When a hurricane or tornado blows through a town or city, which structures survive? The old or the new? Both or neither? How much damage do they sustain? And, could plans be devised to protect historic properties at risk from natural or human-made disasters in the future?

These are the types of questions that Angela Tweedy Gladwell, CHEP ’98M, addresses every day as part of her job as environmental and historic preservation team administrator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

FEMA—a former independent agency that became part of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003—exists to plan for, recover from and mitigate against natural disasters. FEMA also works to support Homeland Security in its mission against human-made disasters, such as terrorist attacks.

It’s work that Gladwell says she finds fascinating, and work for which she says her graduate education at the University of Delaware prepared her well.

Gladwell was a senior majoring in historic preservation at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va., in 1996 when she started thinking about graduate studies. The University of Delaware’s Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD) was “the perfect fit,” she says.

“My interest had shifted from museum studies to public policy in my final year of college,” Gladwell recalls. “Everything I’d heard about Delaware was very positive—and so many Mary Washington historic preservation grads continue on at UD for their master’s degrees that I’d heard it called the ‘Mary Washington of the North.’”

Gladwell entered Delaware’s two-year graduate program in the fall of 1996 and started looking for her niche.

“In terms of historic preservation, I was fascinated and intrigued about disasters and their impact,” Gladwell says. Charleston, S.C., held a special interest: “It has such a rich history and has been pummeled by so many disasters—the Civil War, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes.”

During her second year of graduate studies, Gladwell and her adviser, David Ames, director of CHAD, located the perfect assistantship for her, one involving both CHAD and the University’s Disaster Research Center (DRC). “It was a fantastic experience,” she says.

Gladwell became involved in a project to evaluate a pilot program originated by the Clinton administration. “Project Impact” sought to alleviate or even prevent losses before disasters occur by building partnerships at the local level. Under the program, the government initially provided seed money to seven U.S. communities vulnerable to natural disasters.

In addition to visiting several of the pilot study communities, Gladwell conducted research for a final report, valuable work that ultimately led to her current position with FEMA.

“FEMA has become more and more involved and in tune with how natural disasters can impact historic properties in tremendous ways,” Gladwell says. She and two associates are advocates for environmental and historic preservation issues within FEMA.

She first joined FEMA’s environmental and historic preservation team in 1999 and was promoted to team administrator in 2004, a job she says “couldn’t be more perfect.”

As required by the National Historic Preservation Act, FEMA integrates historic preservation into its mission of reducing and preventing the loss of life in natural and human-made disasters. Gladwell’s team also trains and manages a team of environmental and historic preservation experts who get “called up” to assist with the recovery process after disasters.

One project that Gladwell has been actively involved with is in the small town of Milton in Northumberland County, Pa. Milton, which is located along the banks of the Susquehanna River, not only has a significant historic district but also has experienced repetitive flooding.

Through a joint effort with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, the Bureau of Historic Presentation of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission and the Borough of Milton, FEMA was able to assess risks to the properties in the historic district before another flooding, determine appropriate hazard mitigation options for those at-risk structures and then decide on a structure-by-structure basis what preventive actions could be taken. According to Gladwell, hazard mitigation options for Milton’s historic properties included relocation, flood proofing and elevation.

This pilot project led to the creation of a FEMA “how to” manual, titled Integrating Historic Preservation and Cultural Resource Considerations into Mitigation Planning. Gladwell has been actively involved in the writing and editing of the manual, which is expected to be published in early 2005 and used in “at-risk” communities throughout the country. “Our work with Milton was very collaborative, and it led us to the creation of a template that can be used to illustrate to communities how good flood mitigation planning can be achieved,” Gladwell says.

With Homeland Security now a major issue in disaster planning on the federal level, the possibility of human-made disasters—such as terrorism—have put “a whole new spin on our icons and monuments, which are often historic,” Gladwell says.

Gladwell—who spoke in November to UD graduate students at a seminar on historic preservation—says the government now needs to “think about our icons and monuments in a new way, which presents challenges to us as we strive to protect them without damaging their historic integrity.

“Whether it’s a natural disaster or a human-made disaster, the challenge—and the excitement—of my job has to do with protecting the public and the monuments that are such a big part of our country’s history,” Gladwell says.