While the contrast in utility company performance was the major issue in West Windsor after Sandy, residents complained about another post-storm deficiency: the library. The West Windsor branch of the Mercer County Library System remained closed for the entire week after the storm despite having power.
On November 2, a sign taped to the library’s front door let residents know the facility would remain closed throughout the weekend. Someone had run several extension cords with power strips out of a first-story window onto the sidewalk by the front door. Several people plugged in laptop computers to the strips, and sat huddled with their electronics, trying to stay warm despite mid-morning temperatures in the mid-40s.
Hsueh said many residents complained to him about the library, and he passed the concerns on to Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes November 1. Hughes said he would check into the matter, but that apparently did not convince officials to open the library before November 5.
Meanwhile, residents in neighboring municipalities Hamilton and Princeton took advantage of the heat, electricity, and Internet available at their libraries immediately after Superstorm Sandy. In Princeton, thousands of people huddled inside the public library on Witherspoon Street during and after the storm. Unlike West Windsor, Hamilton and Princeton do not have libraries in the Mercer County system. The municipalities run the facilities themselves.
And in Plainsboro, library staff members came in voluntarily on October 31 to open the doors to those seeking re-charges for electronic devices and warmth for themselves — even though the buiding’s phone system and wi-fi was not at 100 percent. (See sidebar, page 12.)
Municipal workers in West Windsor may not have control of the library, but they took care of what they could. Hsueh said public works crews tried to remove all downed trees from major roads so traffic could move as smooth as possible, as soon as possible.
That many of the sites involved power lines complicated matters. Township workers can not touch any trees that fall near or on power lines without supervision from the utility company that owns the lines.
As one Facebook participant observed, noting West Windsor’s 30-plus years of designation in the Tree City USA program, “Tree City USA looks more like Brush City USA.”
Progress came slowing. The removal on November 2 of a large tree blocking Alexander Road was among the week’s feats. By mid-afternoon of that day the offices of the West Windsor-Plainsboro News, around the corner from the fallen tree on Alexander Road, finally had its power back, nearly four days after it had gone out and too late to publish the regular edition for November 2. “We have a long way to go in terms of cleanup,” Hsueh said. “It’s going to take us a couple months to get everything back to normal.”
Residents can keep track of the progress, other storm-related news and advisories at the township website, westwindsornj.org.
They also can take advantage of the township’s various emergency warning systems, outlined in a letter from Police Chief Joe Pica in a letter that appears on page 2 of this issue.
Eight days after the storm struck West Windsor Police — some of whom had been working 20-hour days since the storm hit, released a summary of the communications they had had to date with residents and first responders.
“Since Monday afternoon (October 29) the Communications Center of West Windsor manned by three communications officers has answered over 2,500 phone calls at a rate of almost a call a minute for the entire time. Several hundred calls for service were handled each day for just the police with DPW handling several hundred “tree down” incidents.
“The department Facebook Page has been corresponding with an outreach of over 50,000 people and has been posting and answering thousands of postings around the clock. The Police have issued over 65 Nixle Alerts directed at over 1900 subscribers. We have also issued a reverse 911 notification to residents without Internet access at 1 a day for the last few days and every day since.
“We have also been responding to hundreds of emails from residents and their families. DPW continues to work long days to remove hundreds of trees from literally every street.
“Operation Lighthouse continues to provide information through Facebook, Twitter, and Nixle on a 24 hour basis. We continue to solicit information from residents without power as well as having officers and the Chief checking select areas for continued loss of power. We are constantly providing street power outages to the power companies and have had the Chief and Mayor tag team the power companies to push for our residents and get them back to 100 percent power.”
