The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season, but one member of the East Hampton Town Board had a very long list of questions for the town’s emergency preparedness coordinator this month, appearing skeptical as to the town’s readiness for a crisis.
Bruce Bates, the preparedness coordinator, delivered a presentation on a draft Hazard Mitigation Plan Annex, telling the board that an approved plan is required for the town to be eligible for hazard mitigation grant funding from Suffolk County. The draft has already been approved by the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, he said, and is now with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “and we anticipate that they will also approve it within the next couple of weeks.”
The town board would then adopt the FEMA-approved document.
Hazards of concern are coastal erosion, cybersecurity, disease outbreak, drought, earthquake, extreme temperatures, flood, groundwater contamination, hurricane, infestation and invasive species, northeaster, severe storm, severe winter storm, and wildfire. “This is not an action plan,” Mr. Bates said. “This is basically a computation and compilation of what the town has as far as people on hand, documents on hand, policies, procedures, protocols that will address some of these and help mitigate anything in the future that might be coming our way.”
“We’re pleased with what we’ve compiled and where we’re at,” he said, “and we hope to have the approval within the next couple weeks from the federal government.”
Councilman Tom Flight, who lives in Montauk, called the plan a valuable document, “but I’m concerned that it overstates the town’s present capability by treating assets, departments, designations, and projects as evidence of operational readiness.”
Mr. Bates and his team “do an amazing job when we are hit with issues,” said Mr. Flight, but questioned “whether the town has built the planning, the training, the coordination, communications, resource management, and continuity systems that allow people and assets to work reliably before the conditions deteriorate. . . . I’m asking what evidence supports the conclusions in here.”
A primary concern, he and other board members said, is the potential for Montauk to be cut off from the town in the event that the narrow and low-lying Napeague stretch is flooded.
The plan lists departments and specialized staff, Mr. Flight agreed, “but does not demonstrate to me a townwide readiness program for employees who may be able to or are required to work during emergencies.”
He questioned the strong rating regarding equipment. “How are we validating that without a current emergency resource inventory?” he asked. “Do we have that inventory? Because I’ve looked for it, and I’ve never seen it.”
The town depends on its departments, but also the volunteers within districts, he said. “What formal mechanism actually ensures that every fire district, E.M.S. service, and key volunteer partners are participating in the preparedness, the planning, and receive the same operational picture, because the danger is, people go off and they do their own thing outside the scope of what the town’s trying to do, and that can lead to disaster. How are we engaging them?”
Primarily by communication with department chiefs, Mr. Bates replied, but acknowledged that “we have a much quicker turnover these days in most of our local departments, so a lot of the information doesn’t get handed down, or we don’t experience a significant event during the time frame of the people that are in charge there, so they’re not familiar with it and therefore it doesn’t get passed down to the new ones coming up. Certainly, we can do better communication.”
Should Montauk have a specific isolation pre-plan involving staging of resources there, Mr. Flight asked, “something formal that says we’re going to move pieces of resources out here to ensure safety?”
That is the plan, Mr. Bates said. “If we’re anticipating a significant event, we’re going to take action well before the perceived arrival of that event. . . . Can we fine-tune that a little bit better so everybody understands? Probably we can,” but historically that plan has been implemented, he added.
In the event of a regionwide emergency, “We’re at the end,” geographically, Mr. Flight said. “We’re not getting those resources if other areas with higher populations are impacted. . . . So what planning assumption does the town use for how long East Hampton needs to operate with its own departments before we get those kind of reinforcements, and what minimum capabilities must be there to maintain that sustainability?” FEMA specifies 45 days, he noted.
It can vary widely, Mr. Bates said, but 45 days is excessive “for most of the things that we’re going to see. . . . But we’ll make it work, and I think that it’s unlikely that if we need assets, whether it’s from the county, from another township . . . that we will not get any of them. They might have to limit what they will be able to share with us, but I don’t think we’re ever going to be totally without assistance from any other agency to our west.”
“You’re more confident than I in that one,” Mr. Flight said.
The level of communication with the towns and the county “has grown significantly in the last decade, decade and a half,” Mr. Bates said. “It’s my sense that that’s going to continue.” Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who has been on the board for 13 years, agreed.
Mr. Flight emphasized that he was not criticizing Mr. Bates, “because I’ve seen you go above and beyond,” and “most people have no idea how you stepped up for this town. That’s not why I’m talking about this here today. This is because, honestly, if something bad does happen, as I’ve said to you before, I want us to be as prepared as possible. . . . That’s why I feel the strong rating is not where it needs to be.”
While he supports the hazard mitigation plan as a tool, “my concern is that the town is using that document to imply a level of operational readiness that’s not been demonstrated,” Mr. Flight said. “Our geography, limited transportation redundancy, and dependence on volunteers and fire and E.M.S. partners make local preparedness especially important. County and state assistance should strengthen a functioning local system, not be a substitute for one.”
Mr. Bates, he said, does “an amazing job with very, very limited resources, and I think this is a department that we need to grow. I think it’s the primary goal of the town board to ensure that in those darkest moments we are doing our utmost to ensure that our community is safe. I think on the ground, we’re doing that. I think as a town board and operational structure, we need to be doing a lot more to ensure that.”
