EDITORIAL

The Tuesday surprise

Posted 8/13/15

The surprise is that it was a surprise. The Aug. 4 morning forecast was for thunderstorms with potential downpours. We’ve been through those before. We know where roads become lakes – the Hoxsie …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in
EDITORIAL

The Tuesday surprise

Posted

The surprise is that it was a surprise. The Aug. 4 morning forecast was for thunderstorms with potential downpours. We’ve been through those before. We know where roads become lakes – the Hoxsie end of Airport Road and Miantonomo Drive at John Brown Francis School, just to name two – and we’ve experienced those loud cracks that are so close that the ground shakes.

What nobody was seeing until only minutes before it hit was a storm with severe macrobursts. In less than a half hour, trees were uprooted, utility poles were snapped like twigs, cars and trucks were crushed by falling trees and 121,000 of National Grid’s nearly 500,000 Rhode Island customers lost electricity. Of that total, 31,000 were Warwick customers, some of whom wouldn’t get their power back until four days later.

The devastation in parts of Governor Francis Farms, Gaspee, Hoxsie, Conimicut, Chatham Village and Warwick Neck made the worst of recent hurricanes and blizzards seem like kids’ play. Trees had fallen on the roofs of scores of houses and vehicles and roads were blocked everywhere. Cleanup crew veterans who have been responding to such disasters for years said they had never seen anything like it.

No one was prepared for a storm of this magnitude.

Between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., the state’s 9-1-1 emergency system received 1,155 calls, taxing the operators on duty. Calls were placed on hold and some people had to wait for almost four minutes to get an operator. And that’s just the callers who got through. Others hung up.

City tree crews, among the first to respond, were up against precarious and potentially lethal conditions. Downed wires were everywhere, and once the sun broke out impatient motorists were demanding to get through – and in some cases imperiling others by driving off road.

Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.

Once the scope of the storm’s wrath came into focus and National Grid and municipal crews mobilized, the cleanup gained momentum. Private contractors were stretched out, responding to homeowner and business calls. The city opened a shelter. Residents requiring special medical attention were identified and contacted. The Warwick Sewer Authority put crews on the road with portable generators to power home and system pumps to prevent backups. And taking a proactive approach, the city went into the neighborhoods to gather home and business loss reports in an effort to gain a disaster designation from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The designation would open the door to low interest loans and federal grants.

The response is commendable. The cleanup and the repairs will go on for a long time, but for the most part, with power restored and roads open, it’s back to normal.

We weren’t forewarned. Crews weren’t standing by to clean up, staff shelters and answer a flood of calls and direct traffic. People weren’t told not to report for work, to stay off the roads and hunker down for the worst.

It just happened. We were caught by surprise. But guess what, we managed and no one was seriously hurt. That makes for a good report.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here