Sandy Post Mortem: Emergency Notification Calls or a Meeting Room

The following comments represent my personal view and are separate and distinct from my unbiased Patch blog postings of meeting summaries for Citizens for an Informed Yorktown, ciyinfo.org. 

As Yogi Berra would say, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

In February, 2012, I posed the question:  

In the event of an emergency, what would help you more?

• Getting phone calls, emails and text messages from the Town with emergency updates, or
• Knowing that the Town’s first responders (police, fire, ambulance) are meeting in a newly furnished and carpeted room.

Back in February, the Town Board had two options for using some of the remaining funds from a $20,000 Entergy grant that the previous Town Board had secured to set up an Emergency Notification System:

• Purchase the Verizon 911 list in order to add 15,000 phone numbers to the system’s database, or,
• Set up a permanent, single use meeting space for an Emergency Command Center (EOC) in the basement of the court.  An EOC is where key first responders meet during emergencies to implement an already prepared Emergency Preparedness Plan. The meetings can be held in any location that has sufficient space, a generator in the event there’s no electricity, and access to communications equipment.  During previous emergencies, the EOC was set up in the Police Department building.

Although the Board never openly discussed the issue, at the time, Supervisor Grace appeared to have made up his mind that furniture was more important than phone numbers. There was no Board discussion and the Verizon list was never purchased.

And in September, when the Board was asked if it was planning to use the remaining grant money to renew  the annual contract for the Emergency Notification System (it expired in August and would have cost about $4,500 to renew), the Supervisor said he was “reviewing the Town’s options.“  Again, there was no Board discussion.

But the choice between an Emergency Notification System or a permanent, single use EOC meeting room has surfaced again -- and again it appears that a decision is being, or has been, made without any open discussion or input from the Town Board or residents.

In the days before and immediately after Hurricane Sandy, the EOC was inexplicably relocated in the board room at Town Hall. But, in his initial storm post mortem, Supervisor Grace informed his fellow Board members that the board room was not suitable for an EOC and he was planning to set up a dedicated EOC meeting  space in the basement of the court.  At a subsequent meeting, Board members were informed that town staff “would be measuring the walls (in the court) tomorrow.” 

Before any money or staff time is spent setting up a permanent EOC meeting space, residents might want to know:

• Who decided to set up a permanent EOC meeting space in the court?
• Why can’t the police HQ be used for an EOC?
• What are the plans to modify the court space and who prepared and reviewed them?
• How much will setting up the EOC space cost and where will the money come from?

And what about the Emergency Notification System?

Has the Town Board voted to scrap the system?  If so, why, and how does the Town plan to communicate with its residents during future emergencies?  The telephone may be “old school,” but guess what:  it works when there’s no electricity.  And not everyone has a smartphone, iPad or laptop computer.

So I repeat the question I posed in February:  In the event of an emergency, what would help you more?

• Getting phone calls, emails and text messages from the Town with emergency updates, or
• Knowing that an EOC was meeting in a newly furnished and equipped dedicated space?

Share your answer with the members of the Town Board. This is a decision that affects us all.

For more information about the Emergency Notification System and the EOC, visit yorktownbettergovernment.org