Barb: Hi, I'm Barb Sturner, and this is FEMA podcast. In Iowa, in the summer of 2008, the state experienced what some are calling a season of disaster. Tornadoes, severe storms, flooding, that really lasted through much of the summer. One of the hard-hit areas was the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City. And today we're going to be talking with Rod Lehnertz, who is the university’s architect and senior vice-president of finance and operations. Rod, welcome. Rod: Thank you very much, Barb. Barb: So tell us a little bit about what the University of Iowa campus looks like and then follow up with what happened to you in the summer of 2008. Rod: The campus at the University of Iowa, which was founded in 1847, is a campus marked by the river, the Iowa River, which cuts through the campus, and then two bluffs of about 70 feet in height on either side of that river that contain both halves of our campus, and it was originally developed as the state was developed. Fifty-nine days after the state of Iowa became a state, the university was dedicated on the east banks of the Iowa River. Over time, as we moved into the 1900's, space was of a premium. The state helped provide land on the west side of the river, and since that time we've developed in both directions. We have 33 thousand students on our campus. We have a major hospital and teaching hospital on our campus as well. And from an academic perspective we are noted for many programs as all of our peers are, but I would say most noted for our medicine and for our arts, which include the full range of arts highlighted by our writing programs. Writer's workshop for instance, the number one creative writing program in the country and what we would call the writer’s university, is the University of Iowa. Barb: So summer of 2008. A lot of… Perfect storm, of weather. Started in northern Iowa. That water came down the Cedar River watershed, but many of Iowa's other rivers also rose, spilled out of their banks. The Iowa River was one. Tell us what happened to the university campus when that flooding started. Rod: The tale of the flood of 2008 was unique, yes to the University of Iowa, but to all of eastern Iowa. At the time, the fifth largest disaster in U.S. history, or natural disaster. With the tributaries feeding both the Cedar River and the Iowa River reaching all of the way into Minnesota. And it was primarily wet weather and late freezes up in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa that led to both rivers flooding. Our neighbor to the north, Cedar Rapids, has the Cedar River running directly through it. That was a case of flash flooding. Ours was a case of slow and tumultuous flooding that lead from the Coralville Reservoir, a dam that exists seven miles north of the University of Iowa campus. As water rose in the spring of 2008, eventually the dam was topped over and reached heights of 5.5 feet over the top of the dam at its height when the flood crested on June 15, 2008. So the University of Iowa was given some level of time to prepare because the reservoir was containing some of the water that was on its way to our campus, but ultimately that also meant that as the river crested, the reservoir had to get back down to safe levels, so we continued to see the maximum amount of water out of the reservoir for weeks after the flood. So we remained challenged not only by the immensity of a flood that was 40 percent higher than the previous record in 1993, but also a flood situation that would last better part of a month in advance of the largest class in the history of our campus coming that August. Barb: So what did you do in advance to prepare and how did it work? Rod: Actually, after the 1993 flood which created 6 million dollars in damage to our campus compared to the 700 million dollar impact of 2008, we had amassed and begun an annual flood emergency response plan and in fact, ironically, the flood response plan we had enacted in 2008 received awards for it being executed in accordance with all of the plans, successfully enacted. However, with the flood being 40 percent higher than any of us had seen before, it was not a flood protection method that was going to protect the campus. So even though it was awarded, we then saw the campus lost on Thursday, June twelfth, when those sandbag walls were overtopped on both sides of the river, and water coming from behind the sandbag walls, up through the grounds. Completely saturated grounds and then storm water backups that were occurring at the time. So what we did was prepare for a flood that we thought would be akin to the worst we’d seen before which was a 100 -year flood. What we got was a 500-year flood and a campus that could not protect itself from it at the time. Barb: From a land size, how much of the campus was impacted by that flood? Rod: Well, we are fortunate on one level, in that the 70-foot bluffs that ridge both sides of the river protected the uplands. However, many of our original buildings, and class buildings were along the river corridor, and as such, we had a sixth of our campus was closed due to the flood. We lost 24 percent of our general assignment classrooms during the flood. All but one of the several bridges across the Iowa River, which serves not only the University of Iowa, but all of the Iowa City area, were closed with water overtopping those bridges. Physically, the campus was cut-off, and again, roughly a sixth of the campus square footage closed due to impacts from the flood. Barb: How many buildings were flooded? Rod: We had 22 major buildings flooded. There were other minor, less-critical buildings, but 22 major buildings were flooded. Of those 22 buildings, two of them were deemed by FEMA to exceed the 50-percent rule of damage, and led to replacement of those buildings. Our original art and art history building built in 1936 and then added to with additions over the decades that followed, and then our performing arts center and School of Music building - Hancher Voxman Clapp is what it’s referred to – Hancher Auditorium, our performing arts center, and then Voxman is our School of Music. In the case of Hancher Voxman Clapp, the size of that building, 300-thousand square feet, led to a realization by both our campus officials as well as FEMA, that it could not be replaced on one site. There wasn’t a site that could take a building of that size. As such, though we lost two buildings, three buildings became the replacement. We replaced the performing arts center on its own, and the School of Music on its own because together there was no place for those two to fit onto a campus and be high and dry and protected from future flooding risk. Barb: So performing arts complex was one of those, one set of those buildings damaged. What were some of the other ones? What kind of functions were going on in those? Rod: The other buildings were primarily academic buildings related yes to the arts, but also general assignment classroom buildings in our College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Our journalism building was flooded. Our main library received some flooding from underneath. It was actually elevator pits that had high hydrostatic pressure from underneath that led to flooding from that direction. We had utility tunnels, we have utility tunnels, roughly three miles of them underneath our campus serving the steam and chilled water needs of our campus. Those, many of those tunnels became rivers themselves and in fact, began to flood parts of the campus that would have not otherwise flooded by over-ground water. We also lost out power plant, our single power plant that serves all the steam for our campus, powers half of the chilled water on our campus. That was built in 1929 along the banks of the Iowa River. Our power plant officials backed out of that building when it had 22 feet of standing water and at that point the campus went dark in that second week of June, 2008. Barb: How did you tackle the recovery? Because, obviously, this is a pretty significant impact to the campus. You’re trying to keep school open, or have school open for the fall semester, and yet you have all this work to do to figure out, ‘What do we replace first?’ and ‘How do the repairs [go]?” Can you tell us a little bit of how that went? Rod: The summer of 2008 was a dizzying summer for all of us. There was a mad dash to get the campus back on its two feet. As I mentioned, the power plant had been lost, so we had no steam, no chilled water on the campus immediately afterwards. We started to build two temporary boilers out of kits and parts from all over the country. The National Guard bringing those parts across flooded interstate 80 when the interstate 80 was closed due to impacts of the flood. Literally, the National Guard was ushering semis through the water to get those parts to our campus so our utilities folks could begin to build, if you will, lean-to power plants that would allow the east and west sides of the river to begin to breathe again. The day after the crest of the flood our president, Sally Mason, announced that the campus would be back online within ten days to restart summer classes. This was a critical statement. It did take our breath back a bit, however, we knew the statement was coming. Had we not re-established summer classes within 10 days, we would have lost the whole summer and that would have set students who are here for the summer back in their academic pursuits to be able to finish school in four years and the impacts to the campus, from a business interruption perspective, would have been massive. So we started an immediate cleanup after the flood to be able to get enough classes online to start classes during the summer, a lighter load, but then also race to recover enough of the campus to start the fall semester with the largest class in our history. Unlike some other universities who saw, who have seen major disasters, we saw no decrease in students and in fact, had record student enrollments the next three years after the flood, which is great and shows the perseverance of our students and their families, but also put additional pressure on us. One of the buildings that was lost was our largest residence hall. We had about a month-and-a-half to be able to recover a 1,000 bed residence hall for those students to come back. We had a large, big-box hardware store, a Menards hardware store had moved to a new location, leaving an empty building at the south part of Iowa City. Within one month we turned that 125 thousand-square foot building into our new, or temporary school of art and art history and moved the entire department to a former big-box hardware store. The school of music, the other program that was really decimated by the flood scattered to the four winds, [to] more than 15 locations in and around Iowa City, practicing in apartments, churches, any office buildings, anything they could find for that first year. And then during the next year, after we were able to get the campus on its two feet again and then get the power plant recovered by November first. Had we not been able to recover the power plant, we would have had to shut the campus down again because the cooling—rather the heating season was starting. We were able, three days short of that, to recover the power plant and start our steam to the rest of the campus. And then started the longer recovery where we had about a year of making things right that weren’t working, like having drummers practice in an apartment next to the flute players doesn’t work. You can hear right through the walls. So we established more sustainable temporary locations for music and other programs over the next year, and then that set us into the permanent recovery, those 22 building being recovered, protected, and/or replaced over what ended up being an eight-year period. Barb: You talked a lot about students. How did the students and faculty react to, not only what happened to the campus, but all the changes upcoming? Were they on board, mostly? Rod: Well they had no choice, but it was remarkable the perseverance by students and by faculty and our staff. We had records that showed that only one student didn’t attend the University of Iowa after committing here because of impact from the flood. And the challenges in the arts programs were immense, but faculty were patient, our director of the School of Music was a trombone player and it was fitting. That’s the kind of personality it took to recover and survive from the flood, but everybody worked together and I think because of that, we had a unified purpose to recover this campus and emerge from the flood and with everyone together and with good communication we were able to work our way through the difficulty. Bard: What were some of the leadership opportunities and challenges you saw in, not only dealing with the flood, but more specifically, the recovery and looking at ways to better protect the campus? Because as you said, with the river running through the middle of it, you know, there may be another time. Rod: The Iowa River is what makes our campus special, and interestingly enough, we have emerged from the flood and are turning our attention to the river as a true amenity to the campus, and we and our surrounding communities are partnering on efforts to do that, which is a great reward from the perseverance. At the time, we didn’t, during the recovery, we didn’t have nearly as friendly a relationship with the river. I would say at the beginning, communication, as is the case in every avenue in life, communication was everything. And as hard as we tried there were gaps in communication or an understanding of that communication at the beginning. But we remained vigilant. We had daily news briefings, we had experts on top of experts telling folks and knowing where they would be for folks to ask them questions. And in the end we were able to work through that very, very difficult first summer and get to a better place where communication and a website that was ground zero for our communications effort became a really critical part of our recovery. Then came working with FEMA, working with Iowa Homeland Security to protect these buildings because they still remain, many of them, right along the banks of the Iowa river, but are now protected in a system that is a whole different level that what we protected prior to 2008. We’re very proud of working with our Iowa Flood Center. We have the number one rated hydraulics institute in the entire country. They amassed their teams immediately as the Iowa Flood Center and have served not only the University of Iowa and Iowa City and the surrounding communities, but all of Iowa, all of the world in flood protection expertise. It’s been a remarkable group to work with and they became partners with us as well in recovering the campus, protecting the buildings, and we have—every building is its own story in protection—some permanent, some operational, but each has what I would say is a confidence-building protection against future flooding that we fully stand behind and are proud to show on our campus. Barb: What would be some examples of the protection that you’ve done? Rod: Sure. So the Iowa Memorial Union, our student union, was taken out by the flood. The entire student floor inundated. Ultimately the protection of that building is a flood wall that is as high as ten feet tall along the banks of the Iowa River. It’s integrated into the architecture of the 1925 building. Actually, the top of that flood wall serves as an outdoor plaza that adds to the use of the building in the long term. Noted architecture along the river. We’ve got really remarkable architecture on our campus, much of it near or along the river. Our Art Building West, designed by Steven Holl, and our Iowa Advanced Technologies building designed by Frank Gehry are two nationally, internationally renowned buildings and designs. Both of those are protected by what they call a—what we call an invisible flood wall system. At Art Building West it’s a foundation that sits around the building, around the site. The building is perched over a pond that was a former quarry, and the entire 900 feet of that site is surrounded by a subgrade foundation that allows us to then insert a combination of metal posts and aluminum panels and we’ve tested it in 2014, in the flood threats of 2013 and 2014. We can amass a twelve-foot-tall protective wall around the entire site within 18 hours. The same for Frank Gehry’s [Iowa Advanced Technologies] building. Those are the two buildings where we enact that measure. Other ones are hardening the lower levels. We have a boat house for our intercollegiate athletic crew rowing program. That has to be close to the river. In that case we changed the design to actually welcome the water in and harden the surfaces that can be flooded so that they’re cleaned rather than repaired and then the flood doors open and let the water out immediately. So, there’s a different story for every building, but where we could, we’d get those buildings up and above the water’s level and that’s what we did with the replacement buildings. Barb: I was just going to say, Hancher is an example. It… That was moved and also elevated, is that correct? Rod: Yeah. So Hancher was relocated from its place. When that building was flooded, the water was 35-feet deep in the building because we had water a foot-and-a half-over the stage, and up to row O in the seating bowl. And then the orchestra pits, and mechanical units existed in floors below that. Ultimately we relocated the building to a site relatively close to the original site, but up a hill, and so ultimately the building sits protected at about eight feet above the flood that we had previously, and in working with FEMA and our flood center, it’s clear that even a foot of water higher on our campus, the dispersion throughout the county becomes extreme. So eight feet is plenty high, but we don’t trust anything. We do also have a road right in front of, between the river and the new Hancher, and we can begin to use HESCO barrier methods of protection should it ever come to a point of needing that though we certainly, and FEMA certainly doesn’t believe that will ever be needed. Barb: Clearly there have been a lot of lessons learned. What advice would you have for other communities, other institutions with some of those top five, let’s say, lessons learned as a result of this? Rod: First of all, we’ve had a lot of opportunities to visit with other universities and communities during the eight years of our recovery and then in these two years post the physical recovery of our campus. As we have told many of our campuses that we know the peers and those we work with, if you can see water from your campus, protect yourself from that water. What we experienced we could have never imagined. The extreme nature of the 2008 flood compared to anything that had happened before was not something we would have protected from before that. We’ve had campuses visit our campus. We’ve had communities call on us when they’ve flooded. The Iowa Flood Center has served as a resource on that as well. Starting fast is the first thing. One, have a protection plan in place, which we now have and we update every single year. But have that plan in place. Practice it enough to know that you can put it into play. Make sure you know what you do with your public. One of the things that we changed, in 2008, we had as many as 3,000-4,000 volunteers on our campus at a time. We didn’t call for them, they came, which was inspiring but also could be dangerous. We had not one injury with all of the little kids to elderly trying to help with power equipment around, moving sandbags around. No one injured, and I would say that was fortunate and lucky. In 2013, when we unfurled our new plan, when we had the threat, we had no volunteers. Everything was done either by university staff or by contractors ready to do the work. There was very little risk. We’ve automated our recovery system to a point where it happens automatically, it happens quickly, and then those volunteers can go to the communities that surround us who do still need that help when the time comes, and we can spend our time helping the communities as well. So that’s an important part of it. I would say get involved with and engage FEMA immediately, and what I mean by that is, our first building that we lost was the residence hall, Mayflower Residence Hall. Knowing that we had to recover that in too short a time, we were literally having contractors wading into water to remove mechanical equipment so that when the water would recede enough, they could simply insert new things. That was the only way to get it done. We were then told by FEMA, ‘you’re working ahead of us,’ at that point. We were doing this work in the days after the flood. I think getting engaged with FEMA right away, to understand the importance of funding eligibility. You want to, as a victim of a natural disaster, maximize your federal funding eligibility, and the only way to do that is to work closely with FEMA, and in our case work closely with Iowa Homeland Security [and Emergency Management]. Not every state is the same on that front. We have a great team, a great experienced team and more folks than maybe some states do. So working with those two parties is a critically important part of making sure the first steps, which are the important steps, are taken correctly. Then have your team set up so they can survive the run of eight years. We were told by the size of our flood that it would take a decade to recover. In the end we recovered in eight years and I would say the perseverance and hard drive by those through our university community helped us. Early we had talked, before the interview, we put together a team, a core flood team, which was only four or five of us put together, to take care of the many matters that would occur on campus, to strategize on campus, but then also to work as the go-betweens with FEMA, with Iowa Homeland Security. We met once a week, every week, during the recovery to strategize and figure out what the next best steps were. We stopped that team, we can come back together if we need to, we stopped that team after about 430 meetings, about nine years into our flood recovery. Of course the closeout process and the audit process related to the undertaking are still ongoing, so while most of the University of Iowa and the state believe we’re recovered, with exception of a museum which did not end up getting federal funding, so we’re doing that on our own, we’ll start construction this fall on our own, on that project. We’re physically recovered, but there’s still a lot of paperwork to go. So recordkeeping is critically important. FEMA came and reviewed our recordkeeping, our project management system called Build UI, and it was a homegrown system for all the projects we do on our campus. It became the holding place for all record keeping related to the projects of the recovery. Hundreds of project worksheets. FEMA recorded it as a best practice for anyone who would head in that direction. We’ve now made it web-based. It’s even improved since when we first started working with FEMA. But having that kind of careful record keeping, electronic and paper, so that when questions are asked, both during and then after during the audit period, you have what you need, and we had a great group of teams at risk management. Susan Klatt, who is our budget officer, constant steadily working on making, along with everything else she’s doing, working on making sure the records and the go-between for FEMA and Iowa Homeland Security’s consistent and conservative. We never stepped beyond our bounds in trying to get more than we felt we were owed. And I think that conservative approach served us well through the recovery. We didn’t have difficult questions to answer. We were answering them ourselves before we even started into the directions we headed because, at a flood disaster of roughly $700,000 million dollars, we had no choice on our service to the state to maximize federal funding eligibility, and the way to do that on our part was to be careful, be conservative and scrutinize ourselves before we headed in. Barb: Rod, thank you. It’s been fascinating. Congratulations on, you know, the recovery and more importantly, the protection that you’ve added for the university. We hope you don’t need it, but if you do, we’re glad that you have it. For those listening, we’ve linked this episode on our FEMA Facebook page, and we invite you to join the conversation in the comments. If you have ideas for a FEMA podcast topic, send us an email at FEMA-podcast@fema.dhs.gov. If you would like to learn more about this episode or other topics, please visit fema.gov/podcast. Thanks again for joining us.