The impacts of hurricanes Beryl, Helene, and Milton in 2024 showed the criticality of having trained and well-equipped public works agencies. Jurisdictions with robust capacity were more resilient and capable of transitioning from response to recovery and providing needed services to their citizens. Whereas, those that were not as well-prepared are still actively involved in the recovery phases. Some areas in the New Orleans area affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita serve as an example, remaining in emergency, unable to transition to recovery for a significant period of time as their capacity for recovery and their ability to provide services to their citizens was as damaged as their physical infrastructure. Further, each of these storms have shown how important private-sector resources are to public works entities.
The Critical Role of Public Works
Public works departments are vital to disaster response and recovery efforts. These teams, typically found at state and local levels, are among the first on the scene to clear roads, remove debris, and mark hazards, facilitating access for other first responders. They also collaborate closely with police and fire personnel to assess damage, develop responses, and implement corrective actions to support recovery efforts. For example, during the 2024 wildfires in California, public works crews worked tirelessly alongside fire departments to create fire breaks, clear evacuation routes, and secure critical infrastructure, enabling faster access for emergency personnel and safer conditions for evacuees. Their efforts directly contributed to saving lives and mitigating further damage.
Public works departments address critical lifelines after disasters, especially regarding water systems (working to make them operational), transportation (such as repairing roads and bridges or facilitating drainage of standing water), and energy (providing needed support to utility companies), all of which contribute to restoring fundamental services to affected communities. During Hurricane Ida in 2021, public works teams in Louisiana expedited the restoration of damaged water lines and cleared flood debris to reopen major transportation routes within days, showcasing their pivotal role in community recovery. These efforts restored essential services and enabled utility companies and other responders to address secondary impacts more efficiently.
Interagency Planning Gaps
Despite its crucial role, public works has historically been overlooked in the planning phase of emergency management. Inclusion of public works at planning meetings and in organizational plans affords crucial guidance to incident commanders and other decision-makers about available resources for addressing critical lifeline issues post-disaster. As FEMA explains, public works departments are responsible for addressing infrastructure challenges, including roads, water purification, and utilities, that are essential for disaster response and recovery operations.
The National Incident Management System, aligned with Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5, provides a comprehensive approach to disaster management, emphasizing primary support functions such as police, fire, emergency medical services (EMS), search and rescue, nonprofit sheltering, and public works as being “responsible for issues and resources in the [emergency operations center] involving roads and grounds, sewers and sanitation, water purification, fuel, utilities, transportation, and solid waste.” The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Training and Education Division further states:
The term “first responder” refers to those individuals who in the early stages of an incident are responsible for the protection and preservation of life, property, evidence, and the environment, including emergency response providers as defined in section 2 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 101), as well as emergency management, public health, clinical care, public works, and other skilled support personnel (such as equipment operators) that provide immediate support services during prevention, response, and recovery operations.
Nonetheless, Christian Fredericksen, a lawyer in the Dallas, Texas, area, and Mistie Gardner, currently the managing director of Strategic Initiatives for the City of Garland, Texas, stated the following in a live presentation at the 2017 Texas Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Management (now the Texas Division of Emergency Management) Conference:
Regardless of public works recognition as first responders at the federal level, it has been an uphill battle at the state, tribal, and local levels.
Initiatives aimed to rectify this oversight underscore the need to include public works in the planning discussions prior to disasters and provide a permanent seat at the emergency management planning table. Emergency Support Function #3, Public Works and Engineering,
assists the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by coordinating and organizing the capabilities and resources of the Federal Government to facilitate the delivery of services, technical assistance, engineering expertise, construction management, and other support to prepare for, respond to, and/or recover from a disaster or an incident requiring a coordinated federal response.
Similarly, the State of Texas established a Public Works Response Team in 2007 to support local jurisdictions in their response to catastrophic events by providing critical public works services as needed to facilitate recovery.
In an interview by the Columbia Basin Herald, Sam Castro, former director of public works for Grant County, Washington, points out that “in many cases, the first responder to arrive is a public works employee and the last one to leave is a public works employee.” He highlights that
public works professionals work incredibly long hours during a crisis, supporting other agencies and communicating with the public…. After a long night’s work, they drive through the coffee stand, where others are being recognized, and are overlooked.
According to the American Public Works Association (APWA),
while police, fire, and EMS are often the three most recognized first responders, public works is often silently there—providing vital support to emergency response partners, helping protect essential services, and restoring those services following an emergency.… Public works is often considered “the silent arm of public safety” … usually without fanfare. Public works professionals are often the first on scene and the last to leave the scenes of disasters—no matter the peril.
Ongoing Planning Challenges
One emergency manager from a small East Texas city noted in an interview that traditional emergency services are expected to support the community and respond in times of disaster (R. Jones, personal communication, October 18, 2023). Yet even with no emergency plans for or proper designations of public works staff during the same disaster, city leadership also expect them to be the first to show up and to be on call during storms and other disasters. Nevertheless, according to the emergency manager, city leadership does not take this expectation into consideration as they set the budget, write job descriptions, and allocate costs and designations during emergency planning.
On January 13, 2024, only three days prior to a light ice event affecting a local government, the Road and Bridge (the local term for public works) Superintendent D. Smith assured the city’s new emergency manager that he and his team were ready to respond as needed. As the new emergency manager listened, he realized that there were no plans or any record of the capabilities of the Road and Bridge team. Despite not being designated as first responders nor being invited to emergency response planning sessions, Road and Bridge still met expectations and executed their job well. Similar to this author’s experience, staff across the country dutifully show up to clean, clear, repair, and open the streets for first responders and citizens during and after an emergency event.
A challenge to recognizing public works agencies’ vital role in emergency management planning has been career emergency managers’ reticence to add a new group to their planning team. Politics, silos, budgets, etc., are commonplace in government, but these considerations have no place in the emergency management field or planning processes.
Integrating Public Works into Emergency Response
Recognition of the importance of public works departments to disaster response and recovery efforts has been long in coming:
- In 2010, Mississippi, under House Bill (HB) 664, recognized public works professionals as first responders.
- In 2017, the APWA board of directors approved the adoption of a national “Public Works First Responder” symbol for use throughout North America to identify public works personnel and acknowledge their federally mandated role as first responders.
- In 2019, the U.S. Senate passed Senate Concurrent Resolution 15, “expressing support for the designation of October 28, 2019, as Honoring the Nation’s First Responders Day.” Public works is specifically included.
- In 2022 New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu signed into law Senate Bill 325, formally recognizing public works employees as first responders.
- In 2022, New Hampshire passed HB 536, “an Act relative to death benefits for public works employees killed in the line of duty, and relative to workers’ compensation offsets for certain retirement system benefits.”
When public works is overlooked in the planning phase at the local level, the resultant lack of understanding of public works staffing, skills, equipment, and capabilities can hinder response and recovery efforts.
Local governments include municipal entities at the county, parish, borough, city, town, and village levels. As previously discussed, the public works teams at these levels have a myriad of responsibilities before, during, and after a disaster, all of which are critical to resilience, response, and recovery. Organizational structure determines where public works falls in the hierarchy of public government. Public works, in some cities, has an equivalent status level to fire, police, and EMS, although most counties in Texas have limited capabilities and capacity at the higher county levels and more at (lower) precinct commissioner levels. This increased capability and/or capacity at lower (precinct) governmental levels as compared to higher (county) levels, can sometimes create a disconnect that is a challenge to overcome.
Snoqualmie, Washington, Public Works Director Kirk Holmes emphasizes that establishing relationships between public works and emergency management prior to disasters enables coordinated efforts and enhances community resilience.
Quoted in an August 2024 article, Holmes states that “emergency managers and public works professionals…need to be more connected. And ironically, it doesn’t take millions of dollars to do that.” He further states that, in Chelan County, Washington,
the person leading [public works] has been through a bunch of events and has prioritized preparedness in his department in a variety of little, different ways. And they have a relationship—they know their emergency managers, they are engaged when there are planning processes going on, and they’re committed to making that happen.
Holmes stresses that the up-front costs of improving connections between public works and emergency management pale in comparison to the costs of disaster recovery.
Based on his personal all-hazard experience, including hurricanes, tornadoes, and landslides, Seattle Public Utilities Emergency Manager Chad Buechler suggests public works departments and their emergency management colleagues obtain needed training. “If it’s not happening in your neighborhood right now and you’re an emergency manager or a public works professional, be supportive of sending your folks to go find it.”
Depending on size and makeup of the jurisdiction, public works services can include water, stormwater, electrical, solid waste, sanitary sewer, streets, transit, buildings, parks and grounds, fleet maintenance, and other areas that are essential to local government operations. As their role in managing these essential services is critical to long-term resilience, public works agencies should develop strong, positive working relationships with partner agencies, both public and private, at all levels. Government leaders, including emergency managers, need to understand these complexities and how they support efforts to survive and recover from an incident or disaster.
Key Steps to Enhance Public Works Preparedness
FEMA encourages disaster planning, with Public Works and Engineering designated as an Emergency Support Function. Every tornado, flood, windstorm, earthquake, fire, or other disaster is a reminder of public works’ crucial role. As such, public works agencies must be included in the development of emergency response plans, processes, and procedures. This planning helps government guide preparation, training, response, recovery, and a return to normalcy for the communities that they support and represent, and by doing so, local governments will align with federal doctrines.
Kamron Nash, public works director for the Village of Summit, Wisconsin, outlines practical steps to prepare public works teams for disaster scenarios, including risk assessments and emergency planning exercises, further underscoring the importance of their role. He also shares the six steps to enhance preparedness for public works departments:
- Understand state and county emergency management framework and types of assistance provided.
- Build partnerships and leverage local resources.
- Complete emergency response training.
- Create an emergency operations plan.
- Perform all-hazards risk assessments.
- Implement emergency planning exercises.
Conclusion
The need to recognize public works’ role in disaster response and recovery is critical, as their area of expertise is indispensable. Responsible for tasks from clearing debris to restoring critical lifelines, their often-overlooked efforts provide key components of resilience and recovery for jurisdictions dealing with crisis. However, maximizing their effectiveness depends on inclusion in emergency management planning and recognition as first responders at all levels of government. By fostering stronger partnerships, investing in training, and prioritizing collaborative planning, public works agencies and the emergency management organizations with which they serve can continue to enhance their capabilities, improve recovery timelines, and build greater resilience to face future disasters.
Greg Hoffnung
Greg Hoffnung is an experienced emergency management and safety professional with over 30 years of experience working as an incident command specialist (safety officer, liaison officer, planning section chief, operations section chief, logistics section chief), safety professional, college professor, hazardous materials emergency responder and investigator-auditor, and aviation captain with over 13,000 safe flying hours around the globe. With a master’s degree in program and project management and a bachelor’s degree in contract management and law, he is a Federal Emergency Management Agency National Emergency Management Advanced Academy graduate (NEMAA), a Certified Environmental Health and Safety Professional (NASP) and a Certificated Professional Continuity Practitioner (FEMA). As an active member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary and recognized as an operational auxiliarist (highest level of achievement), he is qualified in incident management and helicopter long-line operations and as a Coast Guard risk management instructor, coxswain, and vessel examiner. During Hurricane Harvey, he established and supervised a ten-person phone bank receiving incoming calls from the public (60,000 per day) and triaging them for response. Previous experience includes instruction in hazardous materials and dangerous goods handling, shipping, and spill response, with qualifications as a hazmat first responder and law enforcement.
