Disaster Preparedness - Talk Is Cheap

What’s been proven with Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Irene along the eastern coast and Hurricane Sandy in the northeast is that local governments, right on up through the state and the federal governments, are not capable of handling emergencies well, if at all! The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is little more than a “front” for the federal government. Their “help” is nothing more than pointing victims to someone else for assistance. Does this sound like any Town Supervisor we know? They, and our politicians, get repeated publicity and in the end, the victims get little or no help at all. We’re reminded of former President Reagan’s famous quote, “I’m from the government and I'm here to help.”

Many in emergency services are used to responding and attacking anything from a small, single incident to something of a larger magnitude, including mass casualty incidents. The Fire Service trains in the routine tasks of hooking up to a hydrant to dealing with hazardous chemical spills. The EMS Service spends time learning to ask the right questions to ascertain whether aid is even needed. 

The emergency services organizations need to be prepared for any type of emergency. Our Town leadership should also be participating and leading the way. Sadly, they’d rather talk about it than actually do something about it. Last year the Town paid a hefty fee to have Jonathan Raser, to work with Police Chief DeCarlo, to develop a Greenburgh Hazard Mitigation Plan. It was adopted (and paid for) only for us to learn it is merely a vehicle to allow the Town to apply for grant money. 

There are several phases to a disaster that include Mitigation, Preparation, Response, and Recovery. This is the order to address emergency planning as well as infrastructure improvements as they relate to flooding, power outages, resident relocation, etc., if and when the Town choses to address our suffering residents during the yearly “100-Year” storms. Our Town Board is anxious to discuss doing something without actually implementing any improvements. Talk is cheap, isn’t it?

Mitigation is considered activities that either prevent the occurrence of an emergency and/or reduce a community’s vulnerability in ways that minimize the adverse impact of a disaster or other emergency. Most communities have done little mitigation in preparation for an upcoming weather event. This was never more apparent in Greenburgh with the onslaught we received from Hurricane Sandy. Individually, many first responders and their departments handled it well. Conversely, many of our respective Greenburgh communities were paralyzed and unable to effectively receive aid. Residents abandoned? No quite. Thankfully, The Paul never missed a beat sending out emails, especially to those offline with no power.

Consolidated Edison, our “private” public service utility was understaffed to respond to all the incidents that befell them. The operational economics constraining ConEd cause them to not have enough staff to address events the magnitude of a hurricane. How should we get past their staffing issues? The Paul knew a Citizens Committee meeting at Town Hall to “bash” ConEd wouldn’t really do anything, but it would make him seem to care. Ah, publicity. Everyone uses ConEd and no one likes paying their bill, so who wouldn’t want to “go after” the big bad utility company? Pure genius. If you insist on a quicker response from ConEd, with more workers, be prepared to pay higher rates!

The Preparation phase involves activities undertaken in advance of an emergency. Response or Normal Operational phase consists of developing and revising disaster plans and hazard analyses; writing operational mutual aid plans; cross training response personnel to wear one or more of any “hats” as dictated by the event; improving public information and communications systems; and conducting exercises (drills) to validate the planning process. Putting all of these together into an implementable plan is all well and good, but if it is never tested before an actually event, it might ultimately be worthless. As with any critique after this testing, it is imperative that the leadership recognizes and honestly evaluates performances. Simply congratulating everyone so the practice appears good on paper will be self-defeating when it comes time to engage during an event. We often see this kind of “atta-boy” backslapping at Town Board meetings, when they fall over each other, becoming a mutual admiration society. 

An increased “readiness” (pre-planning) is also critical before an incident happens. Inspections of critical facilities must be performed and categorized. Reviewing and updating emergency plans and Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines (SOP/SOGs) should be an ongoing exercise for all Town personnel - not just emergency responders. This should enable them to have increased operating knowledge, familiarity of what is expected by different roles they may be asked to perform, an ability to enhance their performance. Equally important will be their ability to critique the operation to offer a different perspective to assist in making improvements. This personnel should also be updating resource lists and becoming increasingly familiar with mobilizing resources, testing warning and communications systems, disseminating accurate, timely, emergency public information as well as recruiting additional personnel and disaster service workers from the community, such as Citizen Emergency Response Teams (C.E.R.T.).

Responding to a disaster will require actions be taken to save lives and protect property first and foremost. From there, other steps must be taken, including disseminating warnings to be issued, emergency public information to be broadcast, and other advice and action instructions to be conveyed to the public. Perhaps dispatching teams to distribute information will be all that is needed. Leaders will need to have boots on the ground surveying and evaluating the emergency situation. ABG has suggested the Town utilize neighborhood civic associations as well as the CERT members for this task. With information at hand, they will be marshaling, allocating, and positioning personnel and equipment and mobilizing necessary resources. If available, they will need to activate their Emergency Operations Center (EOC) using established guidelines. 

Evacuating the public from certain areas prone in communities that suffer may be necessary and need to be implemented in stages for large areas or restricted access areas. In low lying, flood prone areas for example, conditions may be static, necessitating no changes for those people. Or, those same conditions may change swiftly and require decisions that had been contemplated by not initiated to take effect. All personnel should be well versed in what will be required of them to assist in those actions. During Hurricane Sandy for instance, residents were evacuated to the Theodore Young Center, only to need to be evacuated from there due to storm related damage.

During the immediate emergency, emphasis must be placed on saving lives, gaining as much control of the situation as can be controlled and minimize the effects of the disaster to both the public and the responders. Once an Incident Command Post has been established, they can work in or with the EOC. Of course, sustained or long-term events/emergencies may dictate what else must be done. Providing for the care and treatment of casualties, collecting, identifying, and addressing the deceased, are part of the gruesome reality that must be planned for. During that same period, providing for the mass care with food, lodging, clean clothes, hygiene needs of displaced persons becomes a priority. During the Hurricane Sandy, the Village of Elmsford highway department distributed firewood collected from fallen trees, to residents to burn in their fireplaces. It allowed homeowners with fireplaces to heat their homes and dispose of the wood at no cost! 

Once the recovery process is underway, our people or other appropriate agencies must begin implementing health and safety measures for both the short and long term. Additionally, you must begin protecting, controlling, and allocating vital resources; restoring or activating essential facilities and systems, ensuring the enforcement of police powers in controlling the locations and finally, establishing access controls, erecting traffic barricades, etc.

We do know that with proper planning, evaluation and activation addressing everything that is going on should provide a more organized and less chaotic environment for all. Ultimately, it will assist the victims with a level of calm and security during an extremely stressful event. We don’t currently have a pre-plan for major events and hope this article helps guide our leaders in the right direction toward starting one. We can be ready for the next event. We can only hope.

They Should Resign

Rain, rain, go away, come back another day. Everyone should recognize the lyrics from this old nursery rhyme. The Paul sings a somewhat different tune, “Residents, residents, go away, come back another day.” It seems The Paul repeatedly takes the proverbial wrong courses of action at every turn and every venue regarding the Town’s involvement, finances and now tenuous future. According to him, it’s the residents that continually get in his way of doing what he wants. Although the residents are probably singing, “Paul, Paul go away, don’t come back on any day.”

Flooding
The weather experts claim we are scheduled to be hit with another 100-year storm two months after the one year anniversary of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. It defeats the purpose of calling it a 100-Year Storm if it’s happening every year, doesn’t it? Speaking of experts, one year ago, The Paul hired Jonathan Raser, an engineer and expert specializing in flood mitigation to review the conditions in the Town and seek assistance for the flooded residents. After collecting his somewhat substantial fee, and securing absolutely no funds for the residents or the Town, Mr. Raser hi-tailed it back to New Jersey whence he came, offering no resulting help, funds, or hope! The sum of his efforts? A letter to the flood-prone residents of the Town that they do not qualify for any aid and basically they are on their own. As he was leaving, he might have been overheard saying, “My bill is on The Paul’s desk, see ya suckers!” 

This once again imbues the well-known deflection tactic of The Paul seeming to care. When the flooding from Hurricane Irene hit the region and Greenburgh in particular, it took The Paul quite some time to leave the stately Boulder Ridge gated community to visit his serfdom. But once he received word that the news cameras, reporters and crews were out covering the effects of the storm in Greenburgh, he sniffed them out like a bloodhound that caught a scent. He visited Hartsdale, Fulton Park and Babbitt Court, offering any affected and suffering flood victims another false hope, this time of FEMA home buyouts. He corralled numerous Town employees, working for four years without a contract, to receive a little overtime picking up debris. These dedicated workers came through as usual and then The Paul did what he does best, deflect, ignore, babble on and disappear.

In spite of The Paul intruding with the victims’ cleanups spewing vague ideas that accumulated no traction, his next best idea was to request every other politician do something to help these beleaguered and beaten residents. After all, he’s done everything he can, which in reality was nothing. In fact, he wrote, talked and postured about how many other politicians he contacted deluging various residents with daily mailings stating as much. After the media left, so did The Paul - back to his sanctuary of the secure confines of Boulder Ridge, where flooding, traffic, homeless people, sports bubbles, over-sized stores, concerned citizens, environmental studies, and projects that devalue our residential areas are not an issue.

But why do these areas have such frequent flooding where there never was any? Overdevelopment! The state renovated I-287 and the Bronx River Parkway, routing their water runoff into Fulton Park. The Town has done nothing to address this. Nothing! The Paul helped develop the 9A corridor with more to come, routing that water into Babbitt Court. You might ask, “Don’t we have a Planning Department to oversee and control the development throughout the Town?” We used to. Most projects they “touch” mysteriously become bigger and bigger with the Commissioners involvement. They have even helped developers to find ways around zoning and planning limitations. Quietly, without fanfare they changed the departments name. It’s now known as the Department of Community Development and Conservation. The name change, slightly sexier and more encompassing with political correctness sudden makes things all better. The cost in damage to residents: MILLIONS.

WestHelp
When the County leased the WestHelp facility to the Town, it was a financially secure and rewarding deal for the Town. People in need of housing had a brand new, extremely nice place to live and the Town was earning $1.2 million a year in income. It was a sweetheart deal for then School Board President Michael Smith, now a Republican County Legislator representing the same area. Mayfair-Knollwood Civic Association former President, Ned McCormack, who is now Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino’s Communications Director, was also against the WestHelp deal. You see, they were both on the Valhalla School Board and protested putting those horrible homeless people on the campus of Westchester Community College and into the Valhalla School System without “something in return” for them. Did you know that County Executive Rob Astorino has now endorsed The Paul’s convoluted and illegal plan to tear down the facility to lease the property to a school for fifty years? Why? Why would Rob Astorino do that when all of the County Legislators are against it and trying to optimize housing for the low income and homeless population throughout the county? Partisan politics? Hardly. The County Executive is trying to help his Director of Communications and one of only a few minority legislative allies he has in the County Legislature get along with this neighborhood and get votes through a payback. Payback? Why? 

Not to be outdone, or to lose a vote, The Paul reached a financial arrangement with the Town Board, with no checks, balances or scrutiny to pay off the Valhalla School District. Essentially, he provided them a bribe, under the guise of an “educational grant” to accept these kids. There’s your reason. How they would use the money would be up to the school board for the school district - in essence for the children. So, what did they do with the money? They took a cruise and forced the taxpayers to foot the bill! You can read more at: valhallavoice.blogspot.com/. Fortunately, the Town of Greenburgh had two residents that pursued legal action to overturn this illegal deal in court and won! Now the Valhalla School District will have to return a portion of the monies to the Town in an agreed upon settlement. Something is better than nothing. The cost for this screw-up: $1.2 MILLION per year.

Referendum/Sports Bubble
Before Frank’s Nursery defaulted on their taxes and before the property was foreclosed upon with ownership assumed by the Town, The Paul met with several people representing themselves as a company called GameOn 365. Knowing of The Paul’s non-existent business acumen, they salivated over the possibility of acquiring that property from the Town for a song. These are stockbrokers apparently tired of competing with Charles Schwab and web-based competitors for peanuts and saw this as their big jump onto “Easy Street”. Knowing how to manipulate people into buying worthless stocks, they must have thought it easy to convince a bunch of their stockbroker-jock friends to invest in this deal. The Paul met secretly and communicated with them to position them to be the preferred recipient of The Paul’s good graces when it became time to unload said property.

Immediately after the Town assumed ownership, the public cried for the property to be used as a temporary library. Unassuming as most people in the Town are about what motivates The Paul, many decried foul knowing the history of this property as contaminated. What to do? If The Paul pushed for the library to relocate, they would be exposing “the children” (as well as adults) to toxic chemicals and who knows what else. The Paul quickly needed to deflect; so the talk turned to using the land for a new and larger police station and court. At the last Town Board meeting, Councilman Morgan stated to a resident that the neighborhood overwhelmingly was against this. When did the Town Board start listening to it’s residents? You may recall at about the same time, The Paul announced his newest no/low cost plan to financially save the Town by having interns process millions of dollars worth of back-logged traffic tickets. Deflection at it’s best? You decide. The cost for this illegal deal: MILLIONS.

Fortress Bible

Back when Tom “Proclamation” Abinanti was a mere 20-year career County Legislator, he enjoyed a relative safe haven where he resided. Then an African American church from Mount Vernon, the Fortress Bible Church, purchased property nearby. Ever the close friend of The Paul, he may have mentioned to him his concern of their nearby move. What did The Paul do? He put up road blocks, delays, fees and requirements for them to have to meet in order to proceed ahead with their plans. What were their plans? They simply wanted to build a church and a school on the property they purchased.

Tim “Remediation” Lewis, not wanting to publicize his strategy for fighting the Fortress Bible case in court, remained silent. We’re sure this was mostly on the marching orders of The Paul. But silent he remained; and, so did the others in The Paul’s administration. Perhaps if they had shared their strategy, the residents might have been able to help them. Unfortunately for the Unincorporated residents of the Town, they LOST the court case and were found guilty of discrimination, perjury, willfully destroying evidence and more! The cost for this debacle: upwards of $8 MILLION.

The Paul’s entire administration is a model for mismanagement, misjudgment, misdirection, misspending and missed opportunities. The Paul has exhausted most normal routes to help the residents of the Town preserve what little is left of it. He and Town Planning Commissioner Thomas Madden are on a track to overdevelop what little areas of green is left in Greenburgh. Not sure about this? There is much more about The Paul’s and his Stepford Board’s actions that are crippling our Town. ABG has written repeatedly about it. The Paul and the Board should help the Town. They will do this when they resign. It has to end. We can only hope.