Rockhills boards review response to Hurricane Sandy
:HVW 5RFNKLOO RIfiFLDOV VDy there’s no state or federal law requiring Hidden Meadows on the Ridge senior citizen housing to have a generator, but there should be a way of avoiding having to evacuate the building as was needed when the remnants of Hurricane Sandy knocked out electricity.
“That’s craziness. These old people, you can’t just get them up and moving,” West Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors member John Mann said at the board’s Nov. 21 meeting.
About 60 people live in the three-story building on Farmers Lane.
Plans have already been made and Hidden Meadows will have a generator by year’s end, Connie Renn, admissions and marketing director, said in a phone interview this week.
drand View Hospital, which had generators but was not at full power during the outage, also came within a day of having to evacuate, Donald Duvall, chairman of the West Rockhill board, said.
Duvall said the township now wants to look into whether the municipality can make the generators a requirement.
“They should have to have adequate generators to run their facility,” board member Jay heyser said.
The storm brought the second late October multi-day weather-related electric outage in a year to many homes and businesses in the area.
In its aftermath, East 5RFNKLOO 7RwQVKLS RIfiFLDOV are planning to recondition a JHQHUDWRU uVHG DW WKH WUDIfiF light at Route 313 and Ridge Road and add a generator KRRNuS WR WKH WUDIfiF OLJKW DW Route 313 and Fifth Street.
“7KRVH WwR WUDIfiF OLJKWV are a priority, as far as I’m concerned,” East Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors member Jim Nietupski said following the board’s Nov. 20 meeting.
The possibility of adding a generator at the township offiFHV wDV DOVR GLVFuVVHG, EuW that might not really do the job, board member David Nyman said.
“vou can have all the lights on up here, but if you can’t communicate, what good does it do you?” Nyman said.
During the power outage, Nyman said, he was working in another Bucks County PuQLFLSDOLWy’V RIfiFHV wKHUH there was electric, but no phones or Internet service.
Nyman also said he will be attending a meeting with PPL Electric representatives set up by East Rockhill Secretary/Treasurer Marianne Morano to talk about the response to the power outage. The township did not get information from the utility company during the outage and, although Bucks County was labeled the hardest hit part of Pennsylvania during Sandy, the electric company fiUVW FRQFHQWUDWHG RQ RWKHU parts of the state, he said.
“I’d like to have some sort of explanation of why we didn’t get some priority here because we were hit so hard,” Nyman said at the East Rockhill meeting.
“We haven’t had very good communication with the power companies and the cable companies,” heyser said at the West Rockhill meeting.
The utilities did set up systems to give information to residents about when their power would be restored, dreg Lippincott, West Rockhill’s township manager, said.
“Individuals can get notifiHG, EuW uV DV PuQLFLSDOLWLHV, GLGQ’W JHW QRWLfiHG,” KH said.
While he understands the residents’ frustrations with the outage, Duvall said, he also sees the reason other arHDV wHUH WKH fiUVW WR JHW WKHLU power restored.
“We need to help the citizens understand what it takes to get a system like that up and running,” Duvall said.
The outages in the other areas affected a greater number of people and the utilities were trying to help as many people as possible as quickly as possible, he said.
“They’re going to go where their density is,” Duvall said.
That means urban areas will have the power restored more quickly than the more rural West Rockhill, he said.
Many local people have taken matters into their own hands in dealing with the outage, he said.
“denerators are very popular right now in West Rockhill,” Duvall said. “Our biggest thing was people ran out of gas in their generators.”