Joint hurricane response provides a look into consolidated government

Two weeks ago, when the Princeton Borough and Princeton Township mobilized their resources to assist those affected by Hurricane Sandy, there was little separation of efforts. A joint Emergency Operations Center. dispatched workers to emergency calls from both municipalities. Borough Police Captain Nick Sutter and Township Police Sergeant Michael Cifelli handled police communications together.

The episode was in many ways a look into the town to come after the Borough and the Townshipconsolidate at the start of 2013. While the two municipalities have coordinated relief efforts together in the past — such asduring Hurricane Irene— this year's coordination previewed what will be the norm after the Borough and Township merge on Jan. 1.

"[Previous relief responses were] never done with the mindset that we are one community. And right now we have the mindset of being one community," Township Mayor Chad Goerner said.

While the municipalities had practiced the model of the EOC in simulations, they had never had occasion to implement it before Sandy.

The EOC began working out of Princeton Township Police Department on Monday morning, before Sandy struck that evening. Using power from the Township Hall's generator, representatives from both municipalities sat at a horseshoe-shaped table and dealt with crisis after crisis, using large whiteboards at the front of the room to show where power lines or trees had fallen in both communities.

The emergency operations team included Goerner, Borough Councilman Kevin Wilkes '83, Cifelli and Sutter, the municipal administrators and communications officers of both municipalities, along with representatives of the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad, both municipalities’ public works and fire departments and the University's Public Safety department.

This control-room format — which allowed representatives of many different teams to coordinate on everything from the identification of problems to the dispatching of resources — was helpful to ensure an efficient, non-redundant and logistically organized deployment of both municipalities' resources.

The storm raged from Monday evening to Tuesday morning. Utility crews arrived and assessed the damage on Thursday and began working on Friday.

The integration of local departments and resources quickened response times, local officials said. In responding to thedeath of William Sword ’76, for example, the EOC had to dispatch a public works crew to cut through fallen trees on the road to allow for rescue squads to reach Sword’s home in the Township, according to Wilkes.

“We were able to do this instantaneously because we were all sitting in the same room manning our own little stations, so we were all able to respond right away," Wilkes said.

The units that the EOC team dispatched to remove fallen trees reduced the number of manpower hours that the utility companies had to devote to rebuilding the infrastructure.

"It was a very seamless and effective operation in terms of marshaling our resources," Goerner said, explaining that the control-room format of the EOC allowed the governments "to react more quickly to issues that were unexpected and to issues that arose during the process."

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To notify residents of dangerous conditions and available relief efforts throughout the process, the community made use of their public reverse 911 emergency notification system. The Township used its own system to make calls to its residents, while the Borough used Mercer County’s reverse 911 system to call Borough residents.

As part of the merger process, the municipal communications teams are in the process of consolidating contacts for both municipalities into the existing Township system.

The websites of both the Borough and Township now display links to a self-registration portal where residents can register for the reverse 911 emergency notification system or update their existing registered contact information. Township Chief Information Officer Robert McQueen urged residents to register both their home and cell phones.

Some residents were not able to receive the reverse 911 calls during the storm, McQueen explained. Many people who lost power during the storm lost access to their home phone lines. During the height of the storm, some cell towers were also down, McQueen explained.

McQueen explained that he considered the governments' communication efforts successful given the circumstances of the storm.

"We can't control [when] cell phones' power is out, we can't control when there's a power outage or when Internet stops," McQueen said. "We maintained our equipment. We were able to communicate and use the reverse 911 system."

According to Bob Kiser of the Township Engineering Department, power has been restored to all houses in the Borough and the Township, as far as he knows.

The EOC team made efforts to use many different channels of communication to spread information. The team placed signs outside both municipal buildings and released daily reports to local news outlets. Both police departments tweeted updates regularly throughout the relief efforts.

The University played a key role in the municipalities' relief efforts. In addition tovolunteering the Friend Center as a public reception center, the University loaned 30 to 40 mattresses to the shelter at John Witherspoon Middle School so residents could spend the night there. The University also allowed municipal emergency services workers to eat meals at Rockefeller dining hall throughout the week.

The University also assisted in the need to relocate over half of the town's polling places for Election Day. Of the town's 22 polling districts, 14 needed to be relocated because their original locations lost power. The University agreed to house eight of thoserelocated districts on campus in Jadwin Gymnasiumand the Computer Science Building.

The weekend before Election Day, volunteers of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization made special canvassing efforts to inform voters of the new polling locations. Despite the last-minute scramble to rearrange polling places and spread information, voter turnout was just as high as it is in typical presidential election years. About 65 percent of Princeton's registered voters voted on Nov. 6, which is the regular turnout rate, Jon Durbin of the PCDO estimated.

"It's hard to say things worked out 'well' when you're dealing with disaster recovery, because 'well' is not a word that seems quite appropriate," Wilkes said, adding that he thought the relief effort was quite effective.

The full-scale coordination of all efforts is a preview of how the governments will begin working together within the consolidated Princeton.

"[Our cooperation in relief efforts] shows that the benefits of consolidation are ripe for us to pick. Hopefully it'll be of great benefit," Wilkes said. "It was a bad situation, but the results of the test were really very good in terms of how we performed"