As Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolinas, Bob Hough, Princeton’s director of infrastructure and operations, said he can relate “big time” to what clean-up crews will have to go through.
Six years ago, Superstorm Sandy swept through Princeton, leaving behind a trail of downed trees and power lines and was blamed for one fatality. Thousands of residents were without power for days.
In a phone interview on Sept. 12, Hough said he has had to deal with “too many” serious weather events. The list runs the gamut from Irene to Sandy to snow storms, such that town officials have grown accustomed to responding to them.
“These big storms are, unfortunately, a more frequent occurrence than they used to be,” Mayor Liz Lempert said on Sept. 12. “They’re horrible.”
Florence has been listed as a Category 4 hurricane, which brings wind speeds of 130 mph and higher.
Lempert said that for municipal governments responding to a storm like Florence, the main goal is ensuring that “residents are able to get through the storm safely.”
“A big piece of it is communication ahead of time and making sure you’re doing everything you can to get people to heed the warnings to evacuate,” she said.
Another piece is to have crews on hand to respond once the storm is over, Lempert said.
“While it’s happening, there’s not much you can do, because it’s unsafe to be out,” she said. “So you try to do as much as you can before the storm hits and then come in as quickly as you can afterward to address problems and help with cleanup and help get things back up to normal as best you can.”
“We had Sandy, but we’ve had some other bad storms,” Hough said. “We’ve had some bad events.”
For one Princeton official, Florence is hitting close to home. Councilman Lance Liverman has family living in the coastal sections of North Carolina, in an area of the state due to be hit by the hurricane.
“I’m prayerful they’ll ride this out,” he said on Sept. 12. “I just don’t know what the aftermath (will be).”
He said he was in touch with a cousin who works at a Ramada hotel in the Outer Banks, where people are staying rather than leaving the area.
“I think it’s going to be worse than people think it’s going to be,” Liverman said of the hurricane.
In terms of any impact Florence has on New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy this week urged residents “to prepare and take precautions.”
“Our first concern is public safety and we will continue to monitor the storm and make preparations to ensure all residents are safe and secure,” Murphy said.
Weather-wise for New Jersey, “the forecast is still a little uncertain as to where Florence will go once it moves inland and weakens,” said Alex Staarmann, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, Mount Holly. “But we may end up seeing some impacts either late in the weekend or early next week, primarily in the form of just heavy rainfall from its remnants.”
New Jersey has sent first responders to the Carolinas to aid in search and recovery from the storm.
In South Carolina, a state of emergency has been declared and mandatory evacuations have been ordered for coastal counties.
Evacuations have been ordered for parts of North Carolina as well, in a state where Gov. Roy Cooper said “we are praying for the best, while working together to be ready for the worst.”
Bob Gregory, Princeton’s director of emergency services, offered some advice to officials dealing with a storm of this magnitude.
“The real important thing for something like this is they need to be, like in the beginning of the week … thinking recovery. How are we going to recover from this? Where are the dollars going to come from? What are the short-term, long-term goals?”
Short-term issues include providing food to those who need it, while long-term issues include rebuilding from the storm, he said.
“For me, if I was down there, you’ve got to take care of the immediate (issues),” he said, “but you do have to start thinking about the recovery process.”
He said with weather emergencies, there are “unknown factors,” like which direction the storm will turn or what speed will it take.
“Then it’s dealing with the aftermath,” he said.
This fall, Princeton is having a forum for a neighborhood building initiative on how residents can learn to build relationships with their neighbors, so they have a comfort level to check on one another in weather emergencies or other crises. The event is scheduled for Oct. 27, starting at 9 a.m., in the community room of the Princeton Public Library.
