由艺术纰漏
After the "near miss" of Hurricane Irene in the late summer of 2011, New Jersey first responders took a harder look at dealing with disasters of such magnitude. Most of the state's emergency personnel had never really experienced storms of this type. So even though we had ample warning for Sandy, no one had any inkling that the devastation would be even a small fraction of what it was. Many nor'easters have come through the state, causing major flooding; tremendous property damage; and, far too often, loss of life. Many agencies reacted by developing a response protocol and the resources to handle the problems encountered. Researching past events, they identified problem flooding areas and formulated plans to rescue and relocate civilians affected.
Sadly, many communities not affected by these floods over the past decades failed to envision how their response areas would be affected. Not that they totally ignored the problem, but developing the response units to handle these types of flooding issues is costly, and it's hard to persuade those providing the funding that you need water rescue capabilities in communities without even a single body of water. So, alternatively, many other communities looked to existing resources and set up mutual-aid agreements. Unfortunately, during Sandy, most of these resources were too busy in their own communities.
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