11-9-12 PDX NIMO New York Assignment Winds Down

     Portland NIMO's tenure in Brooklyn, New York is coming to a close as the team finishes its assignment to support the Debris Removal Task Force set up by the  New York City Office Of Emergency Management. The team arrived November 4, 2012 and will complete the assignment November 12^th.

IC Bill Hahneneberg works on objectives.

     While New York City has not "wholeheartedly" embraced ICS,  they have embraced the incident management teams using these familiar tools, understanding It's in an effort to try and bring some structure to the debris removal process.  Some team flexibility was necessary – a willingness to use language familiar to New York emergency responders instead of the ICS nomenclature with which teams are most familiar. But PDX NIMO found a group of very professional, very skilled and very welcoming New Yorkers, willing to accept what the team had to offer.

     NIMO did not have a role working out in the damaged or flooded areas. Our role was very much in support of the Debris Recovery Task Force.  The Task Force was made up of representatives from New York Department of Sanitation, the Office of Emergency Management and NIMO. Our job daily has been to prepare an IAP, called "DCP" for this event, the Daily Coordination Plan.  Not all the normal pages were included but there was a cover, objectives, 202, 203, 215, contact list (very important), emergency plan, and a 214.  NIMO Operations, Safety and Plans concentrated on the DCP while Finance and PIO had other roles.

The daily 1500 briefing in the OEM Command Trailer

     The plan was used during the daily 1500 briefing for everyone from the Navy and Army Corps of Engineers to the NYC Mayor's office and OEM. The PIO and Finance were involved with capturing (very marginally!) all the notes from the meetings as well as building spread sheets to track hundreds of pieces of equipment – who owned it, where it staged, where it moved and where it had to move the next day.  Another significant task was creating a daily report with details of the day's removal efforts and numbers about progress from the previous day's report. The team now knows far more about military equipment capability, heavy equipment names and the sanitation business, than they will ever need!

Debris piles at Riis park, a temporary storage site for storm
 debris. In front is some of the sand washed inland by Sandy.

     The Task Force's primary job was to find, bring in, track and push out hundreds of pieces of heavy equipment to help beleaguered New Yorkers unbury themselves after the storm.  Grapplers, dump trucks, front end loader, roll on-roll offs, large dumpsters, skid steers, backhoes, self-loaders, long haul trucks, railroad cars, barges, were all part of the huge push of heavy equipment thrust onto the streets of New York to try and get all five boroughs clean up. Cars and boats, some moved miles by the storm, are a significant problem due to red tape and rules about entering private property. 


This video was shot by Deputy Task Force Leader David Blitzer, on November 11, 2012 out on the west end of Rockaway, at Breezy Point.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8cb11rl87whgleq/Video%20Nov%2009%2C%201%2032%2026%20PM.mov  

     The debris was not only from homes that were destroyed, along with all their contents, but a large part of recovery was putting the beach back where it started.  Cleaning, sorting, sifting and returning sand that covered portions of Rockaway, Staten Island and many other areas is still underway. As of November 10th, NIMO and the Task Force pushed over 2700 pieces of private and military equipment and 3900 people onto the streets of New York City to help.  It's estimated that over 3,600,000 cubic yards of debris will be the result of Hurricane Sandy and removing it is far from over. NIMO was privileged to play a role in helping get New Yorkers back to normal as soon as possible.