When Hurricane Irene hit, and Seymour opened its emergency shelter at the Seymour Middle School, a problem became quickly apparent: the toilets at the school wouldn’t flush.
The toilets, typically operated by electronic sensors, were a symptom of a much bigger problem: the school’s emergency generator wasn’t connected to some vital areas of the school needed to operate as an emergency shelter.
“The generator was only connected to some lighting and the refrigerator in the kitchen,” Thomas Eighmie, the town’s emergency management director, said Tuesday (Feb. 21) at the Board of Selectmen meeting.
That meant no lights in most of the building, no flushing toilets, and no heat for the residents who took shelter there in August and again in October after a freak snow storm knocked out power.
The problems were fixed after Seymour borrowed a hospital heater unit from the state and brought three other town generators to the school.
Tuesday (Feb. 21), the selectmen approved transferring $25,000 from the town’s fund balance to the Emergency Shelter Repairs fund to pay to connect the generator to the rest of the school.
“We’re going to do all this and knock on wood, we’ll never have another need for (the shelter),” First Selectman Kurt Miller said Tuesday (Feb 21).
The Board of Finance has not voted on the request yet.
CODE RED
The storms also brought to light another shortfall.
The town’s Code Red emergency notification account didn’t allow for enough minutes to send out constant storm updates to residents.
The town’s account allowed for 21,500 minutes, which in a normal year is enough, Eighmie said.
But during Irene alone, Seymour sent Code Red notifications totaling 24,702 minutes, according to Eighmie. In October, Seymour used another 23,894 minutes.
The overage resulted in about $7,100 in fees.
Eighmie renegotiated the town’s contract and was able to get the fees waived. But the new contract costs $1,750 more over two years.
So instead of paying $8,800 a year, Seymour will now pay about $9,700 a year for unlimited emergency minutes.
On Tuesday the Board of Selectmen also approved a transfer — from the contingency to the Emergency Management account — of $1,500 to help cover those costs. The Board of Finance approved the request at its last meeting.
Selectman Gary Bruce said he’d like to see the town look into a state-run emergency notification system instead, because it’s free.
Eighmie said they have reviewed the system twice and found both times it didn’t fit the needs of the town.