At USACE, readiness is key!

Janae Rose Belk (she/her)
Hometown: Roswell, GA
Major: International Relations '24
Internship: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) South Pacific Division (SPD)

For Janae Belk, an internship with the South Pacific Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has ignited a passion for disaster relief and response work

Working for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) South Pacific Division (SPD) has been surreal in quite a few ways, especially since I’ve had the idea of working for the military in the back of my head since high school. For one, it’s a study in acronyms (past interns weren’t exaggerating about that part at ALL!) I’m working with the USACE Readiness and Contingencies Office (RCO) for Emergency Management (EM) for the South Pacific Division (SPD). The SPD office covers almost the entirety of the American Southwest, from California to New Mexico and parts of Texas. 

I’ve had the privilege of sitting in on a variety of regional agency meetings; commander update briefs for high-level military commanders (to keep them abreast of domestic natural disasters); tabletop exercises to prepare for emergency situations; and biweekly meetings to keep the division updated on different disaster events and responses. I’ve even had the pleasure of facilitating a tabletop exercise and moderating a biweekly meeting in my time here already. These meetings have taken me all around the Bay, from the Bay Model in Sausalito, to Oakland, and back to San Francisco. On top of this, I’ve been working on (and finished!) multiple after-action reports of many of these meetings and exercises, both for necessary record-keeping and reference for future preparedness. A lot of the work done at the SPD office is very managerial, but nonetheless extremely crucial — not only for coordination, but also for organization during major crises. USACE acts as a necessary skilled labor arm for disaster relief, and that was a huge eye-opener for me as someone who knew very little about USACE functions before the start of the internship. 

Working for USACE is far more than just working for the military. For one, USACE is part of the Department of the Army, but it’s technically a hybrid between civilian structures and military command, which makes USACE unique all on its own. USACE’s primary functions are to operate on military construction and civil works (especially regarding our national waterways), but it does so much more. The SPD RCO is even more unique in that its entire purpose is to respond to domestic emergency situations, especially concerning flood fighting and natural disaster response in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Just in the short time I’ve been interning, the SPD RCO has already been activated for the June 2024 New Mexico Wildfires and flash flooding, and the July 2024 Utah Wildfires and flash flooding. And this is on top of ongoing work for recent disasters, like the 2023 Atmospheric River Flooding. In many ways, I felt like I was jumping into the deep end with the work that the RCO does day in and day out.