The water comes in at Kingston Point. (Photo by Phyllis McCabe)
“Those guys are dedicated,” said Noble of the crew at the sewage plant. “They wanted to stay until the last possible moment to keep the plant running and that’s what they did.”
Noble, who spent the night shuttling back and forth between the EOC, City Hall and the waterfront said that once the breach at the plant was confirmed, DPW officials immediately convened at the operations center to formulate a plan to get it back online. By 4 a.m. crews were back at work pumping out the flooded plant and setting up an emergency power source. It would not be until 10:30 a.m., after another high tide had crested, that Central Hudson restored power to the plant.
Emergency communications
Throughout the storm, the EOC maintained contact with city aldermen via text messages. The KPD’s popular Facebook page became an outlet for public information on the storm, including road closings, parking restrictions and evacuation plans.
“We’ve made some leaps and bounds in our ability to communicate in an emergency,” said Tinti. “With a simple text message you can really keep people updated. The implementation of that was really one of the reasons for our success.”
By 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Noble felt the situation had improved enough to shut down the EOC. By 5 p.m. the fire and police departments had returned to their normal schedule. Noble, meanwhile faced another busy work week, this time in his day job of running a plumbing and heating company. The long-serving alderman, however, said that experience had been instructive, not just in the nuts and bolts of emergency management, but as an object lesson on the city’s need to prepare for rising sea levels brought on by climate change. Noble, a strong supporter of the city’s recently passed Climate Action Plan, which calls for planning for rising sea levels, said that he didn’t think it was a coincidence that Kingston had suffered damaging floods two years in a row.
“It just keeps happening and more every year,” said Noble. “The question is, when the water levels rise, what are you going to do? That’s what it’s all about.”
Quigley: Some damage in Town of Ulster
By Crispin Kott
In the Town of Ulster, where Hurricane Irene laid waste to homes along the Esopus Creek and may have been responsible for an ongoing mold issue in Town Hall that chased the police department out of their basement offices and into temporary trailers, Sandy provided a different set of familiar problems.
“Unlike Irene, where we experienced extensive flooding because of the Esopus Creek, we were fine on the Esopus Creek side,” Town Supervisor James Quigley III said. “It was the Hudson River side that gave us the problems, and it was primarily related to the tidal flow and the winds.”
Quigley said he believed there were 11 houses along the Hudson which sustained damage; some buildings in Eddyville along the Rondout Creek “at the furthest most point where the tidal flows impact,” also had some storm-related issues. And the two town parks were also hit by the storm.
“Post Park experienced the most damage because we had the most improvements physically in the park that were exposed to water damage,” Quigley said. “We had our normal share of trees down, but the town was recovered quickly and rendering mutual aid to surrounding municipalities by yesterday morning. We had equipment in other townships helping them recover. Last year we were finished in three days.”
Quigley said any damage in the parks would not be remedied until the town hears back from FEMA on their plans.
I hope plenty of people now understand the need to have not only Emergency and Survival kits but also some type of food storage. It is unfortunate that this storm has affected so many people. When things get back to normal is really the time to plan for the next disaster.