If it seemed that City Hall’s handling of the Hurricane Irene emergency ran so smoothly that it couldn’t have been an accident, it wasn’t.
An accident, that is.
Planning for Irene began shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans six years ago — and the payoff came at week’s end as Irene lumbered up the East Coast and a vast number of public employees stepped up and made it all work.
Kudos to them, to Mayor Bloomberg — and to Gov. Cuomo, too.
New Yorkers owe a huge debt to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the NYPD. The department tapped thousands of extra officers and played a key role in the evacuation efforts — especially in the subways.
Cops assisted in rescues, secured dangerous sites, removed vagrants, patrolled evacuated areas and provided shelter security.
The FDNY, of course, also rose to the occasion, effecting scores of rescues, among other feats.
Driving it all was the city’s Coastal Storm Plan, developed post-Katrina to coordinate emergency efforts of numerous public agencies and authorities and put into operation last weekend for the very first time.
It worked, as they say, like a charm.
For starters, the plan called for the development of a database of city employees who volunteered to lend a hand during storms like Irene (a vast project in itself). The mammoth list contains (get this!) 130,000 names — a big chunk, teachers.
These folks provided critical manpower for the evacuations and the sheltering of some 10,000 New Yorkers — including about 1,000 with special medical needs.
The storm plan also spelled out elaborate logistical protocols — identifying danger zones, for instance, and establishing evacuation procedures. Schools and other sites were set up long in advance to serve as intake centers and shelters. Transportation equipment was pre-designated; food, medical and other supplies pre-positioned.
Drafting the plan alone sucked up huge resources, Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said. And while some wonder whether its costs were justified, he insisted that, without it, the city’s response would have been “very, very different — if not impossible.”
At bottom, though, it was city employees who toiled long hours to make it all work.
Yes, many were well-compensated — racking up lucrative overtime pay, which in turn will fatten their pensions. (That fact will be worth recalling during contract talks, when union negotiators remind everyone of their member’ efforts during Irene.)
Still, it’s hard to imagine where the city would have been without the considerable talent and dedication of so many of them.
Mountains of credit also go to MTA boss Jay Walder and Port Authority head Chris Ward and their workers — whose oversight of the city’s transportation network resulted in a quick return to normal (or nearly so) conditions.
And, of course, to Con Ed and the countless boots they had on the ground, working to keep power outages to a minimum.
But, most of all, credit goes to the Coastal Storm Plan — or, more to the point, to the people who prepared it so precisely and then executed it so flawlessly.
In an age of uncertainly, it’s a comfort to know that such far-sighted folks are laboring on behalf of the city.
Take pride, New York.