By Matthew McGevna
He recalled a recent incident when an elderly woman contacted his office complaining that her cesspool had backed up. Callahan coordinated the response, and the woman called back hours later to thank him.
It seems like a small emergency - a backed up cesspool - but for that woman, said Callahan, it was a real emergency. "That's the difference between a disaster and a catastrophe; a catastrophe is when it happens to you," he said from behind his desk at OEM headquarters at the county jail in East Meadow. He spoke frankly about any number of topics and did not mince words about the disasters that cannot be avoided.
An evacuation plan for residents to get off Long Island? "You can't get off the Island," he said. What do you do in a nuclear attack? "Move toward the light," he answered, half-kidding. But the message was clear. There are some things you can't prepare for. For everything else, there's the Office of Emergency Management.
County Executive Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat from Glen Cove, created the office in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and Callahan was tapped last October to head the office because of his local experience. In Callahan's hometown, the Village of Malverne, where he serves as the deputy mayor, he helped create an emergency management committee. Callahan said he got hooked on emergency preparedness before Sept. 11, when he created Malverne's emergency management plan. Converting that experience - planning for the safety of 9,000 residents - to a county of 1.3 million might seem like a leap.
"When you prepare for all hazards, 80 percent of the plan still applies," Callahan said. The OEM runs on a budget of roughly $3 million, mostly from government grants, and continually adds to its stockpile. That includes five trucks filled with bottled water, diesel-powered generators, 15,000 cots, 30,000 blankets, and a massive stock of meals ready to eat (MREs). The county also has available 100 shelters to turn to in the event of a disaster.
"We have to think of what will happen, and then what will fail," Callahan said, adding that the most commonly thought of disasters are Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina. But there are others: blackouts, heavy rains, nor'easters, blizzards, ice and electric storms, and tornadoes (which might be rare, but ask residents in Brooklyn and the Village of Lynbrook about them).
The OEM will soon have about 20 employees, quadruple the number of staff before the agency was created, when the police ran it. The office itself looks like a bunker. A trip down one elevator to the cellar and a right through metal doors reveals an wide-open space with more than 30 computer stations. Television monitors are mounted in every corner of the room, and a slide projector screen hangs on the far wall. To the immediate right is the command center, a long desk with a podium in the middle. Some of the monitors are tuned to local news stations. Others are set up for videoconferences. Portable beds are available in the event of a massive sleepover. Depending on the situation, the room could be filled with representatives from every agency in the county. The office regularly conferences with the National Weather Service, which county officials rely on to track storm activity.
The OEM has three main functions, according to Callahan: coordinate, communicate and educate.
Coordinate
In the event of a major emergency, like Katrina, the OEM would have to coordinate the response with more than 70 governments: the county, two cities, six towns and 64 villages, not to mention Nassau's 71 fire departments. Representatives from these agencies would rendezvous at the office and take their respective places in the emergency operations center, where they would coordinate rescue, recovery, medical assistance and evacuation efforts.
In smaller, cautionary events, less is obviously needed. And, unlike the Gulf Coast, Long Island has never been hit by a Category 4 hurricane. The legendary hurricane of 1938 was a Category 3 storm.
Communicate
The OEM also constantly communicates with New York City officials, and the neighboring Westchester and Yonkers. Once a week the Red Cross, Salvation Army and U.S. Coast Guard stop in to brief the OEM on their operations.
Phone lines are backed up by secondary power in the event that the primary lines should fail. As of press time, the OEM was holding a news conference to announce its latest technology, an automated emergency notification system, which can make 3,000 phone calls per minute to every resident in Nassau. A recorded message will notify residents of a situation and provide an 800 number to call for additional information. If you're on a cellphone, no worries. The new system will send a "reverse burst" to cell towers, and you'll get the message, provided in multiple languages, from your cell.
One of the biggest issues facing Nassau is the fact that many fire departments operate radios on different wavelengths. To combat this, the OEM has a computer program that can combine the wavelengths and make it possible for, say, the Franklin Square Fire Department to speak with members of the Baldwin Fire Department. This is a fairly new innovation, not available pre-Sept. 11. Also, the county will issue more powerful 500 megahertz radios to emergency response teams starting in 2008.
Education
The OEM offers regular tours of its facility to scouts. It also conducts roughly 100 emergency awareness presentations per year at local civic groups, schools and volunteer organizations.
To further educate the local communities, the OEM offers basic training under its Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program. The all-volunteer CERT supports responders and provides immediate assistance to the communities in which they live. Interested volunteers can apply online at the OEM's Web site: http://www.nassaucountyny.gov/agencies/OEM/index.html.
"We are much safer since 9/11," Callahan said. "We have command vehicles, which we didn't have before. We have radio communication, which we didn't have before. But you never stop preparing. We are an all hazards agency."
The office was created in large part to cut through the confusion and squabbling that can occur between bodies of government and law enforcement. Such quibbling over jurisdiction and procedure was blamed in part for inaction in New Orleans after Katrina, and secretive "walls" between the CIA and the FBI were discovered after the twin towers were destroyed.
Callahan feels confident that the OEM will eliminate communication problems. "The county is ready. I don't think the people are ready," he said, adding that many Long Islanders do not realize they exist on a same-day supply system. That means grocery stores, pharmacies and the like order their stock on a one- to two-day basis. They don't have warehouses located in the area. So if at any point the supply chain to the Island is broken, stores will run out of stock within the day. Callahan said the federal response to a major emergency might take up to a week. Until then, residents could be on their own.
"I would tell residents to make their own family plan," he said. "Have a local contact and a long-distance contact. Think of what you can't survive a week without and stockpile those things: water, flashlights, dry clothing, canned soups, peanut butter and jelly, bread. And more importantly, if you're on any kind of medication, have a week's supply of that medicine at all times. If you need insulin and the pharmacy is out of stock, you could be in real trouble." Callahan also recommended having games and materials to occupy and calm children during an emergency.
The OEM is staffed around the clock and can provide residents with all the information they need in an emergency. In the case of a hurricane, the office has its flood surge map and evacuation routes available online. For Callahan, he's fine with doing the worrying for residents. "I get paid to stand guard and make sure nothing happens on my watch," he said. "I love it. It's great to help people and to give back and to get that thank you."
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