Hurricane Florence: Field Assesment Team 1 (FAT-1) Early Access Reconnaissance Report (EARR)

Hurricane Florence made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane at Wrightsville Beach North Carolina, about five miles east of Wilmington, at 7:15 AM EDT 14 September 2018. While wind gusts topped out at only 105 mph, the storm’s impressive size and slow forward speed resulted in significant flood-induced impacts. The Structural Engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) Network mobilized to assess the damage in the impacted region, deploying its first Field Assessment Team (FAT-1) to conduct door to door damage assessments and unmanned aerial surveys September 20-22, 2018. This Early Access Reconnaissance Report (EARR) provides an overview of Hurricane Florence, StEER’s event response, and preliminary findings based on FAT-1’s collected data.