Greetings,
In what is now our twelfth update about Hurricane Sandy, I've got some rather unfortunate news. According to Facebook posts as well as the Freeport NY homepage, the entire area south of Atlantic Avenue in Freeport is going to be without power until November 3rd. That's Saturday, in case we're counting. Before you read on, PLEASE do yourself the favor of reading the posting yourself. I do not intend to repeat it while making my case.
The decision has, according to the Freeport Facebook page, been made by Mayor Hardwick and the Village Trustees (minus Kennedy, an expert in this field from my understanding, who apparently could not be there?) in order to reduce the risk of fires. We've already seen what a fire caused by a wet circuit breaker can do. The idea of a controlled shut-down had never been implemented before, nor suggested (to my knowledge) until immediately before it was executed, but in principle it isn't a bad one. Keeping the power out for a little longer isn't a bad plan at all! Our emergency staff has already been working super-hard for hours upon hours, and unnecessary risks are not what they deserve at this point. They deserve a chance to rest, and they deserve our admiration.
In the moment, safety comes first.
However.
Before the moment, planning comes before passivity, because planning leads to safety.
There are many people south of Merrick Road who chose not to evacuate because, in past storms (Hurricane Gloria, Hurricane Irene), they were able to weather it. I'm not advocating this, but if a home-owner chooses to take a risk knowing that they have a certain geographic advantage (say, they are located at the top of a hill that has never, in twenty-five years, even come close to flooding), they are doing it with certain thoughts in mind. Among them is uncertainly, "As long as I have electricity, I can run a pump." In fact, many people who did evacuate reasoned that they could still run pumps in order to keep their possessions as safe as possible. Some I know of have even installed massive systems to do exactly this.
To my knowledge, Freeport has never voluntarily cut power during a storm, and to my knowledge it was not announced as part of any evacuation or emergency plan until, on Facebook, I saw scattered reports about it happening.
Again, I'm not saying this is a bad idea. I'm saying that it is an idea which should have been made public to those who were going to stick it out, or leave their electrical systems running. What should have been said, in the initial emergency briefings, was that active circuit breakers in flood zones could pose a serious fire risk, and that residents should in fact count on their power being cut if necessary. It was, as I have had to point out all too frequently, a failure of communication. In the heat of a crisis, these things happen. It's easy to be irked, but it's impossible to fault the concept - it's just that one can wish information networks worked better, because there are just too many break-downs in communication.
So, naturally, we have another one: We're now in the after-math of a storm and the Village is insisting that evacuated residents get an electrician to verify that their homes are okay to return to a powered state, one that won't even begin to be a reality until November 3rd.
I've got some very pointed questions...
1: First and foremost, if residents have been evacuated, have no power, probably have no phones, and have no way of getting news...How exactly are they supposed to know of these criteria to get their power back? Without a way to actually get this message, there is no chance of them taking heed - those without electricity will have extraordinary difficulties getting this message.
- Edit: Police will be delivering this message door to door, I am told.
2: Who is supposed to pay for this seemingly-mandatory (we'll get to that) assessment? Residents who are already cash-strapped? Or the Village?
3: How many electricians are actually available, and not already overwhelmed with work? Will Village resources not spent in powering up the area be assigned to assisting residents?
4: Since the Village can't actually precisely target a home for power restoration, and has to power up blocks/sections at a time, how is it going to practically mandate the evaluations and, more importantly, enforce the breaker-cutting order? Especially in cases of evacuees who cannot return in time to shut down their breaker in the first place?
5: Following 4, if there's no way to guarantee that all of an area's breakers can be shut down, why not just power everything back on as soon as possible, section by section, with rescue personnel on stand-by in the immediate surroundings to contain a disaster that is, essentially, unavoidable? Or will an entire section have to wait because one or two breakers are not confirmed as offline?
6: For businesses, schools, and residents who want to get in and try to salvage their possessions and property, say by pumping out their basements and drying out damaged rooms so they don't grow mold, without power that will be impossible - let alone actual operation/occupation. What aid has the Village sought, on behalf of its residents, from State/Federal authorities, especially in compensation for a safety-inspired, Village-Issued shut-down leading to damages?
Again, I'm not suggesting we do anything un-safe, I'm just asking some questions about how exactly we are supposed to go about this recovery. For residents who have been without power for two days, already, another three and a half can be the difference between life and death. How long can we expect people to stay in shelters? For those who might have already left their shelter to return home, only to find out they won't have any power (if, indeed, they find out!), how exactly are they expected to survive?
In one light, it's easy to say, "Well, this is a major disaster and you could have no power for any number of reasons." However, a voluntary outage is not equal to a weather-caused one. In most cases, when power can be restored it should be; only when a lack of safety can be empirically proven should it be prevented. A small delay in restoring operation, after a flood of this magnitude, makes sense; but for an entire week?
At what point, I ultimately wonder, will the risks of starting the power back up be overshadowed by the risks of not having power?
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