At around 10 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 26, key people from emergency management for the city of Bayonne met in the office of Mayor Mark Smith to prepare an action plan to deal with an unexpectedly severe snowstorm making its way up the East Coast.
“The mayor wanted us there to discuss what we were going to do when the snow hit,” said Councilman Joseph Hurley last week.
“We knew it was going to be bad, we just didn’t know how bad,” said Public Safety Director Jason O’Donnell. “As it turned out, it was the third largest snowfall in Bayonne’s history.”
“Abandoned cars represented the most frequent obstacle to snow plowing operations.” — Keith Weaver
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“Most of the people were understanding,” said Business Administrator Steve Gallo. “They knew we were doing the best we could.”
If a call came in on the hotline, it was very likely Mayor Smith was the person who answered it, and if there was a problem, O’Donnell said, someone was sent to the scene to deal with it.
Constable John Youngclaus, whose normal duties involve delivering legal notices, was sent out to look for problem areas and report back.
Smith said the city activated its Emergency Management Command Center on Sunday evening at 5 p.m. as the storm began.
Stuck cars
As the snowfall intensified Sunday night, cars became stuck on several streets, which made it impossible to plow. Payloaders had to dig to the abandoned vehicles, and two trucks had to relocate them in order to plow the street.
“Abandoned cars represented the most frequent obstacle to snow plowing operations,” said OEM Chief Keith Weaver.
“We had about 40 abandoned cars at one point,” O’Donnell said. “It is nearly impossible to plow a street if there is an abandoned vehicle on it. So that created a number of delays.”
To handle a fire call or a medical call, Mickey McCabe, founder of McCabe Ambulance, said, the city sent a plow with a fire truck and ambulance to clear the street.
The Office of Emergency Management Command Center served as the staging point for the city’s combined snowplowing operations. Calls for service were triaged and assigned to crews to address. The office remained open throughout the storm.
“We worked with others to make sure that shelter was available at the schools if power was to fail in someone’s home or senior citizens needed a place to go,” Gallo said. “The city coordinated its efforts to make sure the Meals On Wheels vehicle was able to get through to shut in seniors who relied on these meals.”
Keeping the street passable
“Given the magnitude of the storm and the prevailing blizzard conditions, the staff did a good job keeping the main thoroughfares open and passable during the storm,” Smith said.
The strategy was to get all the streets passable as soon as possible, while still making certain that the city could respond to emergencies such as fire or medical. McCabe’s deployed their new, six-wheel ASAP Emergency Response Vehicle, which is capable of responding to medical emergencies in any condition. This golf-cart sized vehicle is a complete mobile medical unit with balloon tires that allows it to go off-road in other emergencies.
“We would set up on a cleared street, then send the vehicle to the house, get the patient out to the cleared street and back to the hospital,” McCabe said.
O’Donnell said the streets around the hospital were kept clear throughout the storm.
“We handled a number of emergency medical calls and several fire calls, but we had no tragedies,” he said.
The battle to get to all the city’s streets went on all night, with Mayor Smith, O’Donnell, Weaver, and others keeping vigil at City Hall.
“I think we did a good job getting most of the streets at least partially clear,” O’Donnell said. “Some took longer, but we made them passable. That’s all I can ask for in a storm like this. By midnight on Monday, all streets were passable.”
People stranded on Route 440 were rescued
In the middle of the storm, the Fire Department got an alarm from the still un-opened Longhorn Steak House in the new Bayonne Crossing mall.
“This turned out to be a false alarm,” O’Donnell said. “But while we were there, our people noticed that there were cars stranded on Route 440 – and a further investigation showed there were people in them.”
The road had become impassable when a bus from New York became snowbound. City workers had to trudge trough deep drifts to reach these cars and get the people out, bringing them to the where emergency vehicles were waiting.
“The state DOT abandoned us,” said Gallo. “The state didn’t plow the highway and so those people got stranded.”
McCabe said one car contained a family from Maryland.
O’Donnell said another family was from Nigeria, trying to get to the airport so that they could attend a funeral in their own country.
“Our people had to drudge in more than 1,500 feet of snow in some cases, going from car to car,” he said. “We set up a staging area on 30th Street – which we plowed in order to keep the way open to the hospital – and we got the people out. Usually, we take people to the schools, but we decided to take them to City Hall, which was nearby and available. We gave them food and coffee and blankets. The few that lived in Bayonne, we got them home. The rest we kept about 10 hours. We used city equipment to reach their vehicles and plow them out.”
A combined effort
Calling it the “St. Stephen’s Day Snowstorm,” Mayor Smith said that employees from various city agencies responded.
Smith said Acting Governor Stephen Sweeney declared a state of emergency caused by the blizzard conditions that left snow drifts of 5 feet and higher around town.
Employees of the city’s Department of Public Works were supplemented by staff from other groups, including the police and fire departments, the Municipal Utilities Authority, and the Board of Education – all overseen by the Bayonne OEM.
The city deployed 12 snowplows and six salt spreaders, in addition to several backhoes, pay loaders, and dump trucks. Crews began running staggered shifts starting around noon on Sunday and continued for several days.
The city is applying for reimbursement of storm related costs from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, Smith said.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.