Hurricane Sandy

Sandy was the second-largest Atlantic storm on record Storm surge reached over 13 feet in coastal areas of New York and New Jersey The heavily impacted tri-state region is the most densely populated in the nation The impacted region contains critical national functions including the financial district in lower Manhattan

These complications caused large scale challenges in emergency response, including wide scale power outages, housing scarcity, and freezing temperatures

Sandys Impact 8.5 million people lost power across the northeast Fuel shortages immobilized impacted regions and presented challenges in keeping backup generators running Hundreds of thousands were ordered to evacuate 650,000 homes damaged or destroyed 190,000 business affected Winter temperatures added urgency to power restoration and home repairs

Response to Sandy Incident Management Assessment Teams were pre- staged to emergency operation centers Peak of 17,000 federal personnel and over 11,000 National Guardsmen were on the ground assisting with the response The Individuals and Household programs provided assistance to over 520,000 registrations

Response to Sandy FEMA shipped over 20 million liters of water, almost 14 million meals, nearly 80 thousand cots, and over 1.5 million blankets to impacted states Public Assistance provides funding for the repair, restoration, reconstruction, or replacement of infrastructure that is damaged or destroyed by a disaster SBA approved over $493 million small business loans

Whole Community Innovations The New Jersey Governors Office rallied with community partners to establish an emergency hot-line and coordinate pet search and recovery efforts Solar power companies in New York and New Jersey partnered to deploy equipment and volunteers to install and maintain mobile solar power generators in some of the hardest hit communities

A Whole Community team enlisted the assistance of more than 4,000 on-line volunteers to conduct aerial damage assessments Whole Community Innovations

FEMAs Innovations FEMA Innovations Team composed of a variety of whole community partners was deployed to work side-by-side with disaster survivors and Federal agencies to restore and rebuild communications with mesh WiFi networks FEMA gave some of its Community Relations personnel iPads to help facilitate mobile registration for assistance

FEMAs Innovations FEMA created the Sheltering and Temporary Essential Power (STEP) program to repair storm- damaged electrical meters, provide essential utilities, and exterior repairs FEMA employees lived on ships so that their presence in hotels did not displace survivors DHS Surge Capacity Force and the FEMA Corps program helped the agency surge staff response operations

Initial Lessons After Sandy Greater advance planning is needed regarding: Issues specific to emergencies in densely populated urban areas Addressing fuel shortages after large disasters Ensuring capacity to lodge emergency response personnel without displacing survivors Rapidly surging a large number of emergency responders into the field

Initial Lessons After Sandy Recognizing the publics reliance on wireless and mobile technology, priority needs to be given to reestablishing communications infrastructure Given advancements in mobile technology, FEMA needs to establish a more mobile field presence, bringing its services directly to survivors All emergency managers need to continue to and expand upon partnering with the private sector in all phases of emergency management Storm Warnings

13 David A. Trissell FEMA Attaché U.S. Mission to the European Union