How one architect helps communities rebuild after disaster

To mark Disaster Preparedness Month, we chatted with Steve Alspaugh, FAIA, who, in addition to his long career in architecture, currently serves as the AIA Indiana State Disaster Coordinator, working with the Indiana Building Emergency Assessment & Monitoring Team, or I-BEAM. 

Alspaugh's experience with natural disasters started when he was a freshman in high school and tornadoes devastated his hometown of Monticello, Ind. Years later, Alspaugh uses his expertise to provide relief and peace of mind to home and business owners who are reeling from equally life-changing events. 

Read on for Alspaugh's insights and consider registering for AIA's 2025 SAP Evaluator Training, to be held virtually September 24-25. An additional training will be held in December. 

Tell me about your role as the Indiana State Disaster Coordinator. 

Each state typically has an AIA disaster coordinator. It sounds like you’re trying to be the coordinator of chaos, but it’s really much different than that. [laughs] Our role as coordinators is to be part of a nationwide AIA network that gets on quarterly calls and learns from each other in that regard. 

In my case, in the state of Indiana, [I am] the main point of contact between a group of industry professionals—both architects and engineers—and a state organization that is responsible for disaster response, which is the I-BEAM: the Indiana Building Emergency Assessment and Monitoring Team. 

This group was born around 2005. A tornado in southern Indiana brought to light an awareness that these [events] are a more frequent reality now. Our state put together the I-BEAM team, and they’re a full-time department at the state. I work directly with their coordinator, Ryan Wineinger. Ryan and I keep in touch, and that’s how Paola Capo, AIA Manager of Disaster and Community Assistance was at this past summer’s “mock disaster” at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. We’re doing things, even when we’re not dealing with a disaster, to try to put better [responses] in place. Right now, Ryan is working on, “How do we deploy? What activates us?” In the past, it would have been a phone tree. We work much faster than that now. So, there are systems we’re getting in place that will activate and deploy us more quickly. You’re always looking to build back better, stronger and more resilient than what you saw destroyed. 

We are primarily responsible, right now, for training people to do building evaluations after a disaster has occurred. So, for example—we tried to do this with the mock disaster as well—we would like to send a team of at least two people, maybe three, out to visit buildings, and we’d have multiple teams. We want each team to include an architect and an engineer because we look at buildings differently. Maybe the third person is someone who is training to be an architect or an engineer and has a passion for disaster response. There’s a lot of stuff baked into the process of how we try to do these things. 

We evaluate the building and assign an assessment tag: Green means that the building is safe to continue to be inhabited. Yellow means it’s safe, but it might have some dangerous areas. Red means, “You should not go in this building. It’s not safe for habitation right now.” 

When you’re talking about a building that’s a home, homeowners are understandably anxious after a disaster. Their heads are spinning and they’re reeling from the loss they’ve experienced. It’s very emotionally traumatic. We can’t keep anyone from going back in their house or a building that they own, but we do what we can to try to keep them safe and identify risk in the damaged building. 

How long have you been acting in this role?

I was invited to serve in this role in September of 2021. I see this as something that I could do after I retire, [which I plan to do in three years]. I will hand it off at some point. 

What kinds of natural disasters and extreme weather do you typically deal with in Indiana?

Tornadoes and flooding are the two primary [issues]. 

A tornado is the reason that I’m doing this. I grew up in Monticello, Ind., which is about 30 minutes north of Purdue University in Lafayette. Our town was hit by a supercell of three tornadoes in 1974. I was a freshman in high school. It hit hard—I have no problem recalling some of those memories and what the town looked like after that.

But I always thought that some sort of seed was planted, because I watched the National Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Red Cross, all these service organizations sort of descended upon my hometown and try to help us recover. It is a long, painful process. In the back of my head, I thought, “Maybe someday, it’ll be my turn to do this.” When I grew up, I became an architect that had the skill set to do what I’m now doing. 

Can you tell me about the yearly planned exercises that I-BEAM does to prepare for disaster situations?

This year, our exercise at the Indiana State Fairgrounds centered around a cluster of buildings where there’s no real damage, but there is perceived damage shared with the assessment teams as a paper handout. AI allows us to create images of the buildings with damage to the structures, so that’s what our [volunteers] base their evaluations on. We have an app on our phone—I use the ArcGis Survey123 app—that will capture photos of what we’re seeing in terms of damage. It allows us to fill out a form that will give the [structure] a damage assessment.

I-BEAM has resources at the state level that most states do not have, like a semi-tractor trailer. We have inflatable buildings that can be deployed in emergency situations. We have generators and a lot of computer equipment. [I-BEAM] went to St. Louis in 2021 to help with a mock disaster training they were staging because Missouri has volunteers, but they don’t have the same equipment resources. 

What would you say to encourage other architects to get SAP certified and get involved at the local level? 

I think you have to have a passion for community service and want to help people. It’s not for everyone. In our industry, there are a lot of people who are all about design—and I’m a designer. I know. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that they have things they’d rather do than this.

Having the experience that I did when I was growing up with the tornadoes hitting my hometown, I don’t have that feeling. This is the greatest calling that I could follow through on, right? Because if somebody is hurting either emotionally or physically, or they’re less than what they were in terms of their property because of a natural disaster that they had no ability to control, and I know what that feels like. So, for me, this is right where I want to be. 

Katherine Flynn is Director, Digital Content at AIA.