Some of the SD Mines students and faculty who are part of
the EPICS Pine Ridge Emergency Management Team. Team members pictured include
Logan Gayton, Chance Knutson Kassidy Kitzmiller, Jordan Cano, William Smith,
Sam Pfeiffer, Amber Steele, Khang Hyung, Dr. Jennifer Benning and Erica
Lafferty. Not Pictured: John Murzyn
If a mobile home catches fire, it can
burn to the ground in about seven minutes. If this home is in a remote part of Oglala
Lakota County, it can take emergency responders as long as an hour to arrive.
On the Pine Ridge Reservation and surrounding communities there are seven fire
stations to serve an area the size of Connecticut. In natural disasters such as
the flooding that Oglala Lakota
residents are dealing with this spring, emergency response efforts become
even more crucial.
This is one of the challenges
students at the South Dakota School of Mines
& Technology are tackling through the Engineering Projects in Community Service
(EPICS) program. The Pine Ridge Emergency Management Team is using
computerized maps to find the best locations for new fire and ambulance
stations on Pine Ridge. Students have spent many hours calculating travel times
and plotting current infrastructure such as power and water lines to determine
the optimal locations for new facilities.
The project was developed through a
Memorandum of Agreement between the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Oglala Sioux Lakota
Housing, SD Mines and Louis Berger
to work together on projects that help to build the Oglala Lakota Nation on the
Pine Ridge Reservation.
“This effort has the potential to
save lives and build brighter futures together,” says Jennifer Benning, Ph.D., an
associate professor of civil and environmental engineering who leads the EPICS
program at SD Mines. “This project is particularly motivating for students,
because they are communicating with tribal representatives and hearing very
real and personal stories about the critical need for an improved emergency
management system on Pine Ridge. The students are engaging in hands-on learning
while making a real difference in these communities.”
Proper fire and ambulance services
are a vital part of economic development in Pine Ridge. For example: local
banks and insurance companies are reluctant to loan money or provide coverage
to new businesses that want to set up shop in any area where they can’t ensure
a fire department will be able to respond quickly.
During this project students have
spent hours traveling back and forth to different communities to meet with
residents of the Oglala Lakota Nation to incorporate their input. Students are
conducting public meetings in each district on Pine Ridge during the months of
March and April.
In a second phase of the project,
Civil and Environmental Engineering Capstone student teams are designing an
individual fire station for the village of Pine Ridge with input from local community members. The
students, instructed by Dr. Marc Robinson with collaborative input from Dr.
Benning and professionals at Louis Berger, will present their designs during
the SD Mines Design
Fair on April 16, in the Surbeck Center Ballroom. Students involved in this
phase of the project include Amber Steele, William Smith, Amanda Booton-Popken,
Lucas
Chmela, Chad Reimer, Brennen Udager, Zachary Sextro, David Musgrave, Kaz
Matsuda and Eric Simonton.
This project is happening through the support of
the US Department of Agriculture through two collaborative Community Facilities
Technical Assistance and Training Grants, developed by Jennifer Benning and
Cheryl Chapman, Ph.D., vice president at Louis Berger.