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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

OCTOBER 2005

DESIGNED FOR DISASTER

HOUSTON, BUCHAREST, SAN DIEGO–– Insisting in 1996 that the current Houston SPCA shelter be built to withstand a Category 4 hurricane, longtime executive director Patty Mercer was accused of alleged extravagance––but Mercer had seen in 1992 the damage done to shelters in southern Florida by Hurricane Andrew.


Mercer looks like a seer today. The Houston SPCA, already handling more than 35,000 animals per year, took in 270 animals from the Louisiana SPCA and much of the Louisiana SPCA staff just ahead of Hurricane Katrina, and continued to house most Louisiana SPCA activities for weeks afterward, after Katrina wrecked the Louisiana SPCA shelter and inundated most of New Orleans for a month.

 

Asociatia Natura founder Carmen Milobendzchi amid flood

More than a million Houstonians evacuated ahead of Hurricane Rita, but the Houston SPCA didn’t. Animals were trucked to shelters farther away, so that the Houston SPCA could accommodate evacuees from elsewhere––like 57 dogs and 28 cats who arrived the evening of September 25 from the Humane Society of Southeast Texas in Beaumont.


In Romania, Asociatia Natura cofounder Carmen Milobendzchi showed similar foresight. An architect by trade, Milobendzchi opted to build slowly, as funding became available, rather than take chances, cut corners, and get the job “done” only to have to rebuild after one disaster.

 

The disaster came on September 20, as the Bucharest suburbs were inundated. Of the 32 Romanian counties, at least 25 have been flooded since April 2001.


“After I built the enclosures,” Milobendzchi told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “some people accused me of using too much concrete and reinforcement for the floors, but all the rain we have had did not affect them much. Flooding in our inner court goes into the concrete drainage, and is guided under the floor to the courtyard. Of course the courtyard is flooded, but the dogs are still dry. The drainage system is not finished in all the courtyard,” Milobendzchi acknowledged, “because of lack of money. Not all of the electrical installation was done, for the same reasons, and our temporarily installed generator is out of order. Also the cesspit flooded and everything inside was mixed with water and came out into the courtyard.”


That was a mess, but messes can be cleaned up.


Just days before the latest Romanian flooding, Milobendzchi got a chance to compare notes with Bill Adelson of Tucker Sadler & Associates, the internationally known San Diego design firm that has planned a complete revamp of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Chula Vista, California.


“I am sure that the shelter industry in the southeast is in shambles now,” Adelson told Milobendzchi and ANIMAL PEOPLE in follow-up discussion by e-mail. “I don’t know when the last hurricane occurred in San Diego. The naturally occurring threat” that Tucker Sadler most worries about, Adleson said, “is seismic. We are in Seismic Zone 4, the most severe. By the time a building is designed to the strict requirements of Zone 4, it can probably handle a Category 4 or 5 hurricane,” Adelson anticipated.


“New buildings here are very rigid,” Adelson added, but in light of the damage done to shelters by Katrina, he promised to “check the wind uplift requirements for roofing in San Diego; I will see what the premium is to withstand 150-mile-per-hour wind events.


“The very specific issue facing us and Helen Woodward is that the Center is in a flood plain,” Adelson continued. ‘You may know that every winter, at least once or twice, horses have to evacuated from the Center due to flooding. This past winter they had five evacuations, I believe. So the strategic question for us, analogous to Patty Mercer’s decision,” in planning the Houston SPCA shelter, “is, do we design the Center to withstand the 100-year flood requirement, the code minimum, or do we plan for the 500-year flood level? As always, there is a cost versus long-term benefit issue.


“It sounds like Carmen was unable to afford the flood control measures that we have been discussing at length for Helen Woodward,” Adelson noted, including “raising the site up several feet and putting in various concrete culverts and channels to control the water flow. But Bucharest is a world or two away from Rancho Santa Fe, California,” he concluded, not least because the Helen Woodward Animal Center raises $4.4 million dollars a year, while the Asociatia Natura raised a record $50,000 in 2004.
The disparity in precipitation is also significant. Rancho Santa Fe normally gets just 10.8 inches of rain per year, yet still contends with flash floods. Bucharest gets 23.4 inches per year. That convinced Milobendzchi to plan for flooding as a constant threat, even working with tightly limited resources.


Shelters built elsewhere in Romania by British philanthropist Robert Smith have also “had no serious problems with flooding,” Smith told ANIMAL PEOPLE.


“As you may remember our Campina shelter is next to the river,” Smith said, “but I put the buildings on 1-meter platforms––contrary to the advice of the builder, incidentally––and of course now I am glad I did. A few wooden kennels floated away and we were up to about 20 centimeters of water in some places, but the dogs were all okay and no serious damage was done. Oradea was not affected, and our shelter in Mioveni is up on a hill.”