Col. Eric R. Swenson: Built Trust Among Disaster Survivors and Expedited Wildfire Cleanup

Photo by Scott Blair/ENR

Swenson met with anxious survivors regularly to answer questions and reassure them that the Corps would not abandon or fail them.

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From a young age, Col. Eric R. Swenson found himself drawn to construction and earthmoving equipment,“so much so that as a child I once lost my parents on a family bike ride after stopping to watch the Army Corps of Engineers dredging operations in Ocean City, N.J.,” Swenson says. His family also instilled public service as a core value, motivating Swenson to work his way up to be an Eagle Scout, and later to study engineering at West Point, where he was commissioned as an engineer officer in 1998.

Those values proved indispensable in helping communities clean up and recover from major fires, first in Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 2023 and again after the historic LA wildfires in January 2025.

Swenson brought many lessons learned from Maui to his role as the recovery field office commander in LA, responsible for coordinating thousands of Corps and contractor workers to remove over 3 million tons of debris from 9,500+ properties.

“Disasters are fast paced and chaotic,” he says. “In the beginning it is the convergence of many agencies at all levels of government coming to help a community reeling from their worst nightmare. Building trust at all levels and particularly at the leadership levels across organizations is critical in conflict resolution. Success in a disaster requires leaders to work together for the good of the mission.”

LA County Public Works partnered with the Corps on the coordinated recovery efforts. Swenson “played a key leadership role by serving as a central point of coordination, ensuring seamless collaboration between federal and county teams, resolving operational challenges in real time and maintaining a shared focus on restoring impacted neighborhoods safely and efficiently. He was the face of our operations and represents the best of what it means to serve our country,” says Public Works Director Mark Pestrella, who won ENR’s Award of Excellence last year.

Critically, Swenson also sought to build trust among disaster survivors. “We saturated the impacted areas with knowledgeable and personable teammates and met survivors where they were, emotionally and physically,” whether in places of worship, grocery stores, post offices, community centers or elsewhere, he says. “Building trust with the community gave survivors the confidence to sign up for the government’s debris program.” Because the vast majority of survivors signed up early, it allowed prime contractor ECC to mobilize quickly. The Corps’ pre-negotiated advanced contracting initiative also helped debris removal begin within a week of fire containment.

Survivor Robert Staehle, a retired engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says his experience with the Corps cleanup crews was “terrific,” adding “the planning was great. All the right equipment showed up when it was supposed to, and all the right people with the right skills. They completely listened to us about what we wanted to save.”

Originally anticipated to take a year, the cleanup wrapped up in just eight months.

Swenson “showed leadership grounded in purpose,” says Talin Espinoza, chief strategy officer with Royal Electric Co., who lost her home to the fire in Altadena. “By combining urgency with clear communication and respect for the people affected, he kept the mission moving efficiently while never losing sight of the human impact—allowing families like mine to … hope that we could move forward and rebuild.”

She adds that the Corps showed that “empathy and construction can go hand in hand. Clear mission, disciplined execution and genuine respect for the people impacted set a powerful example for anyone serving communities in crisis.”

Swenson currently serves as deputy commander of the Corps North Atlantic Division. In July, he becomes commander of the New York District.

Blair leads day-to-day operations of the ENR editorial team to ensure brand quality and further best practices. He spearheads ENR's various competitions, including Best Projects and the Award of Excellence, and organizes editorial content at events including the Top Young Professionals conference. A Jesse H. Neal, Construction Media Alliance and AZBEES-award-winning writer and videographer, Blair frequently contributes to ENR’s burgeoning video channel with project tour videos and interviews with industry leaders. He is also a frequent speaker and moderator on topics such as diversity and inclusion, design and jobsite technology, construction means and methods and marketing.