FREEPORT – Freeport Fire Chief Darrel Fournier has seen the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy first hand.

Earlier this month, Fournier was part of a response team from Maine that went to New York City to help beleaguered rescue agencies in the cleanup from Hurricane Sandy, the so-called “superstorm” that devastated sections of the city.

But while Fournier’s time in New York didn’t cost the town anything – he used vacation time to go there – it has provided a long-term benefit. By aiding in the response to the storm, Fournier gained valuable insight and experience into disaster response, lessons that could be put to use if a similar disaster ever strikes the Freeport area.

“My experience that I gained was very beneficial,” Fournier said. “God forbid, we ever get a (similar) storm here, it will pay big dividends.”

Fournier was in New York for 13 days, arriving on Nov. 4, where he was initially assigned to the New York Fire Department’s Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn. There, he worked from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m. helping to coordinate shelters and other critical responses to different areas of the city.

After six days working in the operations center, Fournier said, he was moved to one of the more hard-hit areas of the city, the Rockaways area, which is right on the water and had seen some of the storm’s worst punishment. Boardwalks along the shore were torn up and homes were destroyed. The storm surge was so large that seaweed was blown a significant distance from the shore and ended up entwined around and through basketball hoops 10 feet off the ground.

“That was the area that was pretty much devastated,” Fournier said. “The pictures don’t do it justice.”

In the Rockaways, Fournier helped lead a team that had an unenviable task – searching through devastated apartment buildings that had been without power for a long stretch, some as high as 20-25 stories.

“I was the safety officer that coordinated (the response),” he said. “We wrote a plan and did the search for several days.”

Fournier was in charge of 100 ambulances, 300 National Guard troops, 100 officers from the New York Police Department, 50 workers from the New York Department of Health and 25 workers from the New York Sanitation Department. The group’s task was to search through more than17,300 apartments in the area. They made contact with more than 5,300 people who were still living in their apartments, bringing food, water and other supplies to those who needed them.

“We found a lot of people that were in need of food and water (who) had barricaded themselves in their apartments,” Fournier said. “We also found a big need for medical issues and that people needed prescriptions. We would identify the person and get the prescription they needed and bring that back to the command center and follow up the next day and bring the prescription back to them.”

It wasn’t a simple task to conduct the search, Fournier said. In some places, he said, the winds had blown as much as 3 feet of sand in front of buildings, causing rescuers to shovel their way in before they could begin the search. The lack of power and water provided its own special set of challenges, as well.

“We found there were a lot of people that really needed our assistance,” he said. “There was no power there for quite some time, they had no infrastructure to operate on, water in the apartment buildings would only (go as far as) the sixth floor, they needed electrical pumps to boost that up. We had some challenging sanitation issues in those apartments that we had to deal with.”

Freeport Deputy Fire Chief Paul Conley, who heads up the Cumberland County Emergency Management Team, said going to disaster sites like the ones caused by Hurricane Sandy can help provide valuable experience that can be used to help train people locally.

“This was an excellent opportunity for somebody in our state to go and participate in (something of this) magnitude,” Conley said. “Because those lessons come back and help us.”

“It’s a great mutual-aid exercise,” said Freeport Town Manager Peter Joseph. “It lets him experience what to do (in case of a disaster).”

Looking back on his experience, Fournier said, he was glad to have had the chance to go and help out.

“We accomplished a lot of good,” he said. “We’re here to help each other out and to go where the need is. It’s important for communities like Freeport allow people to go down and help people in need because if we ever need it, we’ll be receiving help and that’s a win-win.”

Hurricane Sandy left a destructive path throughout New York City, with the Rockaways being one of the hardest hit. Here, a family’s personal possessions are stacked on the foundation of a destroyed home as beach sand blown by the storm fills the space between two houses.
Freeport Fire Chief Darrel Fournier was one of several people from Maine who went to New York to help in the response to the storm.