Front seat view of the storm that knocked out power for three-quarters of the town’s 6500 households

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March 5, 2010
by Gennaro Faiella, as told to Christine Yeres

Editor’s note: In order to give the community a complete picture of this past weekend’s storm, its impact on New Castle and the official responses to it, NewCastleNOW.org asked Town Administrator Gennaro Faiella to share his “storm story” with our readers.

Anthony [Vaccaro, Commissioner of Public Works] called me at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday night to tell me of the damage they were experiencing here in town.  I [came from my home in Ossining and] met him at town hall and Chappaqua Fire Department Chief Russell Maitland and Millwood Fire Department Chief Joe Rod came in.  We discussed some strategies with New Castle Police Lt. Dan Cannon, recognizing what roads were already blocked – 117, 120 at Roaring Brook School, Hardscrabble Road. All the DPW crew had been called in, some 20-odd people, plus some from the parks department, one or two from the water department. 

Con Ed had outages already.  I called Con Ed to find out if they had assigned crews yet to the locations they knew had been knocked out.  Con Ed told me they were inundated with calls and wouldn’t have anyone available for hours. I left a message for Sandy Miller, chief Con Ed liaison for government affairs.  When she called me back, I told her what the situation was, that the town was split.  Because of road closures Chappaqua Fire couldn’t get to Millwood; Millwood wouldn’t be able to get to Chappaqua, and that everybody was on standby.  New Castle police knew that if anything happened in the West End, they’d have to call on Ossining Ambulance.

11:00 p.m. Thursday, February 25

Anthony and I went out to see 120. He was in a truck and I had borrowed a 4-wheel drive vehicle.  We Nexteled each other along the way.  We got as far as the Duck Pond and everything stopped.  A New York State Department of Corrections van with four correction officers from the City was stopped too. They’d been going up the Saw Mill when it was closed.  A resident who’d been heading toward town had let one of the corrections officers use his phone, and waited for him to finish, then went on his way. 

12:00 a.m. Friday, February 26

There was a county cop by the entrance to the parkway at Hunts Lane, blocking the entry ramp, redirecting traffic from the Saw Mill over to 120 and north. But when drivers got as far as Roaring Brook School, they couldn’t go any further.  We sent a few of them south on the parkway.  My daughter had come out with me.  I took her home around 1:00 a.m. and met Anthony at Rocky’s. Then we went back to town hall and learned that Con Ed was dispatching crews.  We went back over to DPW, checked with the police desk, and spent the night checking roads in town, watching the weather reports, checking with the police to see if there were other issues.

Chappaqua Fire had a call around 2:30 a.m. to Mill River Road, and had seven or eight people sleeping up at the firehouse, a family with children whose roof had been damaged by a falling tree, plus the five corrections officers.  I told Russell Maitland we’d get CERT down here and open up the community center.  We dragged the CERT emergency trailer [from behind town hall], out of the snow and over to the community center, opened up the center, turned the heat up and called Michael Butowsky and Jim McCauley.  [Doctor] Stuart Beeber was down there too by 5:00 a.m. Jim McCauley had a Durango and could go pick people up who needed transport.

I stayed at the community center until around 10:00 a.m., then I had to go home.  I’d had a tree fall in my driveway.  I cut it up with a chainsaw and came back to town at 2:00 p.m. By then, Con Ed had a liaison here and crews were coming. By late Friday afternoon, 4400 households were without power [Con Ed’s estimate of the total number of households in New Castle is 6556].  Anthony went to Penny Paderewski’s house to pick her up and brought her back to DPW where she stayed to handle the phones.  I went home and returned around 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning.

Saturday, February 27 

On Saturday, we had a different Con Ed liaison, and on Saturday afternoon [Town Supervisor] Barbara Gerrard was at town hall. Con Ed had told us they were dispatching crews at 1:00 a.m. the night before, and now they were telling Barbara that they’d send 20 crews on Saturday night.  All this time DPW crews just kept plowing and plowing the snow from the roadways. 

By Saturday afternoon, most people recognized what had happened all over town.  Anthony and I were still cutting back brush and branches and people stopped and rolled down their windows to say, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know how bad it was!”  We took trees out of Route 128, Pinesbridge, even the state roads.  We couldn’t wait.  We took chainsaws to Bedford Road, Route 120 out by Grafflin. For the big stuff we called the front-end loader with a claw bucket.  Portions of Seven Bridges still had hangers that were tangled in wires.  Con Ed takes anything having to do with wires. 

Across from the Wagon Road Camp entrance a phone cable came down, a two-inch diameter cable with thousands of tiny colored wires like little strands of spaghetti sticking out of it and we saw a Verizon guy holding it, looking hopeless.

One night Richie Lange [of Lange’s Little Store] sent down dinner to the guys at DPW, soup, sandwiches, desserts. The next night, the town board bought dinner for the DPW crews from Lange’s.  Some of the guys were talking about how spooky it was, driving down the roads hearing cracking trees and smashing sounds when large clumps of snow let loose, expecting a leader to come down through the cab.  You just don’t know what might happen. As John Hearn said, “If it was just the trees or just the snow, but it was everything.”

Sunday, February 28

At 8:00 a.m. Sunday I started driving around again.  In the West End I saw Con Ed crews at Grace Lane and Inningwood, the Saw Mill, Hardscrabble and by Lange’s Little Store. By now we were doing clean up, cutting back brush, opening roads as far as we could.  Sunday the guys worked till 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. Back at my house, another tree had fallen, blocking my front door. I had to cut the tree to free the door.

On Sunday morning Barbara Gerrard and I talked to David Fleishman and Jeff Mester about school conditions.  We thought that because there were still a lot of tree branches and limbs perched and hanging, and the snow banks from the plowing were relatively high and made the roads narrow and visibility poor, we all thought it would be a good idea to hold off school for a day.

Monday, March 1

Things were fairly well opened by Monday; a lot of people had their power back. [Con Ed’s website reported 690 out of 6556 households were still without power; by Tuesday it was down to 377]. Crews had the good chipper out and working, and a second, back up chipper running, too, along with front-end loaders and roll-off trucks for big tree trunks. 

Looking back: what was key to success, what should be changed

The three police SUV’s were really instrumental in the storm, and we were able to supplement the police with small jeeps from DPW.  Lyle Andersen supplied the website with updates and Nixle alerts.  Lt. Dan Cannon sent Nixle.com alerts from his house.  Although we had met at town hall initially to assess the situation, we didn’t bring our Emergency Operations Center into full swing because really the center of operations moved to DPW [at Hunts Lane].

A lot of things worked in our favor.  Temperatures never got really low. Communications were good with police and fire.  We think we’d like to upgrade some of our mobile radios.  Some of them are 25 years old.  The fire department came out and helped DPW with some of the debris removal. CERT was out.  We had what we needed.  One truck was down during the storm, and we had some windshields broken by tree parts. 

I heard that Club Fit was running low on hot water because everyone was showering there.  People went to the library, charged their phones where they could.  People found their way around in an untenable situation.  We were able to move resources where we had to, and we’ll meet with Con Ed soon and do a critique.