UPDATE: After Hurricane Irene, Council Reviews Borough's Emergency Response

After Hurricane Irene devasated parts of New Jersey with heavy rain, high winds and flooding, a review of Madison’s emergency response topped the agenda at the Borough Council’s meeting Monday night at .

Electric Department head Michael Piano in a presentation said his eight-person staff at one point worked 24 straight hours midnight-to-midnight Aug. 27-28 to make repairs and restore power to residential customers during the height of the storm.

[Click on the PDF at right to see the complete presentation.]

Crews battled high winds that toppled trees around town, bringing down power lines and some of the town’s 2,400 utility poles and 1,500 pole transformers, Piano said.

“The entire workforce worked their tails off, with a limited amount of sleep,” Piano said, who added that it wasn’t until Wednesday, Aug. 31 that all department personnel were sent home to rest.

Piano thanked the Department of Public Works, Fire and Police Departments for their help in clearing downed trees. Council members in turn thanked him and his department for their vital work.

Having its own electric utility meant Madison customers had a shorter wait to get their power back on than in surrounding communities such as Harding, where some residents were without power for as long as a week, Mayor Mary-Anna Holden noted. State utility crews were stretched to the breaking point repairing storm damage around the state, with extra trucks brought in from other states to help.

As it was, Madison could have suffered much greater power woes. While the borough buys all of its electric power from outside providers, it is delivered on a pair of Jersey Central Power & Light lines — one of which was knocked out by the hurricane. “If the other on was out, we would have been without power,” Piano said.

The Electric Department worked on the most dangerous, largest outage areas first, than moved onto smaller ones, including individual residences. “That’s why some customers had to wait longer than others,” he explained. 

The department is continuing work to repair storm damage, he said.

Office of Emergency Management

In his presentation, volunteer Borough OEM Coordinator Bob Landrigan said that early on in the process of preparing for the arrival of the hurricane, “it was made clear [by county officials] that Madison would have to be self-sufficient for several days and that resources would not be available.

“We were on our own for quite a period of time.”

Landrigan said that the borough was forced to find its own shelters for residents who might have to leave their homes after the Red Cross announced the day before the hurricane moved into New Jersey that it would provide regionalized shelter accommodations only.

In short order the borough had secured shelter space with landlord Rexcorp in office space at 1 Giralda Farms, along with a secure shuttle to bring people in, if that became necessary. Said Landrigan, “We did the job of the Red Cross in a 24-hour time period.”

The storm also produced a staggering volume of calls for Madison first responders during the Aug. 27-28 period, Landrigan said, including:

Police:

• 66.5 overtime hours;
• 170 calls for service that included 32 reporting trees/wires down, 6 medical, 12 hazardous conditions, 7 alarms; 
• 153 911 emergency calls;
• Additionally, a call for a residential gas explosion / structure fire was received that required coordinating the response for mutual aid from various fire and EMS agencies.

Fire:

• Overtime hours for paid personnel: 215
• Volunteer hours: 125
• Calls: 9 fire alarm activations; 22 calls for service (trees on house, carbon monoxide issues, medical assistance); 2 mutual aid calls to Morris Township; 1 mutual aid call to Parsippany; 1 mutual aid call to Milburn; 109 basement pumpouts; 1 structure fire

The hurricane turned out to be the first test for the borough’s OEM plan, and Landrigan said it bears revisiting. He pointed to specific areas for improvement:

• Communications with citizens;
• Plans for local shelters;
• Mapping storm drains that tend to flood;
• Sewage backups from illegal home pump-outs;
• Ensure emergency plans for all borough agencies.

Landrigan said he was to brief the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) this morning, the first step in a long process of securing reimbursement for some storm costs.