Village working to improve emergency response

Is Rockville Centre ready for a hurricane?

After a violent storm ripped through Long Island back in March and a fierce late June storm that left many Great Neck residents without power for six days, village officials saw those events as a wake up call. During an April Board of Trustees meeting, which focused on a review of how the village coped with the March nor'easter, village trustees brainstormed and came up with a number of different ideas on how to improve emergency preparedness.

As of early July, many of those ideas were still in the works.

"As much as you don't want to think about suffering through a disaster or an emergency, we are trying to prepare for one now before something happens," said Mayor Mary Bossart during the June 29 Board of Trustees meeting. "The Nor'Easter last March and the strong storms that swept through Great Neck and the surrounding communities last week should remind us once again of the need for individual emergency preparedness."

Bossart warned residents that when dealing with emergencies, power can be out for extended periods of time and it is for those times that residents themselves should be prepared. On the village website, there is a link to the American Red Cross, where residents can find specifics on emergency preparedness — how to set up a family emergency kit, disaster response plan and an evacuation "go bag."

The village is still looking into using the Recreation Center on N. Oceanside Road as a potential shelter for residents during an emergency. The building would have to be equipped with a generator. According to Rockville Centre spokesman Jeff Kluewer, trustees and village administrators will soon meet to decide on how much to allocate for the generator. As it is a large building, the logistics of arranging for a back up generator may be difficult, and as a result, it may not happen until after Sept. 1.

Village administrators also acknowledge the need for improved communication with residents during power outages, and are still working on that as well. "Village staff will meet with Verizon representatives to investigate the best methods of improving power plant communications," stated an emergency management assessment on the village website. A long range goal, it added, is to better the phone system at the power plant which currently has only one phone line, or to establish an emergency call center elsewhere in the village.

All Rockville Centre department managers will complete National Incident Management System training and obtain certification by Sept. 1. NIMS was developed after the 9/11 attacks and sets up standardized procedures for managing personnel, communications, facilities and resources. This plan, contained within the village's emergency management assessment, will "prepare the village and individual households to deal with a widespread power outage of five to seven days."

Following the NIMS system, Rockville Centre administrators will remain in close contact with Nassau County’s Office of Emergency Management and monitor weather conditions. If a crisis were to take place, the first step would be to open an Emergency Operations Center in the Mayor's office in Village Hall.

"The NIMS training is proceeding," said Kluewer. "[Our] police and fire departments are fully compliant; some others have finished the courses already. All the managers and their deputies have a Sept. 1 deadline to earn their certification (which is done online through FEMA)."

But to obtain the most effective and streamlined community response in the face of an emergency, "residents must be aware that preparedness is a shared responsibility," said the emergency assessment document. Village Administrator Frank Quigley encouraged residents in April to visit the village's website and register their mobile phones for its reverse 911 directory, which sends out robo calls with specific updates on the emergency.

"There's only so much that the Village of Rockville Centre can do to restore power if it's out," Quigley said in April. "We have to do an improved job of informing and educating our residents to what their part is in an emergency."