2013.039

Staff, Produced by

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Museum Collections

2013 - 2013

Date(s) Created: 2013 Date(s): 2013

Notes: Archives 2013.039.0014 HOBOKEN HISTORICAL MUSEUM HOBOKEN STORIES: REMEMBERING STORM SANDY INTERVIEWEE: TOM MOLTA INTERVIEWER: EILEEN LYNCH DATE: 15 AUGUST 2013 EL: This is Eileen Lynch, and I'm speaking with Tom Molta. He is the president of the Hoboken Volunteer Ambulance Corps. Tom let's get started. One of the things I want to ask you to talk about is when you first became aware that there was going to be a giant storm, and what were some of the preparations, if any, that the Hoboken Volunteer Ambulance Corps started to take. TM: Our first notification was probably the Tuesday or Wednesday prior to the storm. We were following the weather forecast. It started to ramp up, and we saw that -- they were saying that we were probably going to get a direct hit. The first thing we did was we made sure that all three of our ambulances were in working order. The medical vendor that we deal with for our supplies is [Unclear], right here in "Kearny," so we had ordered additional supplies. We overstocked our ambulances somewhat. We also had our Special Operations team come in the Thursday before. We made sure all our tents were in working order; we made sure that all our oxygen was filled. Standard preparation. In our building, we made sure that we had battery-powered flashlights issued to our members, in the event of power failures. As it started to get closer, we were included in all of the meetings with the city -- with the Office of Emergency Management, the mayor, and you started to see, as -- a lot of people, having gone through Irene the year before -- a lot of people were like, "Well, yeah, they said there was going to be this big storm, and [unclear] it was a washout. Some people got flooded, but it was nowhere near the magnitude they said it was going to be." As it started to get closer, following the weather reports, it was like, "This is going to be the real deal. This isn't going to be a near-miss; this is going to be the real deal. This is the direct hit. This is the hurricane they've been talking about for fifty years, that's finally going to be in this general area." One of the biggest concerns during all those meetings -- we're accustomed to flooding. Hoboken has had a history of flooding, so we're accustomed to the flooding. It's the storm surge. When they started talking about twelve-, fourteen-, eighteen-foot storm surges, it was like, "Hoboken is going to be inundated with water." We had made some provisions that in the event we had to evacuate our building, we had already made arrangements that we would have to go to high ground. So we were going to take refuge, and run our operation possibly out of City Hall -- never expecting it to get to the magnitude that it did (and I'll talk about that later). We ultimately ended up in Stevens Institute of Technology. We didn't just evacuate; we bumped out of our building. EL: Did 707 get flooded? TM: Oh, my god. Our main floor was blown in by the water. We had five and a half feet of water in our building. EL: Wow. At 707 Clinton. TM: At 707 Clinton Street, in our headquarters. And in the thirty-three years that I'm a member there, we never had water come in from the outside. That's the first time we ever had outside water come in. With some of the flooding, we've had our sewer drain back up, and we pushed it out of the building. But we've never had water from the outside come in -- and it literally blew in a bay, our wooden bay door. It shattered it like toothpicks. We had also been in contact with the hospital, because that area, again, was prone to flooding. They had evacuated the hospital during Irene, and they were able to return those patients in 2011; they were able to return those patients within a day or two, because the hospital really didn't sustain that significant of damage. We were able to reopen our ER, I think, in thirty-six hours after the storm. EL: After Irene. TM: After Irene. With this storm, they waited, they waited, and our operation actually started on Sunday, the 28th of October, because Angelo Caprio, who is the Disaster Services OEM -- Officer of Emergency Management -- for the hospital -- he turned around and said, "We need to evacuate the hospital." That was pretty much the prep of it, and our operation, as we were still preparing for -- knowing the storm was coming on Monday -- as we were still preparing, we kind of got put into action because the hospital pulled the trigger and said, "We need to evacuate." EL: So the Hoboken Volunteers assisted with that. TM: The Hoboken Volunteers was the coordinating EMS agency for the evacuation. The way it works is, we need to call the county Office of Emergency Management -- EMS -- which is the emergency medical services coordinator, and that is Mickey McCabe from Bayonne. Then he, through his channels in the Office of Emergency Management, on a state level, he was able to contact multiple ambulances and a coordination team that sat with us. It's a big undertaking to evacuate 138 people. They're already ill. You have to find a facility that's going to take them. Certain patients have to go to certain hospitals. So it was almost a twelve-hour event. We started moving the first patient I would say about 6:00 in the evening -- EL: -- on Sunday? TM: -- on Sunday, 6:00 in the evening on Sunday, which was the 28th of October. We finished up about 4:00-4:30 in the morning. I told everybody at that point, "Go home. Get a couple hours of sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a long day," never, ever thinking it was going to be what it was. We brought a lot of people back on Monday morning. I was doing some riding around with the Ambulance Corps chief's car, and at the first high-tide on Monday morning, I had gone up to the waterfront. And I was like, "Wow. I've never seen the river like this." The river was angry. I couldn't believe it. It looked like the Atlantic Ocean, it really did. EL: All white caps. TM: White caps, and -- EL: And the wind is coming from -- you know the storm is coming from [unclear]. I felt it was like a science fiction movie down there. This is going to be bad. TM: It was awesome. I have a newfound respect for the power of water. But it was absolutely breathtaking to see the river like that. The river had come over a little bit in the morning high-tide, down around the PATH station area. There was a little flooding, but cars could still go through it if they had to. The police were keeping everybody back. I was talking to a couple police officers and saying, "This doesn't look good." He turned around and he goes, "I was here for Irene, and it didn't look anything like that." I said, "Yeah, I agree with you." So we had gone back to our building, and we had made provisions for 15:00 hours -- which is 3:00 in the afternoon. That's when we were going to start staffing additional ambulances and our Special Ops. Everything was going to be up and running. EL: On this Monday. TM: On Monday the 29th. We were sitting in the building. All in all, with the entire storm, it didn't really rain that much. We were waiting for the torrential downpours. It never came to that. It was raining, there was some minor flooding, but the wind started to pick up. Later in the afternoon, the wind started to pick up. We had our three ambulances, and Hoboken High School also has an ambulance. They had mobilized their personnel, so we had an ambulance from the high school in our building. We were manning four ambulances at the time, with the anticipation that the 3:00 crews would go off at midnight. Then at midnight we were going to do twelve-hour operational periods, so the next crew would be on from midnight until noon. Well, that never happened. EL: Those people couldn't get in. TM: The guys who were in our building just kept going, and going, and going. If you asked me what happened Monday -- I could tell you what happened Monday, because that was the starting date. But if you asked me exactly what happened Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I couldn't tell you exact dates and times, because, to me, it was just one run-on day. It never ended; it was ongoing. About 5:30-6:00 in the evening, on Monday the 29th, one of the first calls -- the wind was really starting to pick up. At that time of year, it was just getting dark at 6:00. The first call that came in was a report of an overturned construction trailer at Fifteenth and Washington Streets, with a man trapped underneath. So one of the ambulances was dispatched. EL: Was it in that parking lot? TM: The construction lot across from the [Unclear] building. That had a construction trailer. We had noticed a spike in our call volume from 2:00 in the afternoon. We were starting to see the ambulances getting more calls than they normally would, and there were a lot of people who still thought Hoboken University Medical Center was open. So I think what they were thinking was, "It's probably better if I get in an ambulance and go to the hospital. I'll be safer in the hospital than I will be at home." But then we had to tell them that Hoboken University closed. At that point, we were still able to get in and out of Hoboken, so we were starting to distribute patients. First we went to Jersey City Medical Center. Then we went to [Unclear]. Then we went to Palisades General. You try not to overflow one hospital. As I said, this distress call comes in for the overturned construction trailer with the man in it, a victim in it, and the police had said on the radio -- we get dispatched by the police department. They said, "We don't have any police officers to send. You're on your own. Let us know what you've got when you get there." So the ambulance responded, and myself and the captain -- his name is Mark Harris -- we responded in the chief's car. The construction trailer itself was up on cinder blocks, and it had been knocked off the cinder blocks. EL: By the water? TM: By the wind. So one side of it was off the blocks, and the other side was still up on the blocks. Mark said, "I'm going to go see if there's anybody in there." So I kept the crew back from the ambulance, and I had a flashlight. We had these big Rands. I had a big Rand, and I said, "I'll stay at the fence. This way you can see the light from my beam, so you can get back out." As he went over the fence, to head toward the trailer, a gust of wind came up and picked up a twenty-foot-long, eight-foot-wide, twelve-foot-high construction trailer. It picked it up and turned it upside down. I can't gauge wind, but it had to be eighty miles an hour if not more. It moved us. Where we were standing, it pushed us. It just moved you. There was no way you can fight this; it just moved you. Like I could move this chair, that's how the wind moved you. So I screamed a couple of expletives: "Mark, get the *** out of there!" He says, "Let me see if he's in there." I said, "If he's in there, he's dead. If he's in there, he's already dead." Well, he made it to the trailer, he looked in the windows, and thank god, the trailer was empty. It was a night watchman; he had bailed out. I said, "Come on. We've got to get out of there." While all this is going on, we didn't even realize that just maybe -- it was dark now. Maybe 500 feet north of us there was a raging river on Hudson Street and Washington Street. The water was white caps -- white caps, in the city streets -- EL: -- from the cove. TM: -- coming right over the cove. That's where it was coming in from. I looked at Mark and I said, "We've got to get back to the building." So we took the crew, we went back, and my wife -- when we got back to the building we were listening to the police radio, and they started saying, "Here it comes. Observer Highway being taken over by the Hudson River. Newark Street is impassable." It was just getting worse and worse. "Sinatra Drive is underwater. Nobody can get near Sinatra Drive." So my wife called me. I live right across street from the hospital. I lived in 10 Church Towers. So when I look out my living-room window, I look at the emergency room driveway. My wife says to me, "Tommy, you can't believe this. Fourth Street is a raging river. There is water coming down Fourth Street with white caps on it; it's actually moving the parked cars." And that's only three blocks from the Ambulance Corps. So I said to her, "You guys are safe." They're on the seventh floor. I said, "You guys are safe. Anticipate the power going out, but just stay put. I'll be in touch [unclear]." EL: At this point we still had power. TM: Yes. So I looked at the captain, and Mark and I worked -- I felt like I was married to him for a week! [Laughs] We were together more than we were with our families. I looked at Mark and I said, "Four streets impassable, and it's coming this way. We have to make a decision. Are we staying or are we going?" He turned around and said, "I think we better go." He said, "Because look." I said, "What?" He said, "Come here." He was standing at the threshold to the door. When we looked down Clinton Street, the A&P parking lot was underwater. It actually had current to it; it was moving water. Swift water. We call it, in the rescue business, swift water. It was swift water. So we got our members -- we had thirty-seven people in the building, including Mark and myself, and we told them, "We're bailing out. Get everything you can possibly carry, load it in an ambulance, and go to Ninth and Washington Street. We'll figure out where we're going from there." We had nowhere to go. We're going to high ground. So the guys did the best they could. They grabbed whatever they could. We did a head count. One of our other officers, whose name is David Docherty -- he's one of my lieutenants -- Doch, myself, and Mark, the captain, stayed at the building. We got everybody out into the vehicles, and I said, "All right. Here's what I want you to do. Doch, you go to the third floor. Sweep the third floor, make sure there's nobody up there. Mark, you go to the second floor. Make sure there's nobody left in the building." They ran up, they cleared the building, they came down, and I said, "Okay. Now you two guys stay right here." I went up, I did a secondary, to make sure there was nobody in the building. I said, "All right, you guys get in the vehicle." We actually killed our own power in the building, figuring it would go out anyway, but we would protect the computers and stuff. We shut down the power. So we killed our own power, and we closed the door to the Ambulance Corps, and we were like homeless. We got in our chief's car, and we met the other ambulances up on Ninth and Washington. By this time it was raining a little harder, and the rain was coming down sideways. The rain hurt. When it hit you, it actually hurt. You were being pelted, and you could start hearing and seeing the transformers popping all over time. So Doch turns around and he goes, "What about Stevens?" EL: As a place to put yourselves. TM: We were contemplating, in the vehicle, in the chief's car, "Where are we going to go? We can't stay in the middle of Ninth and Washington." And City Hall, at that point -- that was where the emergency operation center was. There was a lot of activity going on down there. The last thing they needed was ambulances parked all around City Hall. So we said, "Well, you know what? It's worth a shot. Let's go up there." We went the wrong way up Eighth Street, with the whole contingent of ambulances. There was a Stevens police officer coming down Eighth Street when he saw us all coming up. He's a friend of ours; we know him. His name is Junior. He got out of the car and he went like this to me. He said, "Tommy. What's going on?" And I said, "We got no building. It's underwater. Is there anywhere we can stage these ambulances?" He says, "I've got one better than that. Let me make a call." He got in his radio car, he went on the radio, and he says, "All right, they're opening up the Shaffer Gym for you guys." I'm sorry. The Walker Gym. We were in the Walker Gym. He says, "They're opening up the Walker Gym for you guys. You guys stay there as long as you need to." EL Wow. That was great. TM: [Unclear] We had two means of egress, in and out. It was a big, open space. The only downside was it didn't have backup power, so the lights had gone out up there at this point. While we were staying up at Stevens, again -- you're almost star struck. We were looking out from Stevens, which is high ground, obviously -- we're looking out over Hoboken, and Jersey City, and Union City, and you could see the blue flashes going off all over the place. The wind is howling, and explosions going off, and there's no lights. EL: The transformers. TM: Yeah -- and no lights. Mark and I had gotten called down to the emergency operation center to have a meeting -- because now it was starting to get really bad. By now it's about 9:30-10:00 on Monday night, into Tuesday, and the fire department had lost all their communications. Because when Stevens Institute went out, the backup generators didn't kick right in. A couple of our guys are comms guys. EL: What is "comms" guys? TM: Communications technicians, and ham radio operators. Actually, one of the guys who was already interviewed -- Lou Casciano -- Lou and another member of the Ambulance Corps, Alex Chadis went to Stevens, to try to get the fire department repeater back up and running. They went there with a generator and a bunch of tools, to see what they could do to get it up. So I guess we spent about two or three hours at the emergency operations center, and then we went back to Stevens. When we got back to Stevens, Dave Docherty and another lieutenant, Michael Bruno, had transformed this gym into a "cached" collection point; a triage area. EL: A place to actually bring people? TM: Because, at this point, now, it was impassable to get out of Hoboken to a hospital. So, while all this is going on, we're in the emergency operation center, and we hear one of our ambulances get dispatched to a call. They said, "All right." I don't remember -- the call sign was probably 134. They said, "One-three-four. We're going to be transporting a male victim to -- we'll try and make Christ Hospital. He's having an MI." An MI is a myocardial infarction; it's a heart attack. He said, "He is actively having an MI right now." EL: And this was Hoboken. TM: It was a Hoboken call, and they were trying to get to Christ Hospital. So they were driving the ambulance down Second Street, and Second Street, between Bloomfield and Garden -- there was water, but not a lot at this point. They got down between Garden and Park, the water was a little deeper, and when they got down to the Willow Avenue block, the water was to the hubcaps on the ambulance. So the driver of the ambulance had his driver's-side window open to let a cross-breeze through, so the windows wouldn't fog over on him. When he got to the intersection of Second and Clinton, something caught his attention, and when he turned his eyes to the left, there was a literal tidal wave coming down the street that just overtook the ambulance. The water came right in through the driver's window, and filled the ambulance with water. Now they've got a patient in the back, having a heart attack. So the four members who were on the ambulance -- one of them, his name is Brandon Escobar -- he did two tours in Iraq, so he was accustomed to dangerous situations. He said, "Okay." He got on the radio and he said, "One-three-four. We've been overtaken by the water. We're in the water -- literally. We have a patient. We need emergency evacuation. You're going to need a boat to get o us. We're stuck on Second Street between Clinton and Grand. There's no way out. The water has overtaken the ambulance, and we're evacuating our patient. We've got a floater." So they took a backboard (backboards will float), they slid a backboard under this -- now, mind, you, he's having a heart attack. They slid a backboard underneath him, secured him to the backboard. The four members were about chest-deep in water. They slid him out of the ambulance, and had him up over their heads, on their shoulders, trying to manipulate him out. The fire department made it a priority call, obviously, and the rescue company actually went there with a boat. So when they got there, they took the now-boarded heart-attack patient, put him in the boat, and then the boat had to bring him to Third and Park Avenue. That was the nearest place we could get an ambulance. Now, mind you, we've lost one of our ambulances. The other ambulance meets them at Third and Park Avenue. Now our four members are drenched. They need to be taken care of, and they need to do something with this gentleman -- who, at this point, now, is going into hypothermia on top of -- because he's wet -- he's going into hypothermia on top of having a heart attack. EL: Oh, my god. TM: So they couldn't even get him to the "cache" collection point we had established at Stevens. They wound up bringing him to police headquarters, on First and Hudson -- EL: -- because that was closer. TM: They bring him up to police headquarters; they bring him in, and the cops at police headquarters -- they have no power. They're working with battery-powered lanterns. The only power they had supplied the radio system, and they said, "Well, what are we going to do with him here? We've got to get him out of here. We've got to find a way to get him to a hospital. Otherwise, he's going to die." So one of the cops said, "Let me go try to find a way out of town for you." They literally stripped this poor guy naked, in the middle of police headquarters. There were blankets there. They wound up getting the wet clothes off of him -- EL: -- and wrapped him up. TM: They wrapped him up. Now, at this point, they're running out of oxygen -- because he's been on oxygen now for forty-five minutes -- almost an hour. Ultimately, they were able to get him back in the ambulance. They took him off the backboard, they sat him on a stretcher, which is a lot more comfortable than being on a board. They got him in an ambulance, and the police department found a way that took them down to Washington Street, that took them literally right down the center of Washington Street, with water flooding on both sides. It was passable, but they had to go down the center of Washington. I think they made the turn on Eleventh, and they had to go through the Malibu parking lot to avoid the puddles. Then they had to get to the far side of the viaduct, off Fourteenth Street, and once you got up the viaduct the water was coming down, so it wasn't bad. Once they got out of that area, they were able to get up to Christ Hospital and deliver the patient. After all he had been through -- and this gentleman had a history of cardiac -- after all he had been through, he survived. The four members -- Tyrone Huggins, Brandon Escobar, Valentina Miangolarra, and Damar Grant -- they were the first four members in the history of the Ambulance Corps, since 1971, they were the first four members ever to receive the Medal of Honor -- which is the criteria to receive -- we give awards to our members, and the criteria to receive the Medal of Honor is you have to put your own life in danger for your patient. With that, the four of them almost drowned. They almost drowned. There was no doubt about it. EL: Just walking through that water. TM: They could have fallen through an open manhole. EL: They could have had a cut -- who knows? TM: Well, that was the other thing, too. All of our guys were out there in waist-deep water, at any given time. Were you in Hoboken during that? There was sewage. There was gasoline, petroleum products -- you had diesel fuel, oil, floating on the water. While all this was going on, we lost another ambulance. We lost a second unit, so now we were down to two ambulances. Yeah. It was overtaken by water, parked at a call. They parked it at the call, and when they came out they couldn't get out of the building. They had to send a pay-loader, a bucket truck, to get them. There were other calls coming into the emergency operations center, and into our comms center. A woman waited ten hours for an ambulance at 310 Jackson Street. She had difficulty breathing, and we just couldn't get to her. You just couldn't get there. EL: Yes. Because that was bad back there. TM: Oh, my god. Ten-twelve-feet deep. Excuse me. When she finally got an ambulance on Tuesday -- she had been calling since Monday night, for chest pains and difficulty breathing. We finally got an ambulance to her on Tuesday, and they had, literally, a pay-loader, a bucket loader -- we put two EMTs in the bucket loader, with a stair chair and a first-aid jump bag, with oxygen. The pay-loader was towing a small boat. They brought them to the building, and raised the bucket to the second-floor hallway window, where our crew members got off the bucket, climbed in the second-floor window -- she happened to be on seven. So they walked up the five flights of stairs, got her, brought her down five flights of stairs in a stair-chair, loaded her into the pay-loader with the EMTs. The pay-loader turned around, brought the bucket down, they took her from the bucket to the boat, and then had her take the boat to Third and Park. For some reason, Third and Park Avenue became our launch point, for the boats. It was just the way the water flooded in Hoboken: It was a great place to launch a boat, and it was a great place to bring a boat back to. So we were able to get an ambulance in on Third and Park, and keep taking them out from there. But she ultimately ended up going, like I said, from the bucket-loader into the boat; from the boat to Third and Park Avenue; and it wasn't like -- EL: -- to an ambulance at Third and Park. TM: -- to an ambulance, yeah. But it wasn't like you were rowing the boat, or it wasn't that people had a rope and they were pulling the boat. These boats had motors. There was enough water that you were able to use a motor. It was deep enough that you could drive a boat from 310 or 320 Jackson Street -- one or the other -- all the way to Third and Park Avenue. We did over 850 calls in a ten-day period. EL: Were most of them heart attacks, trouble breathing? I would imagine there would be a lot of anxiety out there. TM: I was just going to say -- there was a tone of anxiety. There were a lot of people -- there's a class that we take in ongoing training. It's called "Sick-Non-Sick." It teaches you how to evaluate a patient. Are they really, really sick? Or are they not that sick? One of the things we were noticing was a lot of anxiety attacks. I didn't know there were so many people in Hoboken on in-home oxygen. A lot of them don't have regular oxygen bottles, they have what they call oxygen generators, powered by electricity. So people were calling, saying, "I need my oxygen. I have no power." High-rise buildings -- no elevators. Hallways were pitch-black in the middle of the day, and we were taking these people down -- we initially tried to bring them to the "cache" collection point -- EL: -- up at Stevens. TM: -- at Stevens, to leave them on oxygen. But our generators -- we were using portable generators. They couldn't handle the load. So we ultimately started having to take these people to -- Christ Hospital was the only hospital that was open. Jersey City Medical Center flooded out. We couldn't get out of town to go to Palisades General. So Christ Hospital was receiving not only all of Hoboken's ambulances, but the majority of Jersey City's ambulances, Union City, West New York, Weehawken -- they had beds in Christ Hospital lined up down the hall for as far as you could see. I think we must have brought 300 people there. We had 850 calls. A lot of them we brought to the "cache" collection point. And, again, with that Sick/Not-Sick theory -- if we could bring them to the "cache" collection point and leave them on oxygen for a little while, get them a hot meal -- a lot of these people hadn't had food in two days. A lot of diabetics -- diabetics not making proper provision for food in their home; or, again, Lou was instrumental -- the CERT team and Lou, when it came to getting these people their prescriptions -- insulin was a big, big thing. Who didn't make provision to have their insulin? You're a diabetic, you need their insulin. Not their fault; they just didn't think it was going to be all that bad. But was not just the hurricane. There were so many other factors that came into play. You never realize how much you depend upon electricity until you don't have it. Your whole life depends on electrics, and EMS -- the ambulance -- everything is electric. We plug the ambulances in, because we charge our suction units; we charge our defibrillators; we have to charge our radios. We were relying on generator power; then fuel became a concern. Now the ambulances are starting to run low on fuel. We were getting fuel wherever we could. One of our special services units -- one of the generators we were using was a diesel generator. We couldn't get diesel fuel. The vehicle they had brought to Stevens, that carried the equipment, that was able to make the casualty collection point -- Mark and I again -- said, "Well, that's not moving for a while." He said, "Yeah." I said, "I've got an idea." We got two five-gallon Gatorade containers, that we were never going to use again (coolers), and I said to him, "Do you want to do it, or should I?" Now ... [truncated due to length]