County Emergency Manager Assists in Sandy's Aftermath

Nothing quite prepared Leslie Luke for the aftermath of Sandy. The Office of Emergency Services program manager helped thousands of San Diego residents get back on their feet after the 2003 and 2007 wildfires, and his expertise took him to New Orleans after Katrina and Joplin, Mo. after tornados flattened the town last year.

But Leslie said he could tell Sandy was on a scale of its own the moment he stepped off the plane in New York City on Monday and was greeted by car rental companies with no cars.

A paper sign at Enterprise turned people away. At Thrifty, where Leslie had a reservation, the lot was empty. Customers queued anyway. Just as soon as someone returned a car, the first customer in line would get in and go, no vehicle cleaning or inspection first. And with gas rationing in New York City still in effect, some of the cars were returned without much fuel.  

Leslie said he was lucky his car had three-quarters of a tank.

He called the car rental experience an example of the “cascading effects of a disaster” that he began to note as soon as he arrived.

“The mere number of people who are responding to an area that’s already been impacted further drains the limited resources,” he explained.

In other words, Leslie thinks the thousands of volunteers and federal employees in the region created the car rental crunch, and he expects all the visitors to continue to impact the region even as they try to help it.

Leslie himself expects to be on the East Coast into next week to help FEMA and humanitarian agencies coordinate assistance to the thousands of people who need help.

He said he expects another “cascading effect” to hit next week, when tourists pour in for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Hotel rooms are already at a premium because of the influx of assistance workers and the thousands of people whose homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable in the disaster.

Leslie said Sandy, and the incipient parade, have opened his eyes to how a large-scale disaster in a densely populated urban and economic center raises its own considerations.

Emergency managers and city officials ponder: should you or can you cancel a major civic event two weeks after a major disaster? How can the city go forward with economic recovery—including the parade—while serving the needs of residents?

“These are the kinds of things you have to take into account that you wouldn’t normally have to think about if it weren’t such a widespread disaster in this kind of area,” Leslie said.

Since forming these first impressions earlier this week, Leslie has had a chance to visit some of the most devastated neighborhoods, including Rockaway and Staten Island. In an article to follow Monday, Leslie will tell us what he saw on the ground, and how he’s assisting in the effort to help East Coast residents who lost everything.