Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Reminder of Thursday's Town Hall Meeting on Future of Roosevelt Island Tram

Remember the picture? The late afternoon leading to evening and finally early morning rescue of those Roosevelt Islanders stranded and dangling over the East River on the Tram.
Well, Thursday October 4, is the Town Hall meeting on the future of the Roosevelt Island Tram. Unfortunately, I am out of town and unable to attend this very important meeting concerning one of the transportation lifelines of Roosevelt Island though I am pleased to be able to view the proceedings via RIOC's webcast. If you are able to attend this meeting and care about the future of this Island please go and contribute your thoughts on this issue. If, like me, you are not able to attend try to watch the webcast or follow the issues in the Main Street Wire and communicate your thought to RIOC by email, phone or letter. Also, if anyone in attendance wishes to send in their comments here regarding the presentation on the Tram I would be happy to post them.
As an aside it would be very useful and appropriate in a democracy if Roosevelt Island residents could directly communicate with the members of RIOC's Board of Directors on this and other issues but that will be a subject of a separate post. (Another reason why elections are necessary for Roosevelt Island)
A reader of this hurricane preparedness post asks several question of relevance regarding the extent and/or existence of emergency planning for the Tram

I've been reading and thinking about emergency plans for the Island. Do we really have plans? If we do shouldn't we know what they are? For instance, starting with the Tram, do we have a real plan for rescue? Will the Fire Department be able to use ladders, do we have crane co's on call? Thw airlines will soon be subject to rules on how long they can kep passengers in planes on the tarmac? Do we have rules like that or can people be kept stranded indefinitely? What about flooding? What about the disabled? Can I find out?
Here is the April 19, 2006 statement by NYC's Office of Emergency Management regarding the rescue of the stranded Roosevelt Island Tramway passengers:
The rescue operation on the Roosevelt Island Tram last night was managed as a Unified Command incident, in accordance with the Citywide Incident Management System (CIMS). CIMS dictates that when an incident falls outside of the predetermined incident types, as a high-wire rescue does, the incident will be managed as a Unified Command. Thus last night's operation was managed using a Unified Command between the FDNY, NYPD, and the New York City Office of Emergency Management.

"Not only did the CIMS protocol work and work well, the excellent interagency cooperation was epitomized by the joint Police-Fire rescue operations which took people from both trams to safety. Both agencies deserve enormous credit for safely rescuing 68 people and preventing an accident from becoming a tragedy
Image is from wnbc.com.

1 comments :

Anonymous said...

As usual I'm mad but how`about some thruthful answers How can anyone in the office of emrergency management say that THE PROTOCOL WORKED WEll? Is taking 13 hours to perform a simple rescue WORKING WELL? Is the exchange where the police said to the firemen No F...ing way you're going to make this rescue? Is the 13 hour plan now a regular part of the rescue? In place of lies please give us a real plan What is it? Does`anyone really know? If so who is that?