Hurricane Sandy AAR - NYC

[CharlesHarris]

Hurricane Sandy AAR

Activated at 2100 hrs on 29 Oct 2012. Got the call 2145. We had gotten a call earlier in the day for roster notification but no one really believed that we would be going to NYC. Two hour drive to the HQ then to load up we were on the road in the 4 hours that FEMA allows for wheels up. 26 hours later arrived with our 12 vehicle convoy.

It was a safety hazard pushing drivers that long but every one ramped up for the next Katrina. When we hit New York we ran code through the lights with a police escort at about 15 mph which made the rest of traffic look like it was sitting still. It was Halloween and we were driving under the L for many miles. It looked like a down town Panama with all of the foreign named shops side by side for miles. This area had not been affected very much by the storm but it was overpopulated and dirty looking. Picture "gangs of new york" the movie and china town mixed into one.

We linked up with other FEMA assets at the Mets stadium parking lot. We moved into a Maritime University campus housed in a pre-civil war fort. Slept on a working ship that night in these little bunks that were stacked three high. The fort has offices, class rooms and a museum. The old gun ports and slits had windows custom fit in them. The next day we arrived on Long island and started searches. Lets get this straight folks this was not Katrina. The water came in and the water went out.

FEMA barred us from taking pictures but for the most part damage was no worse than any other hurricane but affected more people as far as
electricity loss was concerned. FEMA and local incident commands needed to know if anyone was trapped in their home or needed emergency medical care. So just like Katrina USAR teams started going door to door. Some
times there was a little water but most of the time it was dry. MO1 went to many different locations to search, Long Beach, Staten Island Queens, Oceanside, Lawrence and some others. Lost track of place names. Some nights we stayed at Fort Dix and some nights we would be in a high school gym with many other task forces. Each house had to be logged and marked on the GPS tracks log. 34 miles walked and over 4000 structures searched later we started our two day trek back home. I got back last thursday night.

Points of interest:

After a disaster the world keeps going and if you are essential personnel you have to go to work and need gas for your vehicles. So plan ahead and have at least one tank of stabilized gas in Jerricans stored for your daily driver. We talked to people in miles long gas lines every day. They slept in their cars to be able to get gas. Especially on the islands the number one thing that they asked for was gas. Gas for trash pumps to clear cellars and to run generators. Gas to go get gas. 10 gallons for your vehicle and 10 for your generator is a good rule of thumb. More if you can stock it.

All of your food, fuel and supply stocks must be in water tight containers. Food, water filtration and purification goods, radios,
batteries, cleaning gear, household cleaning supplies BLEACH!, IMPORTANT PAPER WORK, bedding etc. I didn’t have a bucket of cleaning supplies of home before Sandy, but put none up as soon as I got home.

If gas is King then, liquor is prince. Second thing most asked for was booze. Lower class, middle class and upper class all wanted a drink to drown their sorrows.

We searched 10 million dollar and higher priced homes that had Bentleys setting out front that had no backup generators. These people whined the most about not having electricity. If you own a home and have not made the adult decision to buy at least a small $500/4KW portable generator the day you moved in then you get what you deserve. Take responsibility for your own well-being. If you can afford it, a full-panel system with solid state automatic transfer switch, big enough to power everything in your house, including air condition requires about 10KW and costs about $8-10,000 for a full turnkey system including a 500 gallon LPG tank which will run it for a week.

I wore Ribz harness the entire time I was searching. They are a great concept in gear hauling but they are not bombproof, maddening to keep the straps from getting all screwed up when you take them off. Mine are falling apart and the stitching is stressed with the moderate load that I carry. I couldnt zip them up in the front because I carried a radio in a chest harness, so i just let them hang on my sides. If the manufacturer would beef them up it would be a great product, I love the concept.
Surefire Fury is great light. One of the search team managers, my buddy Schollfield runs one. Put my Browning High Noon spot light to shame. Although my High noon was great inside of the multistory high rises that we searched. No power, no windows, in the stairwells and hallways equals no light. We didn't wear helmets unless we were going into critically effected structures. There weren't as many of those as there are in a tornado.

My Blackhawk Stomp ruck was truly kick ass. Easy access and roomier than our issue top loader rucks. Of course you always need bigger. We live out of these until we get somewhere that we can get access to our 5.11 rolling lockers.

Saying you lost everything in a flood and saying you lost everything in a tornado is two different things. Tornados erase buildings. Floods damage the contents for the most part. If your building is intact then you are much better off than most. Have an emergency latrine plan. Make you plan to last past 30 days. The city of Long Beach put out the cleanest Porta-Johns I have ever seen on every street corner. Very very smart on their part.

The people that I saw doing the best were the ones with a small generator, a fire place and a porta-pot from their boat. Their basement flooded but they were pumping it out and living pretty much unencumbered. Have a heat source people other than you furnace. A SAFE heat source. Our actual "saves" of people came from our Hazmat guys running meters for CO in homes with generators. Some places were 150 times higher than they should be. Had people went to sleep in those areas they would have been dead by morning.

We tried for 30 minutes to help get a brand new out of the box generator started. We did everything you can think of to it and then did it backwards again just in case. It never got started. I own the same generator and I have always had problems with it. It has a Briggs engine. I am getting rid of it soon. It is only a backup. My two potable gensets with Yamaha engines kick ass, no problems, knock on wood. The Honda Ei that my neighbor has is super fuel efficient. Keeping the refer going, a light bulb and some cell phones charged is a big deal when you are trapped in your home waiting for the grid of society to fix itself. You can do it with a smile while the rest of the hood huddle around candles.

[Nix]

Good insight, thanks!