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In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, public meetings in Asbury Park were cancelled for two weeks while the region got back on its feet. On Tuesday night, city officials held an information session at City Hall where they told the public about the efforts made in the aftermath of the storm.

Members of the city government and office of emergency management [OEM] officials discussed emergency procedures and some of the events that transpired in the aftermath of the storm and the snowy nor’easter that blew in a week later.

“This has been an extraordinary 10 days in our history and in our lifetimes,” Mayor Ed Johnson said. “What I was pleased to find during our tours to in the city and during a trip I took on the beach from Allenhurst to Belmar was the sounds of devastation being drownd out by sounds of recovery, sounds of people cleaning up, sounds of life restored to the Jersey Shore community.”

Johnson called the city’s office of emergency management [OEM] efforts “extraordinary,” and also noted the roles of community organizations, the business community, volunteer groups and faith-based organizations in helping recover and boost morale.

Councilwoman Sue Henderson attended the OEM meetings that took place every day at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., and watched the emergency management team in action. She was “extremely impressed with the firefighters, police and department of public works,” she said.

She also saw the community come together in the aftermath of the Oct. 29 storm.

“There weren’t any sides,” she said. “There was only the whole of Asbury Park working together with all different agencies.”

POLICE ACTIVITY

From Monday, Oct. 29, through Monday, Nov. 5 — the day of the storm and the following week — the police department scheduled 49 additional officers to be on duty, Police Chief Mark Kinmon said. In total, they worked 1,660 hours of overtime, he said. Also, 19 special officers contributed an additional 550 hours to the city that week, and the Citizens on Patrol volunteer unit assisted the department with maintaining high visibility throughout the week.

That week, the police responded to 771 calls for service, Kinmon said.

“We’re very happy to report very few [calls] were serious in nature,” he said. “We had zero robberies, zero aggravated assaults, zero shooting incidents.”

Fourteen burglaries were reported, and the police made an arrest in one of those incidents, Kinmon said.

The majority of the department’s time was spent enforcing the curfew, Kinmon said, as well as assisting on the beach front and restricting access to dangerous areas and assisting with evacuations. The department strove to have high visibility and “let me people know we were out there,” Kinmon said. “We had plain-clothes walking officers and uniformed walking officers.”

The department was able to tell outside agencies that the city was handling the storm well and would not need reinforcement, Kinmon said.

“That was very pleasing not just for me but for everybody else,” Kinmon said. “They could focus their attention to other places that were much more in need.”

Equipment damage due to the storm was minimal, Kinmon said. Some police cars were damaged. Some had flat tires, and miscellaneous signs were lost.

LIFTING THE CURFEW

City officials decided to lift the curfew on Saturday night, five days after the storm, even though much of the city was still without power. Some in the community were concerned about the decision, Reidy said.

Kinmon recommended the curfew be lifted because much of the city — including the central business district — had power, so many people would likely be out on the streets.

“The amount of energy the police would have had to expend keeping people off the street after they’d been locked up in homes was a judicious decision to maximize the use of our people in areas without power,” Reidy said. “Once people knew the reasoning behind it, they were much more comfortable. I think it shows the maturity and wisdom of the police chief.”

HOW OEM WORKS

Most municipalities have an OEM, which is divided into 15 annexes like fire, police and first aid, city manager Terence Reidy said. Reidy is the head of OEM while fire and EMS [emergency medical services] chief Kevin Keddy is second in command.

Modern OEM was established in New Jersey in 1989 by the Emergency Management Act, Keddy said. “It makes it possible to coordinate resources, manpower, equipment, financial assistance and it flows from federal to state to county government to events at the local level.”

The state established guidelines for municipalities to follow during emergency operations. The annexes are assigned to city officials who best fit the required duties, Keddy said. For example, the law enforcement annex is handled by the police department. Keddy handles the fire and EMS annexes. The department of public works [DPW] handled tree removal and city engineers handled damage assessment. Tom Gilmour, director of special events for the city, was head of the communications annex.

The group started meeting on Oct. 27, Keddy said, and met twice a day until Saturday, Nov. 10.

“We got to know each other really well and as we had more and more meetings and brought more and more people into the fold, we had the room filled up with 25 to 30 people,” Keddy said. “It was pretty impressive. I’ve been around here a long time and I’ve seen people I never would have expected to work together working together like a well-oiled machine.”

Keddy’s department responded to 409 fire and EMS incidents from Oct. 29 to Nov. 8. Usually, 409 would be a low monthly total, he said. They responded to calls for damaged buildings, downed wires, gas and burning odors, and elevator issues.

FIRE AT ASBURY TOWER

On Nov. 6, a two-alarm fire erupted in the basement of Asbury Tower due to electricity issues. The fire was small, but the fire department could not take action to fight it until the equipment was de-energized by Jersey Central Power and Light [JCP&L], Keddy said. After the utility company arrived on the scene, the fire was quickly extinguished.

The fire department received help from police officers, state troopers and National Guardsmen in evacuating about 100 seniors to houses of friends and family, as well as Arthur Brisbane and Monmouth Park shelters. Many of the building’s inhabitants had already evacuated.

It could take three to four weeks for the building’s electricity to be fully repaired and for the complex to be habitable again, Keddy said.

When transporting residents to a county shelter, Reidy learned that Monmouth University could not receive any more people.

“It was one of those tense moments,” he said. “But our fire chief, Red Cross representative and [social services director] Tony Nuccio really put on a full court press and was able to get a shelter for our seniors.”

ISSUES AT THE WASTE WATER TREATMENT PLANT

The backup generator in the city’s sewage treatment plant on Ocean Avenue failed after running for seven days, Keddy said. Officials notified residents and news outlets that water should not be used so as to avoid overloading the plant while it was out of power.

OEM officials weighed their options and decided if an emergency occurred, they would redirect wastewater to Wesley Lake, which would pump the water directly into the ocean because this option was “the lesser of all evils,” Keddy said.

But power was restored to the plant before an emergency situation could develop, so redirection was not necessary, Keddy said.

The issue was caused by a clogged fuel filter in the plant’s generator, city engineer Joe Cunha said. The generator had been running for seven days and consumer 6,000 gallons of diesel. The generator is tested once a week for an hour.

“Something like this could not have been foreseen,” Cunha said. “Everything was new.”

POWER AT THE FIRE DEPARTMENT

The firehouse was one of the only buildings in town with a generator, so it quickly became a charging station where residents plugged power strips into outlets on the exterior wall on Main Street, Keddy said.

“There was always a person to take charge and it was very self-policed,” he said.

The firehouse also turned into a distribution hub for people who wanted to donate things like water, food and clothes.

RESIDENTS WITH DOCTORS’ APPOINTMENTS

Keddy knew from his experience with the Blizzard of 2010 that many dialysis patients would still need to see their doctors despite the weather conditions. Emergency workers were able to transport 31 residents to their dialysis appointments and back in the days following the storm. One community response team showed up at people’s homes at 4 a.m. to get them to their 5:30 a.m. appointments, he said.

HUMAN SERVICES DURING THE STORM

Social services director Tony Nuccio was considered by many to be critical in storm recovery. He was not able to attend the meeting, but Reidy read a statement from him to those present.

Nuccio was charged with three areas of storm relief — evacuation; shelter reception and care; and social services and public health intervention. His department assisted in the initial evacuation of Asbury Tower and Philips Seaview Tower, as well as housing authority properties, special needs facilities and private dwelling places.

City employees and volunteers went door-to-door in some facilities, Reidy said. Those who were evacuating to county shelters were directed to Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, where they were processed. Most were taken to the Monmouth University and Arthur Brisbane shelters.

During the operation of the reception center, food, transportation, social service intervention and emergency respite was provided to 371 individuals. Overnight shelter at Thurgood Marshall was provided to 38 individuals who refused to go to the state-operated shelters at Monmouth University and Arthur Brisbane, Nuccio’s report said.

Nuccio oversaw the establishment of distribution centers at the Salvation Army and Jersey Shore Rescue Mission. Rev. Kevin Nunn and Minister John Mohammed helped extensively with perishable food distribution.

The city’s senior center was used as a hub for community-wide lunch and hot meal programs — with about 700 meals served per day — coordinated with Interfaith Neighbors. This included a taping of the Wendy Wililams show with free hot meals for 300 people.

The social services department coordinated outreach efforts from other organizations, including a Mennonite group from Pennsylvania that drove a 20-foot trailer across state lines with an abundance of donations, Reidy said.

ELECTRICAL AND CONSTRUCTION WORK

George Selah, construction official and electircal subcode official, oversaw tree removal and was a liaison to JCP&L crews, directing them to wherever he saw problems, he said.

“People had questions like, ‘Why did my neighbor have power and I didn’t?’ It’s the infrastructure,” Selah said. “It’s build in different segments.”

JCP&L left about 10 percent of the city without power after a week and a half, so Selah and others distributed pamphlets telling them who they should cal to have their power restored. As of Tuesday, eight customers were reportedly still without power.

“We kept calling [JCP&L] and whenever I saw a Jersey Central or Brute Force from Michigan truck, I sent them to wherever they needed to be,” he said.

After Selah finished his statement, Reidy said the official had “great, great competence in terms of electricity and how this whole system works … One of the key actions George took was to really figure out why this building, why this neighborhood, why this area wasn’t getting power and then grab these guys and explain to them.”

By demonstrating competency with electricity systems, Selah was able to earn the respect of all the utility workers, Reidy said.

COMMUNICATION THROUGHOUT THE STORM

Tom Gilmour, special events director, oversaw the OEM communications annex.

“I thought we ironed out a lot of the things we did not do so well during Irene, and we were well prepared for the storm,” he said. “But the storm presented a lot of challenges we hadn’t even thought about, one of which was the prolonged time without power.”

AT&T’s cell service was out for several days due to a fire in a transmission station in Hazlet, Gilmour said. Although many workers did not have cell service, they were able to update the website every day – but people without power may not have been able to see the website.

“I was adopted by the fire department. That was one of the few places where we had Internet service in the city,” Gilmour said. “We didn’t have power in City Hall and our server was down, so we will be prepared for that next time — we’ll make sure our server is hooked up to our generator here so we can get around that issue.”

The LED electric sign in Sunset Park had its power restored relatively soon after the storm — but the software to program the sign was on a computer in City Hall.

“In the future, we’ll order more software to put on a laptop,” Gilmour said.

The city is also looking at ways to enhance the Code Red reverse 9-1-1 system.

Jackie Pappas of the Chamber of Commerce “was a godsend,” Gilmour said. “Jackie took it upon herself to make sure the business community was in tune.”

ENGINEERING AND DPW

Principal engineering aide Bob Bianchini reviewed the city’s efforts to remove leaves and brush prior to the storm. Workers collected leaves as quickly as possible to mitigate localized flooding. They also added streetsweeping shifts over the weekend to try and pick up extra leaves.

Storm preparation started Oct. 25 for the engineering and department of public works [DPW] crews. Workers secured barricades, temporary signs, cones and trashcans throughout the city to keep them from becoming projectiles in the storm’s high winds.

City vehicles went through 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 8,000 gallons of gasoline in the after math of the storm, and were able to fuel up using city-owned facilities without waiting in the huge lines in the days following the storm.

They also purchased a chainsaw and some motors in anticipation of a lack of availability after the storm.

Lakes were all lowered to their minimum levels before the storm, starting three days in advance, Bianchini said. Sunset Lake was so low, workers received complaints it might dry up, he said. Gates in the lakes were closed at high tide to prevent the ocean from flowing back into the lakes.

Workers removed the temporary LED lights on the boardwalk and topped off standby generators before the storm hit, Bianchini said. They also relocated the boats and other equipment from behind the casino, and the beach lockers. They also moved all the boardwalk benches and laid them on a lot on the other side of the boardwalk, he said.

After the storm, workers reported downed trees and downed light poles to JCP&L as soon as they found them, city engineer Joe Cunha said. They also had removed some trees before the storm because they seemed loose.

Library Square Park saw “over half a dozen downed trees,” Cunha said. “Luckily, they were dead anyway and were scheduled for removal..”

The foot bridge on Bond Street on Sunset Lake was damaged and is closed temporarily until crews can assess it.

Most city-owned buildings escaped unscathed, although the firehouse had some roof damage.

The day after the storm, Burke Construction mobilized for sand removal and was still working on Tuesday, Cunha said.

A SNOWY NOR’EASTER

Starting Nov. 7 and into Nov. 8, the city received several inches of snow despite forecasts calling for heavy rain and little to now snow. The DPW kept staff on the job later than normal. The standard procedure is to start plowing when one to two inches accumulate, but it did not appear on Wednesday night that plowing would be necessary, Cunha said. Instead, crews spread 40 to 50 tons of salt in two trucks, being careful to watch out for compromised power lines.

They worked until 9:30 or 10 p.m. the night the snowfall started. They began again the next morning.

COMMENTS FROM RESIDENTS

Officials opened the meeting to public comment after they were done speaking, and Tod Bergman and Duanne Small came to the microphone to talk.

Bergman, of Fourth Avenue, said his dog got loose in the middle of the storm because a gate broke. He called 9-1-1 and five minutes later, “really nice police officers were at my door, taking my report and calming me down.”

At 1 a.m., Bergman received a call from Nuccio at Thurgood Marshall.

“He said, ‘We have Max, he showed up at the Thurgood Marshall school,'” Bergman said. “The way they handled this tells me they were sufficiently organized, not running around handling 30 crises all at once.”

Small thanked city officials as well. He was working at the beach front after the storm and said Madison Marquette gave him and other workers coffee and donuts, and Debbie DeLisa of the Wonder Bar also gave them food.

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