A Lesson Learned: Bedford One Year After Hurricane Irene

BEDFORD, N.Y. – If Bedford officials learned anything from last year's Hurricane Irene, Public Works Commissioner Kevin Winn said it would be that communication should be at the top of the list when preparing for a natural disaster.

Winn said steps are being taken around the county to improve communication, an important aspect of disaster management.

After power outages that lasted for days during August’s Hurricane Irene, which blew into Westchester a year ago Tuesday, and October’s unexpected blizzard, Winn said, a group of local supervisors held talks with major utility companies NYSEG and Con Edison, both of which have customers in Bedford, to discuss improving response times and coordination between agencies.

Winn said that over the summer, Con Edison rolled out a liaison program that assigns four representatives to each municipality. These individuals will become familiar with the town’s electrical grid and infrastructure, and work with village officials on site when there is a major outage.

Winn said the town has a formal kickoff meeting with Con Edison in September to discuss the new program.

Winn listed factors that often cause delays during the restoration process: utility companies first need to clear the lines and turn off power before tree clearers from the Department of Public Works can free wires. Only after that can utilities begin to repair wires and transformers.

And complications can arise. “It may be that electricity has several phases,” he said. “Maybe the line feeding your house is down, but there’s another line next to it that’s still charged, and obviously live power can be deadly.”

So while delays from power outages and road closures are inevitable, to avoid a longer delay than necessary, better communication between agencies is indeed key, he said.

Luckily, Winn said, aside from outages and downed power lines, with both Irene and last October’s snowstorm, “we didn’t really have a lot of significant road washouts or infrastructure type issues.”

Lounsbery Road was the only town roadway that was washed out during Irene, when a pipe failed and left water 15 feet deep, but this was quickly repaired, he said.

While the highway department took some money from its fund balance to deal with Irene’s damage, Winn said the town will receive all FEMA reimbursements by the beginning of next year once all associated projects are finished. One such ongoing project is processing storm debris at the Beaver Dam compost facility.

The storm in October, however, was not a FEMA-qualifying event, so the town will not be reimbursed for that. “Irene was bad,” Winn said, “but the October snowstorm was worse.”

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