Articles / May 27, 2025

Transportation Troubleshooting: During a Disaster, Get By with a Little Help from Your Friends

Severe natural and man-made disasters now are more commonplace and expensive. In 2024 alone, the United States experienced 27 extreme weather events that each resulted in more than a billion dollars in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Whether it’s a hurricane, flood, wildfire, earthquake, bridge collapse, mudslide, tornado or another occurrence, transportation infrastructure is among our hardest-hit assets—and getting roads and tunnels, trains, buses, and airplanes back in service quickly and efficiently is of utmost priority.

While disaster preparation is factored for anticipated events—such as heavy snowstorms in the Northeast or hurricane evacuations in the South—few maintain resources at-the-ready necessary to address “worst-case scenarios.”

What happens when vital disaster response resources are not at your fingertips? My WSP colleague Shawn Wilson, senior vice president and national highways business leader, delved into that topic during a recent AASHTO podcast (iimag.link/qbsRG). His firsthand experience as a former secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Transportation and Development gives him a keen understanding of how to successfully prepare a rapid emergency response.

Prepare for Disaster

Forward-thinking DOTs are preparing “mission-ready packages” to anticipate disaster situations. These packages address specific issues such as evacuation protocols, cleanup following a storm and expedited restoration of water or electric service.

“One of the best ways to respond to a disaster is to have a well-maintained system on the front end,” says Wilson. “It forces us to think through effectively how to maintain our staff and our workforce in a disaster theater and train them to not be a distraction or withdraw resources needed for the community.”

This package includes detailed lists of critical tools and equipment, the number of people required and their skill sets, plus a strategy to house and feed the people who are assisting.

Florida exemplifies a state experienced in handling large evacuations, implementing contraflow routes and wider highway shoulders that accommodate emergency vehicles during such events to accommodate potentially life-saving services.

But what happens once that evacuation route reaches the state line? Is there a coordinated effort to make sure traffic doesn’t bottleneck at the border? Thankfully, Georgia is improving the shoulders on its highways to facilitate that flow from Florida, demonstrating an important benefit of state-to-state cooperation.

Lean on Your Networks

One crucial lesson I learned as Washington State Secretary of Transportation: neighboring DOTs must have each other’s backs and form early partnerships with local agencies.

Early in my tenure, a series of unexpected avalanches shut down several roads in my state, blocking key shipping routes and exceeding our normal disaster-response capabilities. Through our governor’s swift action to request help from neighboring state DOTs, we developed a communication plan to alert motorists and truckers of the detours that kept traffic moving as we cleared the affected roads.

Sometimes it’s difficult to ask for help. But it’s not a shortcoming or a failure if an unexpected event has caused sudden and significant hardship and major disruptions. The most effective leaders know when it’s time to offer help, when it’s time to ask for it and how to graciously accept it.

For Wilson, that situation came when a rare blizzard hit Louisiana, a state where snowplows are few and far between.

“It does not make sense financially for a state like Louisiana to invest in snowplows,” he explains. “Fortunately, Louisiana has a neighbor in Arkansas that was able to provide snowplows. It’s a better financial investment when states partner and share resources.”

Innovative Partnerships

Sometimes, it’s necessary to look beyond state-to-state partnerships to find a fast and effective solution to an immediate problem. One impressive example involved an unexpected and innovative “private-public” partnership of sorts between the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and NASCAR in 2023, after a section of Philadelphia highway collapsed following a gasoline tanker truck crash and fire under an overpass.

PennDOT needed to quickly redraw lines on a temporary roadway to safely resume the flow of traffic along an extremely busy corridor. Persistently rainy weather threatened to hamper the initiative.

NASCAR officials agreed to supply one of its jet dryers used to remove moisture from its track at Pocono Raceway. Its extreme heat dried the asphalt enough to allow for line painting, expediting the opening of the roadway to traffic.

Private-sector collaboration can include ways to quickly procure materials to repair damage and provide personnel who can design and implement repairs.

When emergency challenges arise, having a plan, partnerships and personnel ready to respond, react and innovate is critical. We are all in this together.