Politics & Government

Officials: Lessons Learned from October Snowstorm

Hellertown officials say the blackout caused by the Oct. 29 snowstorm revealed the need for a heated shelter and an efficient emergency notification system for residents.

Before the , Hellertown officials and local emergency responders felt prepared for just about any type of weather Mother Nature might throw at them. That all changed, however, in the aftermath of a destructive natural event that seemingly no one saw coming.

At Hellertown Borough Council's Nov. 21 meeting, officials discussed the various lessons that were learned from the storm, which resulted in .

One of the major realizations for emergency officials, council vice president John Bate said, was that elderly and infirm borough residents need a heated place to go to in the event of a widespread, long-term power outage.

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Particularly vulnerable during the October snowstorm were the elderly residents of the Front Street Apartments, which lacked generators and lost its interior emergency lighting after six hours.

Hellertown's emergency management coordinator, Chris Sherer, explained that the four-story building is not required by the county to have a generator, since it is considered to be a regular apartment building.

Find out what's happening in Hellertown-Lower Sauconwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"The county gave us no help really, and it's not their fault," added Bate. "What the county was telling us was, 'The roads are clear. People can get in their cars and drive.'"

In other parts of the county several "warming centers" did open, but most of them were restricted to residents of the municipalities in which they were located, Sherer noted.

Consequently, many local residents with cars left the Saucon Valley to stay with friends and relatives, or in hotels located outside the blackout zone, which encompassed most of the southern half of Northampton County.

Another critical issue emergency responders had to deal with in the wake of the storm was an inability to communicate with residents via phone or other means, Bate said, adding that local phone lines were "paralyzed."

As the head of Dewey EMS, he said his first priority during the blackout was to locate residents with serious medical problems, in order to transport them to facilities that had power and heat.

In many cases this had to be done by going door-to-door, and in a borough whose population includes a large percentage of senior citizens--many with medical concerns--the bigger issue quickly became where to take them, he explained.

"I didn't have anywhere to put these people with needs, and a lot of them needed oxygen," he said.

Fortunately, Bate said, a borough nursing home had power and heat thanks to the installation of emergency generators, and its owners offered to temporarily house residents whose fragile health hung in the balance.

"I can't say enough for 1050 Main Street, ," Bate told council. "Saucon Valley Manor opened their doors to all those individuals at no cost.... I think everyone in the community needs to know what (they) did and how they stepped up to the plate with this event."

In the future, Sherer said, officials hope to avoid some of the issues he and Bate highlighted by upgrading the facilities at both and .

Dewey did have limited electricity during the blackout, but its current generator is insufficient to power the building's heating system, which prevented it from being a full-scale shelter.

The Saucon Valley Partnership--which is a council of governments representing the borough, and the --is also pursuing the creation of a "one-call" alert system similar to the school district's current news alert notification system, Bate said.

This alert system could be customized by individual residents, who would be able to receive timely alerts via phone call, email or text.

"That's something that the partnership is looking at and it's going to get pretty active in moving (the idea) forward," Bate said.

Until that system is functional, local residents can sign up for emergency alerts via Northampton County's and the state's notification systems, Borough Manager Cathy Kichline said.

Links to the websites for the emergency alert systems are currently posted on the Borough of Hellertown website under "Borough News."


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