Touring tornado-damaged homes in Mullica Hill, Gloucester County, New Jersey, United States
is uh [Music] um foreign um back here in front of my eyes not having never doubled something like this you know uh in front of my eyes last night within minutes and then within an hour the coordination in my local site and our fire department director just appointed two weeks ago by the way it was stellar and there were people in the room all over all the communities surrounding electrical online and county so i want to make sure you meet dan kelly before we break today dan works in our office and he's been overseeing uh disasters in this state for longer than you care irene sandy uh if there are any individual family members here i don't know if behind us um are there any at some point are there any family members here i'd love to say hello to some folks we appreciate all the help okay okay look at them haven't seen you since uh i want to thank mayor lou menzo for hosting us uh with this unspeakable uh extraordinary event uh as i said to him he and i have gotten to know each other over the past 24 hours not necessarily in the way that we would have hoped i want to thank the senate president steve sweeney the congressman donald norcross county uh commissioner director bob damager uh superintendent of state police colonel pat callahan dan kelly on my team uh assemblyman berzicelli an assemblyman spearman uh i think that's that's it with who's with us up here um you know an extraordinary sadly tragic historic 24 hours in new jersey there's no other way to put it um needless to say look on either side of us right now in the impact of this these tornadoes that touch down in this county and and here obviously mullica hill but also in winona deptford woodbury township um thank god unless someone knows otherwise casualties are extremely limited which is there but for the grace of god which is extraordinary look at the house behind us if if you want to get a sense of how it could have been and as steve sweeney has said if you look at either side of the path of this you've got houses to the left and right which are largely intact if not completely intact and yet you've got houses that right in the path that are destroyed up north the story was less tornadoes but overwhelming flooding uh and largely the big roads are open although 78 and 280 are still works in progress and there are a lot of off-ramps and other road challenges that we still have before us but it was largely a storm with tornadoes being the big story in the south and flooding being the big story in the central and northern part of the state um and this is going to take us some time to dig out of there's no question about it and i want to just say on behalf of all of us we're going to stay here and be by the side of the residents and the small businesses that have been impacted so so severely you're barely getting if you're a small business you're barely getting back in your feet from a pandemic and you get whacked by this and you ask yourself rightfully life's not so fair sometimes but i promise that we will stay with everybody and it won't be a short road but we will stay with them on that road to recovery i just got off which is why i'm a few minutes late with the fema administrator chris well i've said to to her and she's been terrific and her team has been terrific that we will be sending in a major uh disaster declaration request today um i will speak shortly with the president and reiterate that and thank him for his support and health um and that will be a game changer if we are if that is accorded in terms of our ability to get individuals families businesses and our infrastructure and the cleanup back to where it should be nj transit is a work in progress both on the rail and the bus side somewhat depending on where you are in the state versus the atlantic city line i'm told has been clear sailing which is good news but that's not the case for most every other line in the central and northern part of the state as i mentioned the highways getting a work in progress the parkway and turnpike are wide open north to south and that's good we've got a couple of challenges still on the interstates and as i mentioned some local off-ramp type issues that are going to take some time to fix we have had fatalities i won't get into the details or the numbers we did not have them here thank god but we have had them uh in the central and northern part of the state so please keep those folks in your prayers and as we get more specificity on that we will obviously let you know but sadly more than a few folks have passed as a result of this i think that is it as a general matter other than as i say we'll we'll be we'll stay at this as long as it takes i will likely be doing some more stops later this afternoon probably in central and northern part of the state and those will be largely getting a handle on the on the flooding impact there again we keep all of the victims but both individuals families small businesses on main street in our prayers and again we will not relent we will stand by the sides of everybody who's been impacted by this in new jersey until we get back uh on our feet i guess i'll close with a pretty obvious statement but the the world is changing right these storms are coming in more frequently steve and i were on the phone last night on this topic they're coming in more frequently they're coming in more with more intensity uh and as it relates to our infrastructure our resiliency our whole mindset the playbook that we use uh we have got to we got to leap forward uh and get out ahead of this uh any infrastructure money we get i'll bet you a lot of it will be put into resilient infrastructure because that's exactly what you need when you're the most densely populated state in the nation with our extraordinary location which is second to none um i think any amount of investment we can make in the years ahead in resilient infrastructure will will be investment that will help us please god if we have to deal with things like this going forward in the years ahead anybody want to add anything guys just from the federal side first of all thank you governor for being here steve the legislative team for new jersey and certain the commissioners and myron township i'm looking across the street and that could be any of our closets the shoes are there and behind me swing set that children could have been playing on the fact that people were not killed or seriously injured is just amazing but when we look at this and we were in washington last night monitoring we were in session until three o'clock this morning we jumped on the train and literally i got stopped in delaware because we couldn't get into philadelphia or above as you know this is a problem that's going on but we never had tornadoes of this nature when we grew up occasionally a small one what we see behind here is change and you mentioned the infrastructure that's exactly what we're working on luckily we're going to get that done and bring those much-needed resources to what we have here today speaking with fema we reloaded them because this storm was supposed to make a right-hand turn go out to sea by north and south carolina but as we go into labor day weekend i want to say thank you to all those who labored to help the people behind us whether you're the utility for electricity or your neighbor helping them pull out that's what makes new jersey a great state we help each other in times of need and we're going to need more help so based on that we just want to thank all you who helped then certainly if you're having trouble obviously give our office a call certainly the legislators insurance issues certainly we want to be there for help with that steve come on down thanks tom i i want to start with thanking our first responders they come out they're the front line of defense and they do a hell of a job for us and they put their own safety at risk the county's oem is outstanding the coordination everyone working together to make things work and talking to bob last night and lou the mayor and most importantly the governor because i asked him for some help and help came last night thank you man because we have a lot of trees down you know you're seeing property damage here but as you travel through this county looks like a bomb hit in some places and getting those trees cleaned up is critically important so governor i just want to say thank you for stepping up once again to help the citizens of this county and the state look anybody's a global warming denier take a look at what's going around as donald said you might had an occasional storm and it wasn't anything these things are getting stronger and there's more damage we got to do something about you because it's too late now but governor thank you thank you steve governor for the families that are waiting for the female funds families impacted are there state funds they can look at or is that red cross how do they get help right now yeah we will probably be not probably will be putting up a whole lot of information on where people should either go websites or calls or phone numbers rather to go to and it will be both a combination of state federal and third parties like the red cross and it will obviously depend in part whether or not you've got a structure like this versus whether it's water damage etc um i i want to reiterate before we take a couple of questions the points that these guys just made in particular on first responders i was in a room this morning at the statewide traffic management system with with the colonel and and dan and nobody in that room i i slept a couple hours lou i suspect you didn't sleep much last night or bob nobody in that room had slept so to the atlantic city electric team to the d.o.t folks dep to the county bob to you and your colleagues at the county the state police the local teams oems cannot thank you enough you're on a pedestal brian bob come on before you take questions i'm bob dominger i'm the director of the board of commissioners in gloucester county before the governor takes some questions just want to put it out we have all these cameras here it's the easiest way to get out to people in gloucester county anyone affected by this storm in gloucester county and the tornadoes the red cross is set up at the gloucester county institute of technology and are there to help serve you so that's great thank you everyone get that because as bob says we get a lot of cameras on us let's take advantage of it right brian governor you and legislature steve sweeney speaker have charted a fairly ambitious course against climate change this is and you've said several times they're becoming more intense the storms uh more frequent does this suggest you that we need to accelerate the efforts that are already underway unequivocally yes uh and i think i don't know where donald went but the federal infrastructure bill uh that is being uh debated god willing voted on sooner than later i should say bills you've got two different buckets there any amount of that will be of huge help toward our efforts i just want to make sure this isn't i can't see this thing yeah i believe this may be the president so i'm just going to take this and make sure tell him i settle out bob damager mr president says i think i missed that but um the answer is unequivocally yes i assume you all would agree i'm sorry state and federal but there's only we will put state resources into this as we have done and we'll continue to do but the game changer here is the feds and the work that donald is doing with federal dollars weather service please quick enough on their phones to get to their basement saved their lives alerts also went out uh flood emergencies for up north yet a lot of people were still trapped in their cars some died in their cars sadly don't know even how many water rescues there were is there a way to improve to get people off these roads when these flash flood emergencies are issued before the inevitable yeah it's a great question we had this very conversation the colonel and i and others this morning thank god the alerts worked in this case right so as bad as the damages behind us i'm told that family was in the house and went to the basement and they're alive as a result of it steve you told me last night you went to the basement people did the right thing i don't know i i this is a personal opinion i'm not sure and we're going to look at this i'm not sure it's a difference of the alerts because the alerts did go out i got them myself on my phone but i think people hear flooding and they hear tornado and i think perhaps they put them into a different category and and sadly we can't do that and people paid with their lives as a result of that yesterday but we're going to look at the entire system there were too many cars on the road uh and too many cars thank god most of them were abandoned and people got out safely but that was not the case for everyone sadly please uh sure yeah obviously this is an unprecedented event for us locally and even regionally and what i will say is how impressed i was as i arrived at our you know office of operation for emergency management at our fire hall last night maybe at 6 45 and at that point it was just me and my oem director and a couple of firefighters and i watched the process coordinated by the county and i want to you know give the county their due with you know director damager and that's the way it's supposed to work where everything is coordinated through the through the county i watched it crystallize in front of my eyes over the next 30 40 50 60 minutes where everything was coordinated and nothing was dispatched and we had people now filling the room ready to work and that's the other part of this this support from our neighboring communities and from individuals just showing up in the middle of at that point a torrential rainstorm after the tornado had left and filling our fire house ready to be dispatched but not doing anything based on our local oem you know directive that we have to hear from the county first they did a stellar job thank god and only by the grace of god was there no loss of life or serious injury to be dealt with during that critical first hour or 90 minutes but by the time we got through that the coordination it was like clockwork and it was really something to behold and i literally was just watching it all happen incredible where we go from here is it's a focus on our residents and their health and well-being first of all and therefore if there is a sheltering need or any type of support that is coming to us you know in spades where we're just getting so much so many offers for that that will be our our focus and we have that coordinated locally from a township perspective and then it becomes about these homes and the damage to them and the digging out cleaning up and rebuilding and look that's where americans new jerseyans you know quintessentially come together and we saw it last night and we're seeing it now everybody supports one another the help will be there we'll clean up we'll dig out we'll rebuild i want to make one final comment the you know the governor and again i cannot thank enough the fact that the levels of support from all levels of government i got my you know congressman from a different district by the way okay congress new across is here i've got obviously my my district legislative district representatives here my my good friend senate senate president sweeney and bob damager and the governor comes down so that support is incredible but at the end of the day what the governor said it's residential impact and then business impact locally we were lucky enough where not many of our businesses were physically impacted however and this is the last comment i want to make and put a put a light on it we had our farming community affected and that is you know they are the foundational pillar of where we where we are and they have been for generations locally the graso family farm was devastated it's basically gone and speaking with him at 11 30 last night he is devastated but as he said he will rebuild he had his farming community family around him pledging their support to help him get through the rest of the season and and somehow salvage whatever that might be and rebuild and just north of us in mantua the ecos farm the largest dairy farm i believe governor uh in the state with 250 plus cows where we're told at this point they've lost as much as you know as a hundred of those cows uh it's devastating to that business and to that you know to that culture and we want to i want everybody to just keep them in your thoughts and prayers now well thank you and lou you you make a very important point it's farms here and then if you go into the central part of the state northern part of the state it's main street businesses i saw a uh video of milburn in essex county last night you you and i looked at that a raging river down main you know right down the middle of town and those all those small businesses are are crushed and the farms down here are crushed and there are homes obviously in all over the state maybe take one more we got to keep up commissioner was down in mars river township last week yep uh morris river township senator testa helped set it up yep they were asking him for storm mitigation protection measures yeah he left without committing any yeah what do you guys say about it listen he's doing a lot in fairness to him the dep is just you may have seen put out a big report with the army corps of engineers which is a preliminary uh report but a big one as it relates to resiliency uh as up against storms that that's more focused on the shore than it is on the the shore largely was in was was uh came through last night okay most of what we're dealing with the overwhelming amount of what we're dealing with is inland uh but they'll be there i promise you but it's the it's the game changer will be continuing to do what we're doing and god willing do more and then with donald's help and other colleagues adding on top of that the federal the federal money to really that's the game changer in terms of building the resilient infrastructure we need maybe one last one sir can you uh harrison township where we're at right now mulligan hill woodbury heights deferred winona was hit hard um several of the other towns weren't hit as hard but just got a piece of it but mantua was hit hard manchua winona harrison township i think were the hardest hit yeah and on the outskirts woodbury heights a little bit of woodbury so you know and i just want to let you know and to the people who live here and the residents that are here i know every one of these gentlemen very well that are standing around me this isn't just a photo op for a bunch of politicians to stand here these people will be here for the residents of this community and the rest of gloucester county and they'll they'll all tell you to wrote many of their words we're not walking away from anybody we'll be here through the process right governor you betcha and you can count on us you need anything you call me in the county you call your your local legislature our congressman will help out and you know all the way up to the governor so we're here for the duration we're not going anywhere we're not nobody's left behind so thank you so extremely well said bob and and i just want to underscore that with great emphasis so to the colonel and bob lou thank you for hosting us steve you're being attacked here bill donald john to all everybody here especially to the residents who have been impacted so severely we are with you this won't be overnight by the way this is going to be a longer road than any of us would like but we will not relent and we will stay with you every step of the way thank you all god bless you
2021-09-07 02:54
