FEBRUARY 27, 2006

A Special meeting of the Town and Village Boards was held on February 27, 2006 in the Corinth Firehouse, 16 Saratoga Avenue.

Present:  Supervisor Lucia, Mayor Winslow, Councilman Brown, Councilman Major, Town Clerk Farr, Emergency Response Committee Member Sue Winslow, Fire Chief A. Kelley, Asst. Fire Chief Denton, Asst. Fire Chief D. Kelley, EMS Co-Captains Connie and Randy Tubbs, Deputy Highway Superintendent Shawn Eggleston, Les Bowen of the DDSO, Dennis Dowen of the DDSO, Helen Fischedick of the DDSO, Police Chief Kane, Sgt. Coffman Police Dept., Linda Hamm, Karen Saunders, Lucy Pistoia of the Squad Auxiliary, June Tubbs of the CES, Ruth Miner, Dr. Richard Pitkin.

Mayor Winslow called the meeting to order.

The meeting was held as a round table discussion to critique the way things were handled during the power outage that had occurred from February 17 to February 21 and what needs to be done in case of future outages. 

Police Chief Kane reported that his department had a dispatcher to man the telephones so calls would not go through to the State Police.  He said they posted a car downtown and other cars went throughout the Village directing people where the shelters were set up.  He has patrolmen walking through Adam Lawrence once every hour to check on people.  He said they checked on wires being down and what hazards were out there.  Mayor Winslow asked if Chief Kane found any deficiencies in what happened or between departments.  Chief Kane said the only problem they had was with generators at the Police Department.  Chief Kane also said that they did not have the ability to communicate by radio with the EMS, the Fire Department and the Police Department.  Chief Kane said they have oxygen and a defibrillator in the police cars if either is ever needed.

 Fire Chief Kelley reported on the calls he had at the beginning of the outage.  He said that his Fist Assistance Fire Chief arranged for a generator for the firehouse and within a couple hour they were up and running.  Chief Kelley said he contacted the Auxiliary and they got the food going.  Chief Kelley said they did public address around the Village and Town letting people know where the shelters were.  Chief Kelley said he spoke to both the Mayor and the Supervisor on Saturday and got authorization for generators and salamanders.  Chief Kelley said they had one generator on Gobel Avenue for about 56 hours and one on Oak Street for two days.  He said they had a communication center at the firehouse.  He said they could dispatcher from the firehouse.  Chief said things that we could do better is a while ago we talked about a CAN system.  He said he thinks that could be looked into and it is very important to get it operational.  Mayor Winslow said that was something that should be looked into.  Mayor Winslow said we should look into whether we should have the command center at the Town Hall or the Firehouse.  Chief Kelley said he thought there should possibly be two command centers. Chief Kelley said the Fire Department would have to have more lines brought in.  Chief Kelley said he thought his department did a great job and he wanted to commend the department for that.  Chief Kelley said he lost about 40 traffic cones.  Chief Kelley said he did not have communications with the shelter and something needed to be done about the communications between the Fire Department, Police Department and the EMS. Chief Kelley said he thought in whole everybody did a great job and nobody died over the power outage.  Mayor Winslow said they authorized the purchase of some generators and salamanders.  Lea Murdoch asked about the sirens. Chief Kelley said he thought the CAN system would be better than a siren.  Supervisor Lucia told the public not to throw away their old telephones when they get portable telephones.

Mayor Winslow said Artie Lozier could not be at the meeting so he had him type a report.  Mayor Winslow read the report.  Mayor Winslow said Mr. Lozier’s report said that the deficiencies he could see included not having a generator for the DPW garage, the Police Department did not have a generator to run its entire department.  Mayor Winslow said the Village is looking at a generator for the DPW building as well as a generator for the Fire Department. Mayor Winslow said the DPW bought a couple more generators so they could use on a temporary basis.  One was needed for the hut on West Mountain.  Parts of the Waste Water Treatment Plant did not operate during the outage and they found out that parts of the plant were not physically working when they hooked up the generator.  Mayor Winslow said they have had an electrician there all week working on that.  Supervisor Lucia said that Artie Lozier had contacted him after the power had come on and Supervisor Lucia had to get a news bulletin out to his water district customers because everybody was shaving and showering and the pumps were surging back and forth.

Shawn Eggleston said they went out at 10:30 AM and stayed right on full crew until the storm calmed down.  Mr. Eggleston said communication was bad because there are five towns on the two-way radios they have so Nextel was the only communications they had.  He said they definitely needed a different set up for the generator and they were working with Councilman Brown for that at the moment.

Supervisor Lucia said if it wasn’t for the DDSO they would not have had a shelter and he appreciated that.  Mayor Winslow also said he appreciated everything DDSO did during the outage.  Les Bowen said everything went great.  Helen Fischedick said that DDSO had oxygen for emergencies, and they had vehicles for transportation.  She said she thought everything went smoothly. Les Bowen said they have ordered some Nextel phones for use in the future. She said they could hold up to 150 people.  Mayor Winslow said Dennis Dowen never left during the outage.  Mayor Winslow said Dennis used the handicapped van and the bus to transfer people from their homes to the shelter and back.

Randy Tubbs from the Emergency Squad said he had the same concerns about communication.  Lucy Pistoia stated that the elderly don’t know for sure when people show up at their door that the person is in fact from the shelter, etc.  She suggested having something printed up for the people that are going house to house to wear.  

Dr. Pitkin said as far as he could see everything went along good. He said that people went above and beyond to help the elderly. Dr. Pitkin said that we need to contact the owner of Adam Lawrence and see that the citizens in there are properly cared for during a power outage or such.  He wants to commend everybody for all they did.  Supervisor Lucia said that he thought everybody’s cooperation saved lives.

Lea Murdoch said she thought that some place there should be a list of what should be had for meals for two or three days so they at least had an idea of what they had to get. 

Sue Winslow said it ran quite smoothly.  She said that had approximately 45 to 50 people volunteer right off the bat.  She said they had approximately 19 to 20 teenagers who volunteered and stayed around the clock.  She said they had 4 nurses that rotated and volunteered to look after the health and welfare of the seniors to see that they had their medications and oxygen that they needed.  Sue said on the average they had 71 people to stay in the shelter plus approximately 42 people walking in to get warm or have a meal.  She said the shelter was open for three full nights.  She said on Saturday there were still some seniors who did not want to come into the shelter so Dennis and other people were going around checking on the people to see if they could get them to come into the shelter.  Sue said Sunday morning they were really concerned about the seniors that refused to come to the shelter so they contacted Dr. Pitkin and asked him to go to the senior’s homes with Sue to check on the seniors.  Sunday night the majority of people had returned home.  She said by Monday morning everything was starting to breakdown and be turned back over to DDSO.  She said the biggest problem she said was the lack of communication due to the phones at the DDSO being down.  She said in reference to the food we got donations from GU Family Markets,  the Food Pantry, Price Shopper in Glens Falls, Stewarts  for bread, and the two Hannafords in Glens Falls.  She said we got pet food from Adirondack Save A Stray for the animals since they encouraged the seniors to bring their animals with them.

Karen Saunders a registered nurse who worked at the shelter thanked the Supervisor and Mayor for giving her the opportunity she had the time of her life.  She said it was good seeing what we can do as a community and seeing what we do need to do to be prepared.  She said they need someway to identify these people.  She said there is a need to prepare an incident report since they had one cat bite, one dog bite and one laceration in the kitchen.  She asked who falls responsible for that.  She said there was some concern regarding if this would come back on the nurse’s individual license or what.  She said she could not give enough praise to the kids who stayed with the seniors.  She said communication was very hard.

Fire Chief Kelley asked DDSO if they were still equipped with the radio tower that the old hospital had.  Les Bowen said he didn’t know but Fire Chief Kelley was welcome to come and look to see if it was.

Karen Saunders said she thinks some kind of Rules of Order.  She also asked who we take in, is it just our own community citizens or anyone else who is brought to the shelter.  Supervisor Lucia said the Red Cross was so stressed out and we set up our own shelter for our people.  Mayor Winslow asked if DDSO would have any regulations and Les Bowen told him that it was the Town/Village shelter and it was their decision.  Mayor Winslow said he thinks we need some rules, etc. for the shelter. 

Chief Kane said he thought we needed to develop some sort of code on the doors of people who refused to come to the shelter so that they did not need to go back thirty times.  Mayor Winslow asked what he was thinking about a sticker or something like that.

Supervisor Lucia said he wondered if anyone thought about the Commons.  He said he didn’t.  Karen Saunders said we have people in town who are hearing impaired who never heard the announcement for the shelter.  She said Councilman Saunders said he would take the list of one of the districts in town and see how many people are seniors, physically handicapped, etc. and if each of the other Town Board members would take a district then the Town at least would have a list of people in need if we ever have something like this happen again.  Supervisor Lucia said that is one of the things he had on his list.  He suggested that if we reach out to the churches and the Senior Center they might be able to help. Karen Saunders said that was what they thought they needed at least a list of the clergyman in Town might help.  Ruth Miner asked if there couldn’t be a telephone number that would have a recording regarding where the shelter is and who to get a hold of.  Mayor Winslow said he thinks a lot of people just automatically call the Town or Village Hall.

Lloyd Murdoch asked if we were able to give National Grid information about the shelter.  He said people were calling National Grid to find out when the power would be back on and perhaps National Grid could give them information about the shelter.  Mr. Murdoch said we need to make plans if the power was out for over a week.  Fire Chief Kelley said that the school would have to be up and running.  Fire Chief Kelley said that the school has been approached but it is the money situation.  Supervisor said the school is not wired for a generator.  Councilman Brown said to get the school up and running would be a huge job and would cost a lot of money.  Fire Chief Kelley said if the school was wired he thought the County would provide the use of a generator.

Dr. Pitkin thought there would be a problem with gasoline if the outage was for a week or more.  Supervisor said the Village and Town were supplying the gas.  Lloyd Murdoch asked but what if there was no gasoline anywhere around the area.

Joel Jenkins asked if there was anyway the Town and Village could have a tank of kerosene for people who are heating their homes with kerosene heaters.  Mayor Winslow said that Supervisor Lucia had a list from Emergency Sheriff’s for places to get kerosene and gasoline. 

Michelle Eggleston said that if we had the school open for shelter the kids could have something to do. 

Councilman Brown said he was making a list of things we may need.  He said we need to buy some wristbands.  Karen Saunders said they thought about a medical sheet for each person.  She said we need to have some place to store the supplies that we have.  She also said we need to be able to identify the possessions the people bring in with them and the things that are needed to be borrowed.  Mayor Winslow said we really need a manual for shelter procedures.  Mayor Winslow suggested maybe Red Cross has a manual.  Karen Saunders said Saratoga County is setting up an Emergency Preparedness Committee that has its first meeting in April.  She says she is going to attend as a nurse and she will report back to the committee.

Fire Chief Kelley said who does cover the nurses. He asked if we called a state of emergency would that cover the nurses.  Fire Chief Kelley also asked why a state of emergency was not called.  Mayor Winslow said that they had talked to Emergency Services and nobody had called a state of emergency.  He said that there was nothing to be gained from calling a state of emergency.  Karen Saunders said she volunteered for Red Cross to go to help after Katrina and Red Cross said she would be going on her own license.  Mayor Winslow says he knows there is a provision under the local law and he presumes the state is the same, that if you declare a state of emergency that the law says you cannot be held responsible.  He said he would look into that. 

Karen Saunders asked if the people bring in their animals are the people held responsible if an incident occurs. 

Chief Kane said Sgt. Peter Coffman suggested that we contact New York State Department of Transportation to obtain one of the signs that they have along the road so we could publish an emergency message in the center of the Village.

Dr. Pitkin said he had heard about a couple of people who were overcome with carbon monoxide and he wondered if we could do something about alerting the public regarding the safety precautions to take.  Fire Chief Kelley said we discussed this at the last meeting about compiling a pamphlet with what to do and what not to do.  He said Trustee Densmore is working on this. 

Lucy Pistoia said that someone told her to tell the firemen to go slower when they are telling people about something like this.  Fire Chief Kelley said we should set the Town and Village up in sectors and cover it that way. Fire Chief Kelley said all emergency vehicles have outside PA systems.  Fire Chief Kelley said his department transmits on low band radios and the EMS transmits on high band radios.  He said the EMS would have to give permission for the Fire Department and the Village Police to transmit on the high band before it could be done. 

Lloyd  Murdoch said that we need to go into houses with a detector every three or four hours.  Fire Chief Kelley said what needed to be done was to educate the public.  Mr. Murdoch said the people you want to read those pamphlets are too old or just won’t read the pamphlets.  Supervisor Lucia said another dangerous thing is a gas stove being used for heat. 

Councilman Brown said one request he got was that we have a storage area to put blanket, cots and so forth in case of an emergency.  Sue Winslow said hopefully the Red Cross would come in but not in a wide spread emergency like this one.  She said we did have 41 mattresses that came from the County and 25 or 30 cots that came from Albany Airport.  Sue said we do need to be prepared and have things in the area so we can get at them in an emergency situation.  Mayor Winslow said that there was room in the overhead area of the DPW garage.  Sue Winslow said we need to keep track of the food pantry and when it gets low we should contact the public and ask for their assistance in replenishing the pantry. 

Supervisor Lucia said that the Town Hall had received three monetary donations from people that were appreciative for what happened over the weekend and the Town is opening an account to put these funds in. 

Lloyd Murdoch says he can get as much food as he needs with a days notice for the food pantry.  Lea Murdoch said that instead of the people donating food if they donated money it would be more beneficial such as $1.50 donation would be equal to $9.00 worth of food.

James Murray suggested that the Town/Village look to stations that broadcast highway conditions and toward the military for MREs.

Sue Winslow said she commended all the volunteers who came out to help.

Fire Chief Kelley made a suggestion was made that we have a dinner for anyone who assisted during the power outage. 

Sigrid Koch suggested that we have a telephone number that tells people to call to see if their relatives are okay.  Supervisor Lucia said that was discussed before Mrs. Koch came in.  Karen Saunders said anyone that came into the shelter called a family member to let them know where they were. 

Councilman Brown said we needed a list of nurses who are available.  Karen Saunders said she is working on that and has been in contact with both hospitals.

Councilman Brown is working on a list of providers of oxygen in the area.  Councilman Brown said that he was working on a list of the elderly and disabled.  He said that he is working on changing the telephone wiring in the Town Hall so that phone jacks can be in the meeting room.  Fire Chief Kelley said the firehouse is set up for a disaster center.  Councilman Brown said he was looking into a list of contractors in case that would be necessary.  Councilman Brown said one thing they found out in the shelter is that some people won’t eat dinner if there is a dog in the room.  Sue Winslow said that was taken care of.  Councilman Brown said that when it is time to break down the shelter more help is needed because the people that have been there are exhausted. 

Meeting was adjourned at 7:10PM.

                                                            Respectfully submitted,

                                                            Rose E. Farr, RMC
                                                            Town Clerk