UNC Charlotte Students Design Bridges to Replace Those Destroyed by Hurricane Helene
This is the kind of thing that we call resilience, that people are willing to help each other.”
In one of our recent posts about Hurricane Helene’s recovery efforts, a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) review showed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sent $59 million to New York City so officials could house illegal aliens in luxury hotels.
Therefore, the agency clearly had the funds to assist the displaced North Carolina residents struggling to find shelter.
There is more positive news to share, including an indication that local organizations can make a big difference.
A group of 13 engineering students from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte are using their college classes to design bridges for victims of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina1. This initiative is part of an independent study led by Professor Shenen Chen, aimed at helping rebuild infrastructure in Ashe County that was destroyed by the hurricane.
“This is the kind of thing that we call resilience, that people are willing to help each other,” said Professor Shenen Chen. “A lot of places are still there’s no access, so the students will have to do something extraordinary”
Chen leads the independent study of 13 students. For some, the connection is personal.
“I go home every weekend. I can get to my house easy, but it’s like, these people 40 minutes from me can’t even get to their house, or their house is gone,” said UNCC Senior Nathan Hall, from Ferguson in Wilkes County. “So just trying to help out your neighbor and your neighbor county.”
His personal connection is shared by Emily Davis, a former UNCC Charlotte student and now engineer in Ashe County. She and her husband Leeth founded Lansing’s Bridge to Recovery after the storm, a nonprofit helping people rebuild their private roads and bridges.
“We’re seeing a lot of washout and damage to even destruction of things that have been put in place since the storm to gain access,” Davis said.
#BREAKING: A group of 13 engineering students have been using their college classes to design bridges for victims of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina.
Every student has a goal to complete at least 1 bridge before the end of the school year.
INCREDIBLE!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/1nhu88TLoK
— Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) February 21, 2025
The students are designing bridges to replace those lost during Hurricane Helene. Each student is tasked with designing a solution for a different real-world residential access point that was washed away by the storm. Their goal is to complete one bridge design per student this semester.
Engineering students immediately flocked to the course, happy to have an assignment that was both practical and meaningful.
Students immediately enrolled and are already receiving the necessary data from the actual access points to produce rapid bridge and culvert designs. Using advanced Geographical Information Systems (GIS), drone data processing and remote digital construction (DC) technologies, the students are developing designs that will be shared back to Davis for implementation.
“The novel skills learned in this course are not currently taught in any standard civil engineering class,” said Chen. “Rather, it’s a need-centered model that can help inform new curricula in engineering across higher education.”
Together with guidance from Lansing’s Bridge to Recovery, insight from the homeowners, and mentorship from Charlotte Water, the engineering students are developing ways for communities to reconnect.
Meanwhile, Governor Josh Stein has recently requested an additional $19 billion in federal funding for Hurricane Helene recovery efforts. The state still faces many post-hurricane challenges.
- Only 4.2% of owner-occupied households with flood damage have flood insurance, resulting in an estimated $9.5 billion in uninsured residential property losses.
- Many sewage and water treatment systems are still not fully operational.
- The agriculture and tourism industries in Western North Carolina face “multi-year damage”.
- Reconstruction of vital structures is complicated by the region’s geography and the prevalence of privately-owned roads, bridges, and culverts.
I am looking forward to the progress of the student efforts on these bridges.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
“Only 4.2% of owner-occupied households with flood damage have flood insurance, resulting in an estimated $9.5 billion in uninsured residential property losses.”
Floods are not insurable events – all the policies go bad at once, so the risk can’t be spread over homes that don’t flood, like fire insurance. And people not in flood plains don’t buy the insurance.
Subsidized flood insurance is a gift to the owner of the house when the insurance is passed. It just adds to the home’s price for subsequent buyers so they don’t actually benefit.
Without the insurance, nothing too expensive would be built there at all.
These houses were in places that had never flooded before. How SHOULD they have estimated their flood risk?
Actually, as I recall, it had flooded there in the 1930s. I think it was the 30s. All these pics, are near streams or rivers…..
Sweet
Interesting. My youngest brother lives in Ashe County. His company has built new construction for Emily and her husband in the area. One of his employees’ home was part way washed out and so he has to move in with his family across the line in Virginia and drive back to Ashe and surrounding mountains to work. Lansing was a neat little community and if I could have retired young I might have moved there. Good for these students if they can do it all the way through.
A lot of places are still there’s no access,
/sigh/ And this guy is a professor.
Every student has a goal to complete at least 1 bridge before the end of the school year.
No offense, but the “complete” here is only a design. Unless the Lansing organization is directing them to be built (with funds from somewhere) they’re just designs, no matter how well-intentioned.
The novel skills learned in this course are not currently taught in any standard civil engineering class
HUH?! You’re telling me that current civil engineering courses do not teach bridge design? Because there should be NO unique designs. They should all be designed around sound mechanical principles. I can see them using techniques that don’t normally get used in your average highway span around Indianapolis or Kansas City, but there aren’t any novel skills in bridge design.
I think this is a great idea, but it all sounds very Hopes and Dreams – which is the exact opposite of what civil engineers should be doing. I really hope these students are part of the entire process of actually building these things, too.
I think the “novel” part is the actual real world application of the text book design theory for bridges. The students doing the design work have to assess the real world situation for the bridge they are designing; soils, terrain, load capacity needed, etc. That is something that might not be done until the student had graduated and was in the work force. I took a degree in electrical/electronics engineering and there was no real world application that I was ever faced with. A fellow student that was in the Biomedical track did a real world project that was tested on a human; his experience was something that I wish I had had.
I’m a practicing bridge engineer. I believe your interpretation of what these students are doing is correct.
That wasn’t what he said, unfortunately. And that made it sound really questionable.
Also, “Wow” on not having done any application work. We did lots of “practical” work in college, including a senior project.
Applying the textbook to the real world is often not done. You just take the course, read the book and take the text. As a person with a Biology degree I was lucky enough to have a number of courses that followed with direct experience. Studying amphibians for example and then going out to various streams to study the habitat. Classroom teaching on how to do a wildlife survey then designing one and doing it. Studying organic chemistry where the lab directly followed the classroom teaching so you could see with your own eyes what was being described by the professor. It is invaluable.
Not necessarily. Many civil engineering programs at large universities have numerous specializations for students to choose from – specializations that do not involve bridge construction at all. Some typical specializations in civil engineering are:
– General civil engineering
– Coastal & ocean engineering
– Environmental engineering
– Construction engineering and management
– Transportation engineering
– Water resources engineering
– Geotechnical engineering
Undergraduate courses in engineering tend to cover smaller focused topics (such as statics, dynamics, steel design, concrete design, surveying, mechanics of materials, and fluid dynamics). Engineers who build bridges must draw on a wide variety of knowledge and not something that can be imparted in a singe course.
Building a bridge requires a large set of skills and knowledge, and I have yet to see a “Bridge Building 101” type of course that would fit the bill. You learn bridge building by actually doing it while being supervised by experienced engineers and following established building codes and procedures. These students are being given a fantastic opportunity to see real-life engineering in action, and I am very jealous for my own engineering students.
I wish that was actually what he had said. The way he said it sounds a lot more like woke malarkey.
I hold bachelors and masters degrees in civil engineering, both with a structures concentration. I’ve spent my entire career (still active) designing highway and railroad bridges. Most civil/structural engineering programs emphasize building design based on the AISC and ACI codes. The principles of designing structural members based on individual member loads are the same for almost any type of structure, but the applied loads and the codes that prescribe them are very different. I never saw an AASHTO code (for highway bridges) or an AREMA spec (for RR bridges) until after I’d graduated.
I can also confirm that each bridge project, despite its obvious similarity to other bridges, will be, to a degree, unique unto itself.
I think these students have been given a great opportunity to take the basic principles of structural engineering that they’ve learned and put them together to generate solutions to specific, real world problems. What’s not addressed is that their designs will need to be reviewed and sealed by a registered PE before they can be built, but I assume the professor has made arrangements for that.
Lots of white males in that group. Where are the trans-BIPOC designed bridges?
They couldn’t get past the rope walking bridge designs
I was thinking the same thing. Western NC doesn’t need more racist bridges.
Engineers are heroes!
(Disclaimer: I teach 1st and 2nd year engineering classes, but I am not biased. At all!)
Bailey Steel Bridges are off-the-shelf designs. Just add money (No, I don’t work for them, there are competitors as well)
When the I40 OKC Crosstown expressway was redone, it went from an elevated road to a regular type road. As a result, there were plenty of steel i-beams that were rehabbed and recycled to be used for smaller bridges elsewhere in Oklahoma.
https://americastransportationawards.org/ok-i-40-crosstown-bridge-beam-recycling/
Why wasn’t this program started after the floods? Oh, the feds will take of it – no they didn’t. Use local resources wherever possible – they KNOW the territory at least to some degree.
FEMA has been a joke. It should be trashed. Give the $$$ to the states with the REQUIREMENT they have so show where and how the $$$ was spent.
Back in 93 I graduated as an older non-rational student. There were 4 Asian males, six white females, and 36 white males in the engineering school that graduated with me. We had a 60% attrition rate for the fist quarter of junior year to graduation. Calc III took a lot of them out and it was required to be a C grade for every major. I took it twice and it was my only C grade as I graduated with a 3.46 GPA out of a 4.o system. People of color did not make it to the senior year while I was there.
You were old and not rational?
I’m thinking “non-traditional.” I did get a chuckle reading it, though.
Nice article. I think a good part of the point of it was to show that federal agencies established to address recovery from natural disasters failed to show up, whereas students and their professors are stepping up and at least doing something to help.