By this time next year, New Haven might not have to call on New York City’s fire boat to tackle blazes in the harbor. With federal dollars, the city plans have a new dock to tie up its new police/fire boat, and a new security camera system to spot emergencies.
Currently, a harbor fire triggers an emergency call to New York City, where the nearest fire boat is docked. And maritime police emergencies require a call to Milford for the closest police boat.
All that would change if the city can build a new dock for a fire, police, and EMS response boat it’s ready to purchase.
Wednesday night the Board of Aldermen’s Public Safety Committee approved the paperwork for the submission of a grant request for construction of a $142,000 dedicated floating dock near the Sound School that will be the berth of the city’s future rescue boat.
The committee also voted to approve a $280,093 grant request for a new software system that would tie together the sundry security cameras in operation at the harbor.
The dock grant request will be made to the port security program of the federal Transportation Security Administration, part of the Homeland Security department. New Haven, along with Bridgeport and New London, are part of what is known as Sector Long Island, said Maggie Targove, the city’s deputy director of emergency management, administration, and planning. This year it received $2.2 million for port security. How to use those monies is decided by maritime committees composed of police, port, and other officials from the three affected harbors.
The floating dock will be deployed off Sea Street at the small marina that is home to the teaching boats of the maritime-themed high school at City Point. The dock, which will be home port to the emergency response boat, is eight feet wide by 160 feet long. It is to be located at the Sound School facilities because “you want to keep it outside the port” said Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts. That’s just in case there’s a problem in the port, it will be safe and close enough to respond quickly.
A request for money for the emergency fire, police, and rescue boat that will tie up at the new dock was submitted to and approved by the same federal source in a previous round of grant-making.
Click here to read a story about the boat, which will pump hundreds of gallons of water a minute and also offer the city protection against chemical and biological emergencies.
Allan Appel Photo
Maggie Targove & Rob Smuts.
The city has narrowed potential vendors of the response boat down to two Canadian firms; Hike Metal and Metal Craft Marine. The custom built boat will be ready in about eight months, once a purchase is made, according to Targove, who made a presentation to the committee Wednesday evening along with Smuts.
New Haven’s police department has a 13-member dive team and a Zodiac, a motorized inflatable, capable of doing certain kinds of emergency operations. The new response boat, as the grant application refers to it, will be 36 feet long and feature fire, police, and EMS equipment.
Smuts said the new boat can tackle fires by shooting water from its cannon, or foam.
New Haven last had an operating fire boat in the 1980s, named the Sally Lee (after former Mayor RIchard Lee’s daughter).
Smuts called premature the question of what to name the new boat.
Annex Alderman Al Paolillo expressed dismay at the slow pace of enhancements to port security. Smuts said the city is well aware that “there’s a lot of critical infrastructure in your ward that can be accessed from the water.”
Panopticon Preparations
Committee Chair and Vice Chair Alex Rhodeen (right) & Gerald Antunes.
Committee members Wednesday also discussed another port security grant submission for a software program that will enable all security cameras in the harbor ultimately to be managed and read via a single server. That includes cameras deployed by police, fire, and other agencies throughout the city.
The new platform will be provided by a Milestone Server, said Targove. Cameras will be able to tilt and zoom. Footage could be read by authorized personnel at access points such as police headquarters and, ultimately, on the mobile computer consoles in police cars and cycles.
A secondary phase of the project is to integrate all the cameras of other large agencies, such as the Board of Ed, into the single system. Currently the BOE is on a different security camera system from the police and the port. Smuts said the Board of Ed pays somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000 for companies to monitor the school buildings cameras and alarms.
When Antunes expressed skepticism that a beseiged NHPD could handle additional alarm calls from the schools, Smuts tried to assure him. If the software lives up to potential, the BOE could pay the city, not a private vendor, to monitor and respond to school alarms, Smuts said. He predicted that the BOE and city coffers would both benefit from such an arrangement.
Targove called the whole project “exciting.” She said cameras in Bridgeport and New London harbors as well as DOT’s equipment all along the interstate could potentially all be integrated into the new Milestone-based system.
Who down the road would pay for such integration?
She did not have all the answers. “This is just the beginning,” she said. She called next year one of fact-finding, with beginning implementation next summer.