Fort Lee Emergency Services Prepared For Worst

With Hurricane Irene bearing down on the area and virtually all weather reports indicating that the impact could be significant, with high winds, excessive rainfall and potential flooding, Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich issued a hurricane advisory on the borough’s website Thursday, assuring residents that the borough’s emergency service agencies are prepared to keep them safe and are on “the highest level of alert.”

Meanwhile borough and school officials say Fort Lee High School and the Fort Lee Community Center are being prepared as emergency evacuation centers, “preparing for the absolute worst,” while “hoping and praying for the absolute best,” as Sokolich put it.

“We cannot find ourselves in a position where—God forbid, if this storm is as bad as some people say it may be and people have to evacuate from their homes—they need to be able to go someplace where it’s secure, where it’s warm, where there’s food, where there’s cots, and we are fully prepared to deal with that,” Sokolich told Patch Friday. “[The evacuation centers] will be fully secured, fully staffed, there will be food and water so that we can make our residents as comfortable as possible. And I will tell you, it’s expensive to do, but I’m hopeful that it will be—at the end of the day—an unnecessary expense.”

Fort Lee Board of Education president Arthur Levine told Patch Friday that Fort Lee High School is also being prepared to function as a potential evacuation center for a worst-case scenario, and that all events scheduled for the high school have been cancelled through Monday, including church on Sunday and teacher orientation Monday.

“At this point preparations are being made to make sure that there are adequate supplies and it’s clean, so that people—if need be—will be able to stay at the high school,” Levine said. “We’re going to be adequately prepared to accept people.”

In the meantime, the mayor urged residents to hunker down and stay home if at all possible during the storm, thereby helping to keep roads accessible for emergency vehicles.

“We’re very, very concerned about trees that are going to fall because the ground is going to be so soggy,” Sokolich said, adding that he’s authorized two emergency crews to be at the ready—one for the borough’s south district and one for the north.

“These guys are going to be sleeping here all weekend so that if a tree comes down, if an event occurs at a house, in conjunction with the fire department, police department, ambulance and Office of Emergency Management, the DPW crews will be out to remove the tree, push it to the side for the moment, let the storm pass, allow the emergency vehicles to pass and access where they’ve got to get,” Sokolich said. “And then we’ll deal with cleanup on Monday.”

He added, “Every single catch basin in this town has never been cleaner or free of any excess or debris.”

“They are 100 percent capacity,” he said.

The borough is also setting up a communications center at the police department where emergency services department heads will convene over the course of the weekend to deal with potential issues as they arise and delegate resources if necessary, according to Sokolich, and has a crew specifically dedicated to repair and maintenance of Fort Lee’s pump stations.

“If those [pump stations] don’t function, that could be potentially catastrophic,” Sokolich said. “But if something goes wrong, we have a crew experienced with the pump stations that will go directly there and restore it as soon as practically possible. It’s virtually impossible for this town to be more ready.”

Sokolich directed residents to call 911 in the event of an emergency and to visit the following websites regularly for updated weather information, ways to prepare for the storm and any special announcements:

• The New Jersey Office of Emergency Management website
• The Fort Lee OEM website

The mayor also said in his letter to residents, which can be found here, that he will periodically update the borough’s website to provide “as much information as possible.”

As of Friday morning, the Fort Lee Office of Emergency Management was reporting that, “The center of the forecast cone of Hurricane Irene has moved slightly eastward,” but noted that forecasts are subject to change.

“Current forecasts relevant to Hurricane Irene are calling for [five to 10 inches] of rain Saturday afternoon into Sunday afternoon,” according to the Fort Lee OEM. “It is forecasted that there is a significant chance of winds up to 49 MPH with higher gusts. The times of the highest winds are predicted for midday Sunday through Sunday afternoon.”

Here is the latest forecast for the Fort Lee area from the National Weather Service.