Message from the Mayor: Storm Wrap-Up and an opportunity
Posted on: March 15, 2018 - 7:16am
Fellow residents,
Now that we are more than a week beyond the end of the (last) two storms, I wanted to wrap up where we stand and what is next, as well as speak of an opportunity for gratitude.
The two storms collectively put over 500 homes in our village in the dark. Those homes were all restored, though some took as long as eight days. There may still be a few homes with telecommunication issues (please send me an email with “Telecom” in the subject header if you remain one of these and we will aggregate and attempt to prompt some action.) If you have branches that fell on your property, it is yours to cut up and clean up. Leave the pieces in lengths no longer than four feet bundled by the curbside and the Village will continue to pick them up, with the next curbside pickup scheduled for this Wednesday (assuming the next storm doesn’t get in the way).
Our Department of Public Works (DPW), Police and Fire Department emergency protocols were successfully executed. Our collective gratitude is extended to the men and women of the DPW, Police and Hastings Fire Department for the hours spent, the hard work, the vigilance. Where we were able to open streets without waiting for Con Edison to depower a fallen line, we did so quickly, sometimes even before the storm was over. The Fire Department knocked on doors in several rounds of “welfare checks”, making sure the elderly and infirm were safe. The Police Department responded to many calls, and maintained order amidst all the closed streets and delayed or constrained school openings, due to storm or coyote. The Andrus Home was generous enough, again, to extend the offer of emergency shelter to anyone in a dark home, an offer that was taken up by at least one family. Quiet competence and generosity of time and spirit ruled the day.
The one area we identified as in need of improvement was the ongoing maintenance of the list we keep of seniors and handicapped. The Village is updating the mechanisms by which we keep this list up to date, and will continue to rely on collection efforts by the Police, the Senior Advocate, and others. We want to make sure our list is always current so we can quickly and confidently react to emergencies in the future.
Clearly, Con Edison demonstrated its emergency response was not what it should be. This is not the place to dissect their many faults – the State and County governments will take the lead on that and we will be willing participants. There were failures on repowering, but more damning were the failures of communication and reporting, where people were repeatedly misled on when they would see light again, or even told they were lit when the evidence of their eyes indicated otherwise. This must be fixed. It is unfair and cruel to those sitting in the dark. (Speaking of Con Ed, if your power was out for at least three consecutive days and you lost food or medicine stored in the fridge, you can go HERE and request reimbursement for up to $255, or even more if you have receipts.)
We were fully repowered (if not re-telecommed) within eight days. Appallingly, over 130,000 people are still without power in Puerto Rico, on this, today, the sixth month anniversary of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria. While repowering continues house by painstaking house, it is unacceptably slow. We are partnering with a local branch of the Sierra Club to provide the funding for a community solar project in a rural community which will help to light community structures and give people a place to recharge phones. This shouldn’t still be a need six months later, but it is. That’s beyond depressing and we can do something about it. We are kicking of a County-wide campaign right here in Hastings to raise this funding for a community in Puerto Rico still in the dark. Better yet, this will provide some level of resiliency in a future outage. Please click HERE to contribute. I ask that you think how important and gratifying it is to hit that light switch and assume that power is there and then give accordingly. These Americans should not still be in the dark, 23 times longer than we were. Please help in gratitude for the big and little advantages we have and because we can.
Finally, I would like to thank the community for persevering so calmly through this moment. There were multiple assaults on our community between two storms and one rabid coywolf and genuine (and appropriate) fear and anxiety, and yet I did not get a single angry phone call, not one meltdown. That speaks to the character of this community, and made me even more proud than I already was to be a part of it.
Sincerely,
Peter Swiderski
Mayor
mayor@hastingsgov.org
Mayor
mayor@hastingsgov.org