Ready for Hurricane roulette?

No one can say for sure whether we are going to get another August Hurricane or even another Superstorm  this fall.  But quite a few of our eyes have now turned to the latest hurricane “Chantal” (love that name) in a completely different way than they have in the past.

We’re feeling exposed, that’s the difference.  Generators have been selling like hotcakes all year and there are more “Go bags” waiting in closets in Morris county than ever before.  Recently someone told me that there was nothing to worry about, all the trees that would have fallen are already down.  I don’t share their confidence.

There is also a lot of line work, power, phone and cable that looks like it still needs to be cleaned up.  It makes me wonder what is our state of readiness for another big storm?  During Sandy there was a lot of difficulty even figuring out who had power and who didn’t.  The Patch was a big help a couple of years ago during an August Hurricane due to a volunteer effort in creating an Interactive map.  During Sandy we had 11 days without power and very little idea what was actually going on.

So what has changed?  Well there is a JCPL outage app on my iPhone now and it looks pretty specific, I’d like to see it in action in a big area outage though.  And that all depends on available connections to a cell tower, which can be very difficult to get when the power’s gone.  Seems like everyone picks up their phone when the lights go out.  What’s going on with the cell phone infrastructure?  Is that getting expanded or reinforced?

We were lucky during Sandy, FIOS stayed up even without the power.  That was a big help.  My wife and I work at home so with a generator, an undamaged house and an active internet connection we made out very well.  Our neighbors didn’t though, with no power they couldn’t even take a shower or flush their toilets.  Being on the downhill side of the road, we all have to pump our waste water up to the sewer on the street.  Having a cold house is pretty nasty but not being able to use the bathroom or the sinks makes that much worse.  I think the town needs to be more active during outages showing up with portable generators and pumping people out.  The holding tanks only give people about a day’s worth of use before they fill up.

My neighbor on one side has small children so they decided to “Bug out” after only a couple of days.  They searched for hotel rooms all the way down to Delaware and ended up coming back after only two days.  They bought 5 kerosene heaters after they got back and stuck it out for the rest of the time.  I wonder what we could do about that?  How many out-of-towners were in the hotels around here during that period?  How fast can the schools become emergency shelters?  How would we know where to go in case our own homes became unlivable?

There are a lot of questions that don’t seem to be answered in one place, maybe I’m just not paying attention.  For instance, who is responsible for keeping a list of all the people who are “at risk” in Morris County?  People who need respirators, oxygen, people who have trouble getting around and could be trapped in their homes without power or just people who need daily care.  I know if you make that list it implies responsibility for those people, but without the list we can’t judge the risk.  Isn’t that  irresponsible?

Just so you guys know, there are several things we all should be doing for ourselves. 

The first, sign up for Nixle alerts on your cell phone.  Town, Township and County authorities send out alerts when there’s anything from a road closure to a major flood.

Second, “like” the Morris County Office of Emergency Management’s facebook page.  That way you’l be warned of current or impending problems and get a sense of how things are going as you read through past alerts.  The Morris County OEM also “Tweets” alerts if your not a facebook fan.

Third, make sure you haven’t disabled the “Government alerts” feature on your smart phone.  This feature works through SMS and will alert you to potential disasters based on your location.  This system has been recently rolled out to our area and will make your phone sound off when there is an active alert.  It sounds a lot like the first tone of the old “Emergency Broadcast System” tests we all grew up with.  You wont miss it.

Last, check out the Morris OEM website and ask questions now.  Maybe there are no comprehensive plans for another Sandy, but we should know what plans there are.  Everyone in the county should be able to find out quickly where they can go when a tree smashes their house to pieces or a storm floods they and their neighbors out.