Jack Burns sat at his desk last week in the Secaucus-based office of the Hudson County Office of Emergency Management (OEM). He was showing off a map of Northern New Jersey, part of an uncompleted draft of an evacuation plan created by Rutgers University.
Burns then asked a reporter, “Supposed you had a hurricane here, and three days before it struck I told you that you had to go, would you go?
The answer offered was “Yes.”
Burns countered, “Good, you would be one of the few.”
Burns continued, “It’s difficult to evacuate this county, whether it’s nine o’clock in the morning or five o’clock at night, [with] the infrastructure we have, and we can’t build any new roads. And then you have to look at evacuating people who may have a more difficult time getting out such as senior citizens, people with disabilities, people not proficient in English, people without vehicles, and so on.”
Also, Burns, as the county’s OEM coordinator, cannot worry only about this county of 12 municipalities (with its 600,000 people), but the projected millions coming across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
Evacuation is not simply issuing emergency alerts to the masses and finding the best modes and roads of transportation.
For Burns and his office of four full-time and two part-time employees, it is planning and meeting, and more planning and meeting.Reasons for concern
Burns pointed out on the one of the maps in his office that Hudson County is in a “100 flood plain,” which means that in the past 100 years, the county has been an area that floods on a consistent basis and susceptible to flooding.
A major hurricane has not hit New Jersey directly since 1903, but the thought of hurricanes is on Burns’ mind not only because this is hurricane season, but also it is month away from the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans.
“We would suffer from the largest surges if there is a hurricane,” Burns said.
Officials have estimated that a direct hit to could put parts of the county under two stories of water.
Then there is the specter of 9/11, which saw mass evacuations from Manhattan to Jersey City, Hoboken and Weehawken by ferry as a result of a massive terrorist attack.
According to Burns, the think-tank Rand Corporation found in a recent study that 62 percent of New York City-Northern New Jersey is at high risk for a terrorist attack. One part of a larger puzzle
How does one evacuate Hudson County?
Burns said the direction to leave will be westward going toward Pennsylvania.
But as he put it, “What we really need are plans, and evacuation is a big project that needs to be looked at.”
Various municipalities have promised plans over the years, but some have still not been executed.
In other cases, cities like North Bergen have instituted “reverse 911” systems to phone residents in an emergency.
Burns said that a three- to four-year study is currently being designed by the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick to look at evacuation from major urban areas such as Jersey City, Newark, and seven surrounding counties.
It studies various aspects of evacuation, including the best means to evacuate and cooperation among governmental bodies from local up to federal level.
Burns said there will be phone call surveys will be coming in the future pertaining to this study.
The Hudson County OEM has also worked with the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken to create maps showing the various evacuation routes out the county.
Burns meets each Wednesday with the New York City Office of Emergency Management and has quarterly meetings with the OEMs in all of the Hudson County municipalities.
When they meet, they discuss every detail of how to organize an evacuation, from how to properly communicate with the population to making sure they have the proper equipment to conduct the evacuation.
Burns said the county is planning to eventually move the Hudson County Office of Emergency Management from its current location at the old Meadowview Psychiatric Facility to a renovated shipyard warehouse located in Kearny overlooking the Hackensack River.
That new location will allow for one-stop command center to hold all OEM officials under one roof.
It will also hold the various items that have been obtained by the Hudson County OEM such as trucks, generators, and boats. Comments on this story can be sent to rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com