Hi Everyone,
My name is Brock Giordano and I was part of the Fort St Joseph Archaeological Project beginning in 2002. That year was the first year we found structural features and could definitively say we “found the Fort.” As a graduate student studying under Dr. Nassaney, it was very exciting for all of us. It set the stage for my graduate work, and really opened my eyes to how the study of material cultural expresses the practices of individuals, society, and the culture they belong to.
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Brock participated in the 2002 field season. You can see him kneeling, second from the left. Photo Credit: Unknown. |
Throughout my time at WMU, I made some great friends working at Fort St. Joseph. We traveled presenting our research at conferences, and spent hours and hours reading and talking about each other’s work. To this day I still continue to speak to many of my fellow alumni. To come full circle, Dr. Nassaney was gracious enough to have me contribute to his most recent volume, “Fort St. Joseph Revealed,” and two years ago I had the privilege to come back to the site to see the operations and sit with all the students. It was a great experience and I was so happy to see how far the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project has come. It’s truly one of a kind!
After graduating from WMU I returned to my home state of New Jersey, where I have been since. I have worked at several cultural resource management and engineer firms all over the northeast. Through those experiences I have been able to work on a multitude of archaeological and historic preservation projects. In 2012, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, my archaeological experience took me on a new path in disaster relief working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As a Federal agency, FEMA is responsible to consider the potential effect on historic properties for any FEMA funded actions or projects per compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA). FEMA also carries out other Environmental and Historic Preservation (EHP) compliance. This includes similar laws and Executive Orders such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and Executive Order 11988-Floodplain Management, just to name a few. I work for FEMA Region II and am the EHP Supervisor for the NY Hurricane Sandy Disaster (known as DR-4085). Our office is located in One World Trade Center, NY, NY. It’s an exciting office to work in and often filled with high emotions. I believe it’s something not to take for granted.
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| Brock's view from North side of the 53rd floor of the One World Trade Center in New York. Photo Credit: Brock Giordano. |
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| Brock's view from the south side of the building. Photo Credit: Brock Giordano. |
While FEMA is known for its immediate responses to help disaster survivors, FEMA also invests to make communities more resilient to future disasters. Resiliency projects for NY Sandy include such things as school renovations for emergency power, elevations, bridges replacements, wastewater treatment plants, flood berms, walls, and engineered wetlands to protect venerable emergency facilities and communities. In regard to Section 106, EHP assesses the potential of the project to effect historic properties, defined as archaeological sites, buildings, structures, districts, and/or objects listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. For NY Sandy we have reviewed thousands of projects of all sizes.
In March of this year as COVID-19 began to really impact NYC and the metropolitan area, FEMA EHP staff (as with most other agencies and companies), were ordered to work from home. As the FEMA and Region II Administrator’s stated, FEMA is always open. As a disaster response agency, FEMA staff are equipped and trained to work in remote locations at any given notice. The transition to full-time telework (working from home) was nearly seamless in order to maintain operations. Now during this pandemic, FEMA EHP is reviewing projects for FEMA funded COVID-19 operations. These come in the form of such things as emergency supplies to testing centers. The nature of these FEMA funded projects is still taking shape both in Region II and nationally but are true to the FEMA mission to helping people before, during, and after disasters.
I hope everyone is safe, and I can’t wait see the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project get back into the field! Until then, we all know there is always plenty of lab work and analysis to do, in order to keep this important project moving forward!
All the Best,
Brock
