Charlot House Natural Disaster Preparation & Mitigation Plan

This project is part of a partnership between the Historic Hawaii Foundation (HHF) and the University of Hawai'i Community Design Center (UHCDC) to prepare a Natural Disaster Preparation and Mitigation Plan for the historic Jean & Zohmah Charlot House. UHCDC, supported by Professor Karl Kim, from the UHM Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Director of the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, and Professor Wendy Meguro, from the UHM School of Architecture and Sea Grant Colleges, Director of the Environmental Research Lab, are jointly hosting this workshop to gather expertise from across disciplines to evaluate different mitigation strategies for hurricane, flooding, and fire events that consider impacts to the historic character of the house, among other factors.

The following flipbook is the culminating share-out report of the Charlot House Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation Plan effort. This document includes the outcomes and synthesis of the three workshops, as well as maps, diagrams, and information shared on this website.

February 4, 2022 - Meeting #1 - Introductions, review of material, hazard 1 assessment February 18, 2022 - Meeting #2 - Welcome, hazard 2 and 3 assessment, and overall share-out. April 1, 2022 - Meeting #3 - Share-out of Draft Disaster Plan to subject matter expert and stakeholder group for feedback.

3:30 - Welcome, agenda 3:35 - Kiersten Faulkner, introduction. 3:40 - Team and participant introductions 3:55 - Detailed feedback 4:30 - 10 min break 4:40 - Breakout groups (3 groups) 5:10 - Return to main group - discussion. 5:30 - Pau!

3:30 - Welcome, review of hurricane and flooding information: updated design flood elevation diagrams, flood video, stream flow, images. 3:40 - breakout rooms - Hurricane 4:00 - breakout rooms continued - Flooding 4:30 - breakout rooms continued - Prioritize short term and mid term strategies 5:00 - Main group - share-out priority list for each group - select a spokesperson -10 min presentation from each group. 5:30 - Pau!

3:30 - Welcome 3:35 - Introductions 3:40 - Review overall process and draft Natural Disaster Plan 3:55 - Gather feedback from each participant (3m per person) 4:35 - Broader discussion questions 5:05/5:15 - Pau!

• Assess hazard mitigation and adaptation strategies for the house, relative to impacts on historic character, structure, cost, permits, insurance, or other factors.

• Prioritize strategies for short, mid, and long term implementation.

• Develop a Disaster Plan for the house based on collective input. Share as best practices.

The Jean and Zohmah Charlot House stands alone among the cultural and historical assets in the University of Hawai‘i’s architectural inventory. Situated in Kāhala, wedged between Wai‘alae Stream and the Wai‘alae Country Club golf course less than 500 feet from Kāhala Beach, its design expresses a novel, globally-significant, cross-cultural interpretation of the mid-century modern idiom. Its sub-tropical spatial organization embraces Hawai‘i’s legendary trade winds, which flow through a gallery of integrated works of craft-inspired art produced by one of the university’s most respected and celebrated educators.

The Charlot House Timeline: 1949 - Jean Charlot is commissioned by the University of Hawaiʻi to paint the wall-sized mural in the entry foyer of Bachman Hall. The Charlot Family arrives in Hawai'i in 1949. 1950 - Jean is appointed as faculty advisor for the UH Newman Club. 1958 - Together with Pete Wimberly, the Charlot House was designed to showcase the art and craft of numerous cultures. 1960s - Jean teaches art at the university throughout the 1960s. 1979 - At the time of his death, Jean Charlot left over 700 prints, 1,300 paintings, and hundreds of sketchbooks. 2002 - The Charlot Family gifted the home to the University of Hawaiʻi with the intention of preserving its cultural, educational, and architectural value in perpetuity.

For more information on the house please see our resource links at the bottom of the site.

The UHCDC team, advised by Professor Karl Kim, and Associate Professor Wendy Meguro, selected three types of hazards to focus on: fires, hurricanes, and flooding. Brief descriptions on each are included below, followed by a collection of mitigation strategies. 

Interior and exterior fire-starting factors are included as hazards for the Charlot House. Interior fire-starting factors include built-in features within the house including electrical wiring, appliances, other heat-generating sources, or by smaller interior electronics. Exterior fire-starting factors include materials that originate outside of the home and act as a pathway or as fuel for a fire to reach the home. Prevention and mitigation methods should be explored for both interior and exterior risk potential. Examples of prevention and mitigation methods may include updating home alert systems (including smoke detectors, and heat bells), ensuring clearly identifiable street numbers/pathways to the home, single-use suppression methods (such as fire extinguishers), and installing fire retardant infrastructure (such as insulation, caulk, reinforced windows, removal of rotting wood, clearing shrub/leaf from surrounding landscape and gutters and updating roof materials).

Wildfire season in the State of Hawai’i typically begins in April and ends in October. HI-EMA estimates the state will experience around 12 wildfire events each year (HI-EMA 2018).  On O’ahu, many of these fires occur on the West and South shore. Areas with valleys and grassy hillsides are particularly vulnerable to wildfires. The Charlot house is located in the Kahala-Waialae area which is rated a moderate risk for wildfires. The house itself is also primarily made of wood and other flammable materials.

Hurricane Iniki made landfall in the Hawaiian islands on September 10, 1992 as a Category 4 hurricane. Wind speeds were recorded at hitting 130 miles per hour and wave heights topped 30 feet. The island of Kauaʻi took nearly ten years to recover from the damages. Although hurricanes are a relatively rare occurrence in Hawaii, the damage from wind, rain, and waves can cause massive devastation. The effects of a “missed” hurricane can still be felt by those living in the islands. As flooding is a separate hazard addressed in the project, the main focus of hurricane disaster prevention and mitigation is against high velocity wind and how to secure and reinforce existing home features (roof, awnings, windows, etc.) against foreign airborne objects (trees, pieces of other homes in the surrounding area, etc.). This study assumes a Category 4 Hurricane wind speed of 130 mph to 156 mph. 

Hurricane season in the State of Hawai’i runs from June through November, especially from July through September. The State of Hawai’i is prone to high wind events. These events originate from different sources including the Kona winds, trade winds, and hurricane/tropical storm winds. According to the state’s emergency management agency (HI-EMA) there is a 100% chance of at least one high wind storm occurring annually. More specifically the state can expect 8 to 9 high wind events per year (HI-EMA, 2018). Since 2012, three of those high wind events (all hurricanes/tropical storms) have led to a FEMA declaration. Annually, there is a 25.2% chance of the state experiencing a high wind event related to a hurricane or tropical storm with a 3.1% chance of that occurrence being declared a disaster by FEMA (HI-EMA, 2018). The large trees on the Charlot House property create a more severe risk for the preservation and the protection of the property in a high wind event. Trees surrounding the home could be uprooted and damage the roof/frame of the original home.

The Charlot House is located less than 1,000 feet from the shoreline of Wai’alae Beach Park and is fronted along its eastern property edge by the Waiʻalae Stream at an elevation of approximately 5 feet above mean sea level. The stream experiences large volumes of water during moderate rainfall events and wave action travels through the stream near the house during high tides. Due to its proximity to the ocean and to the stream, the Charlot House is at risk of flooding caused by sea level rise, rainfall, and storm surge. Flood risk was assessed through multiple sources including FEMA (Coastal Zone Flooding), NOAA (Sea Level Rise), PacIOOS (Passive Flooding, and Annual High Wave Flooding), NWS (Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes for hurricanes category 1-4), and State of Hawaiʻi’s tsunami evacuation zone maps. The models listed above are used as tools to estimate the severity of flood impacts and help to inform the flood mitigation strategies that would be most effective in preserving the property, infrastructure, and its historic assets. Assuming a Category 4 Hurricane event (as we did above), flood range is from 5.9 to 10.8 feet above mean sea level, resulting in ~1 - 6 feet of flooding.

Flooding occurs within two categories: event-based flooding and chronic flooding (HI-EMA, 2018). High wave flooding, sea-level rise, and tidal flooding are all examples of chronic flooding and according to HI-EMA should be expected on an on-going basis, particularly in the summer and winter for tidal flooding (HI-EMA, 2018). These events are expected to increase in both frequency and intensity with climate change. Event-based flooding occurs more rapidly and includes flooding from storm surge, heavy rainfall, and tsunamis. Annually there is a 100% chance of the state experiencing a flood event due to storm surge or heavy rainfall. Additionally, there is a 26% chance that at least one of those events will be declared a disaster by FEMA (HI-EMA, 2018). For tsunamis specifically, there is a 17% chance each year that a coastal evacuation will be necessary and a 34% chance each year of there being a tsunami advisory with no required evacuation (HI-EMA, 2018).

Different strategies are compiled below, in cut sheets that provide information on application, impacts, and costs.  Click here  to download PDFs of the strategies or scroll through the images below. 

Scroll through the plans and diagrams below that map out potential extents of impact areas on building floor plans and elevations to estimate feet, square feet, or cubic feet involved.

Lily Bui, PhD is Assistant Director of Training, Research, and Project Development at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center. She is a subject matter expert in disaster risk reduction, planning, early warning communication, and urban islands in the Asia/Pacific and Latin American & Caribbean Regions. She received her PhD from MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where her research focused on disaster early warning systems on urban islands.

William Chapman, UHM SOA is Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Educated at Columbia (M.S. in Historic Preservation, 1978) and at Oxford University in England (D.Phil. in Anthropology, 1982), he specializes in architectural recording, the management of historic districts, and materials conservation. Dr. Chapman is widely recognized as a leading authority in recording historic architecture and in policies and procedures for historic preservation at both the local and national levels.

Kiersten Faulkner, AICP is the executive director of Historic Hawai‘i Foundation and oversees all aspects of its preservation programs, strategic planning, business lines and operational matters. Prior to joining HHF, Faulkner was a Senior City Planner for the City & County of Denver, where she managed complex and controversial comprehensive planning, promulgation of land use and urban design regulations, and development proposals. She holds a Master of Arts in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Elizabeth Fischer, IAEM, APA, MSLA the disaster dame, has worked in the area of community planning throughout her career on issues specific to rural areas, small communities, and tribal governments, and in special topic areas for communities including place-making, livability, smart growth, active-living through design, context sensitive design, historic preservation, climate adaptation, and disaster recovery planning. She is a Senior Liaison Officer for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency where she represents the HI-EMA administrator as required. She also is the agency subject matter expert on transportation infrastructure in the Pacific and serves as COVID emergency response team Planning Chief.

Timothy Goshi is a structural engineer at Kai Hawai'i. With over 17 years in the field, Mr. Goshi's expertise ranges from residential, commercial, industrial, medical and hospitality. Mr. Goshi is a licensed structural engineer in Hawaii and California and has been actively involved in several associations which include the Structural Engineering Association of Hawaii, American Society of Civil Engineers, and the American Council of Engineering Companies. He is a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (BS Civil Engineering and MBA) as well as Stanford University (MS Structural Engineering).

Dennis Hwang is Counsel at the Office of O’Connor Playdon and Guben and his clients include government agencies and planning departments dealing with coastal, hazard, and land use issues. He authored the Hawai'i Coastal Hazard Mitigation Guidebook, which is used in the land use process in Hawai'i.  A similar version was produced for Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. He co-authored the Homeowners Handbook to Prepare for Natural Hazards. Hwang is a member of the NOAA National Focus Team for Hazard Resilient Communities, Hawaii State Hurricane Advisory Committee, American Society of Civil Engineers, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Hawaii State Bar Association and is a Court Appointed Arbitrator.

Karl Kim, PhD Received undergraduate education from Brown University and Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He is Editor-in-chief of Transportation Research: Interdiscplinary Perspectives; Associate Editor of Transportation Research, Part D, Transport and Enviroment; and formerly Editor-in-chief of Accident Analysis and Prevention and formerly Editor of Korean Studies. He has received more than $67 million in research and training grants from federal, state, and international agencies and organizations.  Served as Chairman, National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (ndpc.us). Previously served as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (Chief Academic Officer) of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, overseeing strategic planning, accreditation, tenure and promotion, and international programs. Holds faculty appointments in the Center for Korean Studies, and the School of Architecture. Serves on several committee of the Transportation Research Board.  Served as Chair of the Pacific Risk Management Ohana. Elected to the Board of North American Alliance of Hazards and Disaster Research Institutes (NAAHDRI).   

Glenn Mason, FAIA Recognized for his leading role in the preservation of culturally important places, Glenn has had the honor of working on many of the most important historic sites in Hawaii and Guam, including ‘Iolani Palace, Lunalilo Tomb, Hulihe’e Palace, Kalahikiola Church, and Kawaiaha’o Church. He views preserving our environment and people’s relationship to it as integral to the practice of architecture, and consequently, sees little separation between the concepts that underlie sustainable design and preservation practice.  He strives to find creative ways to bring new uses to old buildings, designing for the 21st century while respecting the past.

Wendy Meguro, AIA is a licensed architect and associate professor, whose teaching and research focus on high-performance and carbon neutral architecture, grounded in building science and professional practice experience. With a joint appointment in architecture and Sea Grant’s Coastal Sustainability and Resilience Team (CReST), she also studies enabling coastal communities to adapt to sea level rise.

Virginia Murison, AIA is a part-time consultant contributing to HHF’s technical assistance program. She provides subject matter expertise in research, reviews projects’ scope and effect, and prepares written comment on projects. Murison was the Historic Preservation Architect and Architect of Record for the historic rehabilitation of the Moana Hotel in Waikiki. She is a member of the American Institute of Architects and has served as a juror for AIA Honolulu’s Honor Awards program and the University of Hawaii School of Architecture. She served two terms on the Hawai‘i Historic Places Review Board. Murison is a charter member and past Trustee of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation, a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and a member of several historical societies and libraries on the continental US. She received both her Bachelor of Arts degree in Architecture and Minor in Urban Law, and her Masters in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Jim Newberry is AVP & Risk Control Manager at Island Insurance. Newberry has over 30 years of experience in the insurance industry. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Safety and Safety.

Jenny Parker is an architectural historian in the Technical Preservation Services office of the National Park Service where she produces guidance materials and presentations related to the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. Along with co-authors, she recently published Guidelines on Flood Adaptation for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings. Ms. Parker is also responsible for the review of Federal Historic Tax Credit projects in Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Historic Preservation from Savannah College of Art & Design and a Bachelor of Science in Building Science from Auburn University.

Daniele Spirandelli, PhD is a subject matter expert on Coastal Programs and Training at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center. She formerly served as Assistant Professor in Coastal Policy and Community Development in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning.

Charlot House Documents:

1.  Charlot House Heritage Center Report (May 2013) 
2.  Charlot House Site Plan (May 2013) 
3.  Charlot House Emergency Plan (May 2013) 
4.  Charlot House Plot Plan (October 2004) 
5.  Charlot House Plans (October 2004) 
6.  Charlot House Baseline Report (Draft, November 2001) 
7.  Charlot House National Historic Registry (March 1996) 
8.  Charlot House Assessment Report (2021) 

Hazards Documents:

1.  Multi-Hazard Pre-Disaster Mitigation Plan of the City & County of Honolulu Executive Summary (2020) 
2.  Homeowner's Handbook to Prepare for Natural Hazards, Fourth Edition (September 2019) 
3.  Guidelines on Flood Adaptation for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings 
4.  Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties 
5.  Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: 2019 Report 
6.  LEED Resilient Design Pilot Credits 

Cathi Ho Schar FAIA, Asst. Professor, SOA; Director, UHCDC; Principal Investigator Karl Kim Ph.D. Prof, DURP; Director, NDPTC; Co-Investigator Wendy Meguro AIA, Assoc Prof, SOA & Sea Grant Colleges; Director, ERDL; Co-Investigator Rebecca Denzer, Research Associate, UHCDC Creesha Layaoen, Student assistant, UHCDC Megan Russell, Student assistant, UHCDC Kiana Dai, Student assistant, UHCDC Sequoia Riley, Graduate Assistant, NDPTC Jaeho Choi, Charlot House Caretaker; Graduate Assistant, NDPTC Keola Annino, Charlot House Caretaker