DOI: 10.17603/ds2-ng93-se16
title: Hybrid Preliminary Virtual Reconnaissance Report-Early Access Reconnaissance Report (PVRR-EARR)
title: in StEER - Hurricane Laura

description: This report will serve as StEER’s primary product documenting this unique response to Hurricane Laura, combining elements of StEER’s standard Preliminary Virtual Reconnaissance Report and Early Access Reconnaissance Report in to a single joint PVRR-EARR, that: (1) provides an overview of the Hurricane Laura, particularly relating to its wind field and storm surge impacts on the built environment, (2) documents the joint effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Laura on affected populations and emergency management, (3) overviews the regulatory environment and construction practices in the affected area, (4) outlines StEER’s event response and reconnaissance methodology, (5) summarizes the damage reports in public and social media, as well as observations recorded by StEER FASTs to document the performance of a wide range of buildings and other infrastructure, and (6) recommends topics worthy of continued study by the natural hazards engineering research community and affiliated fields. Note that all observations and findings provided in this report should be considered preliminary and are based on the limited scope of the FAST and particularly the constraints created by conducting the assessments from vehicles due to restrictions imposed by COVID-19.
description: Hurricane Laura made landfall as a strong Category 4 storm near Cameron, LA in the early hours of August 27, 2020, tying the Last Island Hurricane of 1856 as the strongest land-falling hurricane in Louisiana history, as measured by wind speed, tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane on record to make a continental US landfall, and setting records for fastest intensification rate in the Gulf of Mexico. Wind speeds are estimated to have reached or exceeded the design wind speeds for Risk Category II buildings and other structures, as defined in ASCE 7-16 and the 2018 International Building Code (MRI = 700 years), by as much as 5 mph in near Lake Charles, LA (specifically, northeastern Calcasieu Parish and the eastern half of Beauregard Parish). While storm surge data was still being processed at the time this report was issued, preliminary data suggests that the storm surge was in excess of 10 feet over land in areas east of Cameron, with estimates upward of 15 feet in some locations. Moreover, the occurrence of a design-level wind event during the COVID-19 pandemic represented a unique, multi-hazard scenario, creating challenging dynamics for evacuation, sheltering, recovery and reconnaissance efforts. 

Estimates of losses from the hurricane range from $4B to $12B, with substantial impacts to the residential sector, sustained outages of water and power impacting the operation of hospitals providing critical care during a pandemic, significant damage to commercial construction from low-rise retail to high-rise buildings, casino resorts, and hotels in the wider Lake Charles area, and notable impacts to facilities in the oil and gas industry.  As the storm’s well-predicted track facilitated coordinated, multi-entity surface measurements of wind fields and storm surge, Laura is one of the best documented storm events and thus provides novel opportunities to understand the vulnerabilities underpinning losses across a diversity of building occupancies and other critical infrastructure. 

In order to balance the need to capture high-quality perishable data for this event while minimizing the exposure of its Field Assessment Structural Teams (FAST) and the impacted community, StEER organized a unique field response: swiftly mobilizing a series of FASTs to collect streetview panoramas between August 27 and September 12, which were then triangulated by available aerial imagery and reports in the pubic and social media by Virtual Assessment Structural Teams (VASTs) working to remotely evaluate the performance of structures in the impacted areas. This project encompasses the products of StEER's response to this event: a hybrid Preliminary Virtual Reconnaissance Report-Early Access Reconnaissance Report (PVRR-EARR) and Curated Dataset.