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DART Team on Target After Hurricane Matthew

The eye of Hurricane Matthew is clearly visible in this National Weather Service radar image as the storm approached Florida.
The eye of Hurricane Matthew is clearly visible in this National Weather Service radar image as the storm approached Florida’s Space Coast on the morning of Oct. 7.
Credits: NOAA/NWS

While residents of Florida’s east coast listened to the wind and rain as Hurricane Matthew churned past on the morning of Friday, Oct. 7, NASA’s Bob Holl was on the phone.

The storm had just made its closest approach to Kennedy Space Center and was slowly easing away as Holl, chief of the center’s Damage Assessment and Recovery Team (DART), dialed in from home to tie into a 9 a.m. call with about 50 of the center’s senior leaders and other team members to talk about how the center was faring.

The job of the DART team is to identify and triage any damage or other safety issues following an emergency, with the goal of returning the center to normal operations.

But “normal” is a relative term following an event such as a hurricane, Holl pointed out.

“‘Return to normal’ means there is a reasonable expectation of safety,” he said. “It also means if people encounter any problems or unsafe conditions, everyone knows how to report it.”

The team had watched closely as Hurricane Matthew drew closer to Florida. Each morning, forecasters with the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron provided a briefing on the predicted conditions for that day and the rest of the week, including storm models and probabilities.

Earlier forecasts predicted Matthew would come close to the Space Coast, but turn north in time to keep most of the storm’s effects offshore, passing by on Monday or Tuesday of that week.

A section of roof is repaired atop Kennedy's Operations Support Building II following damage caused by Hurricane Matthew.
A section of roof is repaired atop Kennedy’s Operations Support Building II following damage caused by Hurricane Matthew.
Credits: NASA/Kim Shiflett

“But every day, it got a little slower,” Holl said. “Every day, it didn’t make that turn, and it started really looking like it was going to come into and through Florida.”

Eventually, county officials closed the causeways leading to the barrier islands of Merritt Island, where Kennedy is located, and the beaches to the east. Kennedy closed Wednesday, Oct. 5, at 1 p.m., and a small team of 139 specialists, known as the Ride-out Team, stayed on center through the storm.

Just as Matthew approached the coast, the storm was downgraded from a Category 4 to a Category 3 storm. The hurricane’s eye passed just 20 to 25 miles east of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, with Kennedy’s Launch Pad 39B near the western eyewall experiencing peaks gusts of 107 mile-per-hour winds.

The DART comprises several smaller, coordinator-led teams that focus on specialized areas or operations. Participation in the DART is over and above team members’ regular day jobs; the team’s leadership meets a few times a year to ensure they’re familiar with processes and expectations.

Many DART members, including Holl and his team assistant, Greg Gaddis, worked for many years in the Space Shuttle Program, which had its own DART operation that oversaw preparation and recovery efforts for the Launch Complex 39 area at the north end of the space center. In the 2004 storm season alone, the team had to deal with a seeming parade of hurricanes — including Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Ivan — that either threatened or impacted the center. Frances removed some panels from the walls of the massive Vehicle Assembly Building, while another facility suffered significant water intrusion.

“I come from a program where you practice,” Holl said. “The phrase is, ‘You don’t rise to the level of your hope — you fall to the level of your training.’”

Although the DART team deals primarily with hurricanes, its scope is wider-ranging.

Damage to a facility roof is seen during an aerial survey of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 8.
Damage to a facility roof is seen during an aerial survey of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 8.
Credits: NASA

“During a storm about a year ago, a microburst came through and did a bunch of damage. It blew some of the pea gravel off the roof of the Headquarters building and broke a few windows,” Holl recalled.

“So they activated the DART, the repairs were done and after a few hours we determined everything could return to normal.”

Other events that have closed the portions of the center in recent years included a water line break that caused a loss of potable water pressure across the north end of the center, and shifting weather that carried heavy smoke from a prescribed burn to facilities in the spaceport’s Industrial Area. In both cases, buildings in those areas were temporarily closed and employees sent home or to other locations until conditions were safe for regular operations.

The team’s collective experience, training and prep work came together in October during the center’s brush with Matthew — which, thankfully, struck with less intensity than some forecasts had predicted.

Many facilities had roof damage, broken windows or lost power. Portable chillers mounted on trailers were brought in to provide cooling and ventilation to buildings that had lost air conditioning, including the Launch Control Center. Almost every stoplight on the center had blown over and broken, Holl said, and water intrusion also was a common problem.

Kennedy Space Center reopened at 6 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 11. By the end of that week, the DART team had handed over the ongoing repair and recovery work to the managers of affected facilities and organizations.

This GOES infared image was taken as Hurricane Matthew's eye passed Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center.
This infared image was taken by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite system (GOES) as Hurricane Matthew’s eye passed Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center.
Credits: NOAA/GOES

But they are ready for next time — whenever that may be.

“This was the strongest storm we’ve seen here in nearly 40 years,” Holl said of Matthew.

“We were hopeful that Kennedy would be spared. But we knew we were ready for whatever the storm could throw at us.”