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NAVFAC Team Deploys to Haiti to Assess Hurricane Damage

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS080923-20
Release Date: 9/23/2008 4:16:00 PM

From Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southeast Public Affairs

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (NNS) -- A team of four Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Civil Engineer Corps (CEC) officers mobilized last week to Haiti to assess the effects of several hurricanes that damaged the country's key infrastructure this summer.

The CEC team, headed by Cmdr. Kevin Roye, NAVFAC Southeast Lead for the South Atlantic Integrated Product Team, will support U.S. Southern Command to provide damage assessment and engineering surveys of the country. The team consists of two CEC officers from NAVFAC Southeast, Jacksonville, Fla.; one from NAVFAC Mid-Atlantic, Norfolk, and one from NAVFAC Southwest, San Diego.

"Our team is always ready and on standby to take emergency measures when necessary," said NAVFAC Southeast Commanding Officer Capt. Doug Morton. "The NAVFAC team is experienced in dealing with hurricane damage, and will provide excellent assistance while they are in Haiti."

As the team compiles reports of the damage, they will forward the information back to NAVFAC Atlantic for further review and plan development.

"Going into a hurricane damaged area is not new to NAVFAC," said NAVFAC Southeast Operations Officer Capt. Darius Banaji. "We train for this. This team will go in and assess damages so that Haiti will have a good estimation of where they stand and what will need to be done to get them back to some kind of normalcy."

During response to Hurricane Gustav, NAVFAC Southeast deployed Contingency Engineering Response Teams (CERTs) to New Orleans to provide damage assessment capabilities with great success. NAVFAC Midwest, NAVFAC Northwest, NAVFAC Mid-Atlantic and NAVFAC Southwest also had CERTs on stand by and prepared to respond with a 48-hour notice to provide support for Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

In recent years, NAVFAC has deployed CERTs, comprised of structural, electrical, and mechanical engineers, architects, roofing specialists, community planners and construction contract specialists, to offer professional engineering and contracting support to installations affected by disasters such as hurricanes. Such support could include restoration of basic installation functions such as opening roadways, sanitation, water, electricity and communications to meet an installation's mission readiness.

NAVFAC teams were rapidly deployed to Navy installations along the Gulf Coast in 2005 in response to damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and in 2004 to Pensacola, Fla., in response to Hurricane Ivan. Since this time, NAVFAC has established the Contingency Engineering business line and is developing a more robust and structured contingency response capability throughout the command.

For more news from Naval Facilities Engineering Command, visit www.navy.mil/local/navfachq/.