Mayor Flisser Lauds Scarsdale's Emergency Response Team

We spoke with Scarsdale Mayor Miriam Flisser late Saturday afternoon after she had partial power restored to her home and was able to use her land line. She provided an account of the Village’s response to the storm and lauded the entire team for their round-the-clock efforts to keep residents safe and clear the streets of 250 tons of debris.

According to Flisser, the emergency response team meets twice a day in the new Public Safety Headquarters to coordinate the efforts of safety and highway department workers. This team has spent hours on the phone with municipal officials and Con Edison advocating for services for Scarsdale. In Flisser’s words, they “did everything they could” to get Con Edison to service Scarsdale, but “they do not consider the Village a priority.” She said that Con Edison is a “public utility without adequate resources” and said that the Trustees would soon revise the home generator law to make it easier for residents to install their own power source.

The team’s work was severely hampered by the collapse of the Village’s new, state-of-the art Optimum Lightpath Communications System. Apparently Optimum had no back-up generator in place, and once the primary generator was out, there was no way to power the communications system. According to Flisser, the Village turned a few fax lines into phone lines to permit calls to Village Hall and team members used their personal cell phones and email addresses to stay in touch. Thought the Village has made almost daily robo calls and sent emails to those who are registered to receive them, the outage prevented them from updating their website. Flisser credits the highway department with hooking up the Village’s generators to power traffic lights at busy intersections to prevent accidents.

The Highway Department cut down and moved massive amounts of tree material and has cleared many major routes including the Post Road,

Deputy Village Manager Steve Pappalardo and Mayor Flisser

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Pappalardo, Flisser, Goodwin and Datino

Emergency Response Team Meeting

Mayor Flisser at the Warming Center at the Scarsdale Library

Photo credit: Harvey Flisser