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FEMA to return hurricane supplies to LI

BY BILL BLEYER | bill.bleyer@newsday.com

July 12, 2008

Yielding to pressure from Long Island officials and lawmakers, the federal government is returning stockpiles of hurricane emergency supplies to Nassau and Suffolk counties after a year's absence.

Food, water, generators and shelter materials, stored here in 2006 but not last year after the Federal Emergency Management Agency changed its strategy, will return starting next week. Food and water supplies for both counties will be kept in Bethpage, with nonperishable items stored at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Two years ago, FEMA brought in trailers of supplies in June that were stored in Nassau and took them away after the hurricane season in November, said Jim Callahan, commissioner of Nassau's Office of Emergency Management. "They said they were going to put them back last year and they didn't," he said.

FEMA spokeswoman Barbara Lynch said the agency had not returned supplies last year because its strategy now is to consolidate stockpiles in larger regional hubs, including one upstate for the entire Northeast that is less likely to be affected by storm conditions because it is inland.

But Callahan and his Suffolk counterpart, Joe Williams, complained, and Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, Rep. Peter King and the State Emergency Management Office challenged FEMA's decision. They argued supplies could never reach Long Island during or immediately after a hurricane via the available bridges and tunnels, and FEMA relented.

Lynch said four 48-foot containers, similar to shipping containers, that will arrive in Suffolk next week contain "basic necessities: shelter supplies, basic medical supplies, tools, generators."

Suffolk already has 10 trailers filled with supplies it purchased on its own, stored in Yaphank.

Callahan said that under an agreement with Suffolk, Nassau will store food and water supplies and Suffolk will store nonperishable supplies because "we have a climate-controlled warehouse in Bethpage." He said the 10,000-square-foot warehouse is being retrofitted with additional racks to increase its capacity.

"We already have our own stockpile of 90,000 MREs [meals ready to eat] and 172,000 bottles of water in the warehouse," Callahan said, and FEMA will be providing four or five times that much by the end of the month.

He said two years ago FEMA sent food supplies in trailers that were stored in Nassau. "The problem with trailers is they are not climate-controlled. MREs deteriorate much more quickly" at temperatures below 50 or above 80. "In a climate-controlled warehouse, they can keep for 10 years."