Teresa Elliott, is a resilience engineer and is a retired chief engineer for Portland Water Bureau (PWB). She worked 25 years for PWB 1996 to 2021. Prior to working at the PWB, Teresa worked at Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) for 12 years. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Portland State University. Teresa has been involved in the utility, water and transportation infrastructure since 1980 with jobs ranging from surveying, construction and project management, project delivery, emergency management and public administration.
Teresa has been involved in emergency management and resiliency work since 1996. She was a member of the Technical Council for Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (TCLEE) investigating earthquakes and winter storms. She is a current member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Resilience Division (IRD) (which replaced TCLEE in 2015). She is the co-chair of the Disaster Response and Recovery Committee under the IRD. She has investigated damages from earthquakes, hurricanes, winter storms, wind and flood events, wildfires, including spending 30 days in New Orleans overseeing damage assessment teams after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She was an Incident Commander and previously a Planning Section Chief at PWB Emergency Operation Center where the FEMA National Incident Management System Incident Command System (NIMS ICS) was used for emergency response and training exercises. She was responsible for training and organizing the water bureau’s six damage assessment teams for over 10 years. Teresa is certified with California Office of Emergency Services as a Post Disaster Safety Assessment Program (CAL-OES SAP) evaluator, coordinator and trainer for their Cal-OES SAP. Teresa is certified with the State of Oregon Bureau of Buildings as a Post-earthquake damage investigator. Teresa has also been involved in the Oregon Water/Wastewater Response Network (OR WARN) since its inception in 2007 and she oversaw the water bureau’s emergency management section.
Teresa has worked on, oversaw and was a technical advisor on a number of all-hazard resiliency projects including the Conduit Vulnerability Reduction project, Groundwater Security Improvements, Powell Butte Reservoir 2, Kelly Butte Reservoir, Washington Park Reservoir Improvements, PWB-City Emergency Operations Building, Interstate Facility Replacement, Willamette River Crossing, PWB Water System Seismic Study, Earthquake Resistant Ductile Iron (ERDI) Pipe Pilot Project, the PWB’s Seismic Implementation Plan, and the Conduit Least Hazard Reduction. More recently Teresa has worked on private consultant projects as a technical advisor and support engineer for an emergency drinking water program, a county communications site hazard assessment, a private developer community resilience assessment, and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality fuel tank seismic resilience research project.
Teresa has completed the prerequisite courses for the FEMA Basic Emergency Management Academy and is waiting on registration approval to begin that academy as she works towards obtaining emergency management certification through IAEM.