The rain kept coming and so did the 911 calls

GREENE COUNTY―The rain kept coming and so did the 911 calls. On July 29, as parts of the region were being inundated with flooding, dispatchers in Greene County took 396 calls between midnight and 3 p.m.

“Only 13 of those were not storm-related,” Greene County Emergency Services Deputy Director Dan King told county legislators during a committee meeting this week.

The Coxsackie Fire Department handled about 70 of those calls and, countywide, firefighters responded to more than 180 pump outs. For the first time ever, the 911 center had all six terminals manned.

“Depending on where you were in the county, we received between six and 11 inches of rain over a 24-hour period,” said King. “The heaviest of which was concentrated in Greenville, New Baltimore, Coxsackie and the northern part of Athens.”

The county’s emergency alert system automatically activated 17 times for flash flood warnings, alerting 6,560 phones and generating 3,290 emails, he noted.

“As on the automatic side, we initiated three separate alerts generating 25,881 calls and 1,481 emails that day,” said King.

Coxsackie was one of the hardest hit parts of the county with Mayor Mark Evans calling it a “rain event never seen before in Coxsackie.” The Village’s boil water advisory was lifted on Thursday afternoon, more than a week after it was implemented.

“From our cache of supplies, the emergency management office deployed two of its portable pumps that we maintain to Coxsackie to assist the fire department in their pump outs,” King said. “We also sent 30 sandbags.”

In addition to first responders who were running back-to-back calls, highway crews worked throughout the storm to quickly close off flooded roadways.

“Whether it was state, county, towns, village, they were all great,” said King.

The storm was also the first time the Greene-Columbia COAD (Community Organizations Active in Disaster) was activated, King noted.

It is a cooperative network coordinating local non-profit, faith-based, and community groups to support emergency planning, disaster response, and recovery across Greene and Columbia counties.

“Through the COAD we have also tasked Team Rubicon, who is another partner,” King explained, referring to the veteran-led humanitarian organization that serves global communities before, during, and after disasters and crises.

In Greene County, Team Rubicon will be mobilizing muck-out assistance, King said.

“It will likely occur next week and the planning on that is still ongoing,” he added.

“The American Red Cross was tasked with opening two evacuation shelters, one in Hunter and one in Greenville,” King said. “They transitioned to assisting with water distribution and are now leading the recovery assistance program.”

On Friday, August 7, the American Red Cross will be at Coxsackie Village Hall on Mansion Street from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. along with multiple other local agencies to help flood victims by providing recovery planning support, casework, clean-up kits, bottled water and information on other available resources.

As for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) support, it is improbable that Greene County will be declared a disaster area.

“We received initial damage assessments from eight of the jurisdictions totaling a little over $500,000 in damages in the county―mostly culvert repair and replacement and road shoulder erosion repairs,” explained King.

When determining disaster assistance, FEMA divides the estimated eligible damage cost within a specific county by that county’s population, then compares the resulting per capita dollar figure against an annually adjusted benchmark set by the federal government. For Greene County, it means damages must total at least $230,000. But in addition, statewide damages must meet a certain threshold; in New York it is about $38 million.

“While we crossed the county threshold for federal declaration, the required statewide total was out of reach,” said King.