How does the 21st century communicate without power?

HARLEM VALLEY — Pine Plains town Supervisor Gregg Pulver put it best, looking back on the storm that began March 6 and resulted in flooding and widespread power outages across northeastern Dutchess County.“We live in the technologically advanced age of cell phones and computers,” he said. “But when the power goes out, it’s like we’re forced back into an analog existence.”Pulver’s comment echoed the same concerns as many town leaders and emergency volunteers, all of whom have been sorting through the aftermath of a storm that left many without power for nearly two days, and some even longer.CommunicationSupervisors and mayors interviewed for this story all agreed, one of the biggest problems in dealing with a power outage and providing community support services was letting residents know those services were available.The communities of Amenia, Pine Plains and North East/Millerton offered shelters with electricity and heat to residents who found their homes underwater (as was the case in the hamlet of Wassaic) or simply without power (much of the remaining area). In Amenia, 26 Wassaic residents spent the night in the Town Hall gymnasium. In Pine Plains, Pulver estimated that volunteers from the local ladies auxiliary served between 40 and 50 meals to residents that the Heart of Pine Plains (HOPP) community center’s Jennifer Mosher helped organize. In Millerton, American Legion Post 178 was available as a Red Cross warming center.The problem, in many cases, was that it was difficult to get the word out to residents. In the case of Wassaic, Deputy Supervisor Victoria Perotti called a local state of emergency late on the night the flooding began, and firefighters and rescue squad workers from Wassaic literally went door to door in the downtown hamlet, evacuating residents.But several Wassaic residents spoke out at the Amenia Town Board’s March 10 meeting, saying that not being in the immediate flood zone in the center of Wassaic, they were unaware of the emergency notice and had not been evacuated from their homes.“Certainly there should have been some kind of warning sent out,” Tom Werner said, suggesting the use of the fire siren.“We’re not even in the flood zone,” resident Sally Leaf said, “but I was stopped and asked why I was still in Wassaic. There was nothing on [local access Channel] 22, nothing about what was going on.”Perotti said that she had gone on the air with radio station WHDD in Sharon at 6 a.m. on Monday, March 7, getting the word out about the situation, but that other radio stations, including Q103.3 in Lakeville, were out of power.Who has access?As far as Channel 22, town Videographer Gary Bonds explained later on in the meeting that he was out of town during the storm and did not have the access codes or Internet protocol addresses that would have given him access to the system remotely.“My point is that there should be somebody that is capable of doing this when you’re away,” Leaf replied.The Amenia board has previously discussed having Bonds train a stand-in videographer, as he is the only person with knowledge of the system. Discussion of that issue is scheduled to occur at the Thursday, March 17 Town Board meeting.“We all go through learning experiences and growing pains,” town Supervisor Wayne Euvrard remarked while listening to residents. “In emergencies, you sometimes just have to deal with it. It always can be done better, and we’ll try harder in the future.”Decision, decisionsWassaic Fire Chief Scott Boardman added his own assessment of the situation, saying that the houses that were evacuated were the ones that he felt would be effected the greatest by water flooding the hamlet. It was a very similar situation, he said, to flooding that occurred in both 2007 and 2009.“I did the best I could,” he told the board and the audience gathered at the Town Board meeting. “Between 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon and 8 p.m., the water had jumped a foot and a half. It was fast.”Wassaic resident Tonia Shoumatoff said she was concerned with residents driving cars through flooded roads, without barrier signs.Boardman replied that “Road Closed” signs had been put up, but that in many instances drivers ignored them.“People would just drive around them. They don’t listen to us,” he said, pointing out that even though there was a state of emergency in Wassaic and people were evacuated, by 7 a.m. everyone who had stayed overnight in the Town Hall gymnasium had returned home.“I can’t make people stay,” he said. “We did the best we could and we were there to help everybody who was there.”All of the Amenia residents who spoke out during the meeting said they were not criticizing the fire department or any of the volunteers who helped. Same goes for the supervisors in surrounding towns and villages as they dealt with their own issues during the storm.Volunteers, municipalities, did their best“Everything was very well taken care of,” said North East Councilman Dave McGhee, although there was confusion among town leaders as to where to set up the emergency shelter (for more, read the related article on emergency disaster plans on page A1). “It could have been a big disaster, but all the departments, and even Central Hudson with equipment, were out working.”“The fire department responded tremendously,” Millerton Mayor John Scutieri said. “They were pumping basements out all day, and they worked amazingly well. The highway crews were out as well, early in the morning.”“Every piece of the puzzle worked really well,” Pulver added. “The highway crew, you have to give them kudos, they’ve probably had the worst winter in recent memory. The weather has not let up, week after week, but those guys got the roads open, they helped people with flooding issues, they really went above and beyond.”While Pine Plains and Amenia both had a fairly steady stream of residents taking advantage of the warming shelters, the Millerton shelter was not as populated, and both Scutieri and Sherman attributed part of that to the issue of letting residents know it was available.“The warming center was not really used,” Scutieri acknowledged. “That may have been because people didn’t feel like they needed it [as the majority of Millerton residents had their power restored by early evening on Monday]. But at one point we were going to start looking for volunteers to do a sweep of the village to let people know, even if we had to go door to door.”Pulver said that some suggestions he had heard included installing an LED-illuminated sign at the firehouse to scroll messages on, especially during an emergency, and to install a generator at Town Hall and staff someone there so that people could stop in for information.“The biggest thing to take from this is how to communicate with the population of Pine Plains,” he said, “giving them some radio stations, a place to key in to and listen during emergency situations.”