for 72 hours. District 9 also has a separate building that is earthquake proof. Each district has permanent staff assigned to specific emergency response duties. If there is an earthquake, they know what they're supposed to do and where to go. The Central office also has specific staffing requirements and assignments. For instance, the bridge office staff knows they have to mobilize so they get packed and get ready for their specific orders.
The southern most part of the state will probably to be hit the hardest. So we assume District 9 staff are victims of the earthquake and need to take care of themselves and their families. We plan to bring in highway maintainers, lead workers and field workers from District 3 in Ottawa, and District 4 in Peoria. We actually went through an exercise where we ordered the mobilization of District 3 and 4 personnel to District 9. They actually got in the trucks, drove the routes, radioed in the information, and manned the radios. They did it all without the assistance of any District 9 employees.
Communications. In Illinois this is a touchy subject. We chose to have mobile locations, basically truck to truck. It's a low band system. We think that's good for anywhere from 12 to 20 miles. We can communicate from district to district with supervisors. The highway maintainers cannot do this but anyone that's a supervisor, a lead worker, lead field worker, field tech, or lead field engineer has the capability of communicating from one district to another. So worst-case scenario, we could radio from District 8 to District 6, which is the district right above that, and they in turn could radio to Springfield.
In our exercises, we've implemented mobile towers in both districts 8 and 9. They have got bucket trucks where they put up an antenna and we've operated that system in all districts. We have high frequency single-side-band radios that have been used by the federal government for years. It's the way that Illinois has chosen to go. Originally we just had one in Carbondale, but because of Y2K we have one in Collinsville and one in Effingham. We have tested those units and they also work. We have a direct communication link. It's like a telephone handset but it works like a two-way radio, and we have a direct link to Springfield. We also have satellite telephones we could borrow from Illinois Nuclear Safety. I believe they have ten satellite phones. All our supervisors have cellular telephones but we don't think they will really be an option when a disaster hits.
On our priority routes, I talked about the first in first out. The very first people that are going to be inspecting these routes are what we call highway maintainers. Those are people you see out plowing snow, mowing the grass, et cetera.
They have is an inspection kit. They´ll get their trucks; they´ll load up bridge supports and supplies; they´ll get their maps and drive their route. They have been instructed to look at the bridges, sight down the parapets, look at the joints, get off to the side, look underneath it, don´t get underneath it, identify any kind of damage, or shift in alignment. If it´s okay, they put a green ribbon on it. If it's not okay they string a nylon cord across it and put a red ribbon on there. They find a way to go around and continue on their routes and radio that information in.
As far as bridge inspections, again that would be first level team, just what I discussed, highway maintainers. A second level will be people that are qualified, basically in the district, construction people, bridge maintenance people would fall into that category. The third level would be people out of our central bridge office primarily structural engineers. They would be qualified to come down and actually go do field details and possibly come up with temporary shoring plans. They could relay information back to our central office where detailed plans could be developed.
Relocation of personnel: We have the automatic plan assignment. We´ve got a guide in our manual that describes what our personnel need (personal articles) when they are assigned away from home
When I first got this position, I asked myself, "Why isn´t there anything in our plan about flying our people to sites or flying priority routes?" I was told that State planes would be tied up by other governmental officials. I met with aeronautics and explained that other State DOTs had planes available for responding to disasters. I think we´re going to modify our plan to reflect reliance on State aircraft for deploying certain personnel and flying our priority routes as part of our initial damage assessment.
Private industry assets: We meet periodically with our Association of General Contractors and Illinois Road Builders. We´ve told them that if there is a significant earthquake, just to show up at an IDOT facility and we will tell them what we need done and we can then get started. Thank you.
| Send mail to scott.holder@fhwa.dot.gov with questions or comments about this web site. |
