WESTERN FEDERAL LANDS HIGHWAY DIVISION RESPONDS TO NORTHWEST EMERGENCIES

For more than 50 years, the Western Federal Lands Highway Division (WFLHD) has been assisting federal land management agencies with road and bridge design, environmental studies, and transportation planning. The winters of 1996 and 1997 were quite unusual in their devastating effects to the Northwest. In the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest alone, the area's roads and bridges sustained more than $25 million worth of damage during the floods of February 1996. The damage was so great that a method of attacking all the projects and of meeting customer and public expectations had to be conceived. WFLHD's leadership formed the Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads Program (ERFO) Team with hopes of streamlining the work. Specialists in such diverse fields as environmental clearance, geotechnical engineering, highway design, and hydraulic engineering were included on the team, which was tasked to respond to engineering requests and to deliver service as quickly and effectively as possible. Developing timely and cost-effective solutions, even if they included approaches never tried before, was the primary goal of the team. Since 1995, eight separate disasters have resulted in more than 6,500 damaged sites that were approved for ERFO funding. The total value of this repair work is $265 million. WFLHD has completed 83 separate contracts with a combined value of $55 million.