COLUMBIA COUNTY STORM DAMAGE
PRESS RELEASE
Full recovery from Thursday night’s devastating ice storm will take multiple days, according to Columbia County Board of Supervisors Chairman Art Baer, who said downed power lines and trees have left thousands of residents in the dark and cold, and local roads impassable.
Emergency shelters have been established at the Ichabod Crane High School in Valatie and the Hudson Middle School on Harry Howard Avenue in Hudson. Claverack, Philmont, Mellenville, Stuyvesant and Pine Plain fire houses are open to residents, as is the Stuyvesant Town Hall. The Germantown Town Hall is open as a warming station for the evening.
For directions to emergency shelters or assistance with transportation, residents are encouraged to call the Columbia County Emergency Operations Center at 828-1212.
Several area nursing homes, including Whittier and the Pine Haven, have offered to accommodate residents with special health needs and the Firemen’s Home is making available handicapped accessible buses to transport the disabled. |
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A State of Emergency was declared for Columbia County early Friday morning, followed by a Local Emergency Order that prohibits all non-emergency travel on roads within a dozen towns. The local ban impacts travel in the towns of Stuyvesant, Stockport, Greenport, Germantown, Clermont, Livingston, Gallatin, Taghkanic, Claverack, Ghent, Kinderhook, and Chatham. Travel in other communities is limited to necessary travel.
“We were hammered,” said Baer, who spent the day at the county’s Emergency Operations Center in Greenport, coordinating recovery efforts with county and state highway department officials, police agencies, fire and emergency rescue officials, the Red Cross, and various other county agencies.
An estimated 20,000 customers still were without electrical service at sunset Friday, with some towns dealing with more than 50 percent road closure, including Ghent and Taghkanic (all or nearly all impassable), Gallatin, Kinderhook, Chatham, Claverack, Hillsdale, Stuyvesant and Copake.
Power outages were reported at Columbia Memorial Hospital and local long-term care health facilities, which were operating on emergency generators, as was the Emergency Operations Center. The Columbia County Airport was closed.
“Fortunately we did not have any loss of life or serious accidents,” the chairman said.
‘Our biggest concern was the downed power lines and the danger these fallen wires posed to homeowners, motorists and our highway and emergency crews,” Baer said. “It’s particularly dangerous when workmen are dealing with chainsaws on ice and in the dark.”
The State Department of Transportation has closed the Taconic State Parkway from the Dutchess County line to Route 23 in Claverack and reports many other state highways impassable. The same was reported by the County Highway Department, which hopes to have its highway system cleared by Saturday afternoon.
County and local highway crews will be helped by additional crews from the state DOT and from the Greene County Highway Department.
The emergency center issued a number of safety tips for residents coping with the storm damage, including:
• Do not leave lighted candles unattended;
• Do not use gasoline powered generators indoors;
• Do not use barbeque grills indoors;
• Portable electric generators must be used with caution to avoid electrical hazards;
• Treat all downed wires as energized.
The state of emergency and travel ban will remain in effect until further notice, Baer said.
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