Allan Appel Photo
Tee Kemp works the storm emergency line at 200 Orange St.
A Matterhorn of snow is blocking Fountain Street buses.
Can you park on the odd side once Norton Street’s plowed?
An oil truck can’t get through to make deliveries on Pardee Street, and an ailing Spanish-only-speaking elderly woman is worried to the point of anxiety attack that an ambulance won’t be able to get through on Fulton to help her.
And oh, a representative of Simkins Industries is giving one of the drivers of a snow-filled trailer a hard time about dumping on the company’s East Street site.
These were four of approximately 100 calls within a single hour Tuesday as yet another series of storms hit New Haven. The calls were fielded — and will continued to be fielded Wednesday — by phone-answerers like Tee Kemp. They’re responding to cries of hazard, help, confusion, and complaint at the city’s underground-bunker Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at 200 Orange St..
One of five operators on duty Tuesday morning in a shift that will go from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Kemp is normally a staffer with the city’s prisoner re-entry initiative. She has a calm, professional manner, with an accent of friendliness, just right for the job at hand.
Tuesday she was armed with a caller complaint form, a list of streets highlighted in orange where parking is forbidden on the odd side, and streets in white where you can’t park, period. There’s also a new form to fill out today, a tally form to see what issues people are calling about.
Here’s how one of her busy hours went:
10:00 a.m. Kemp’s phone panel flickers green. A Grand Avenue resident is calling to report a snowbound and overflowing public garbage can on the sidewalk. Kemp records the caller’s name, address, and patiently reads the info back to the caller. She indicates it’ll be taken care of if perhaps not expeditiously given more pressing concerns.
That read-back appears to be important, making the caller feel he’s been listened to.
“When you explain the process, that we’re getting to those fallen people [those who have injured themselves on the ice], and those medical emergencies. Then we start [with issues such as the overflowing trash can],” Kemp says.
“If they’re really irate, we talk them down.”
10:10: A Norton Street resident asks: How come we can’t park on the odd side if it’s just cleared, especially if the even side is so full of snow it’s not parkable?
Kemp’s response: “There’s a ban in effect [on the odd, until further notice] ‘cause emergency personnel need to get through.”
She then suggests the caller park in a Board of Ed lot or ask a neighbor.
Kemp says she has encountered “no screamers and cursers, ‘cause I think I provide impeccable customer service!” She acknowledges that people are frustrated. But once you explain the process and people understand “there’s a system in place, they calm down.”
10:15: The Fountain Street resident calls about the huge bank of snow obstructing the bus route and asks for it to be removed. Kemp duly takes the info. “Is there anything else you want me to put down?” she asks.
Kemp fills out a form for each caller, provided it’s a complaint and not an information request. She and the other operators deposit the forms in a central box, where officials like public works chief John Prokop go through and triage the responses.
If it’s a real emergency, Kemp says, she walks the complaint sheet directly to Prokop’s hand or to Rick Fontana, the deputy director of operations for the city’s Office of Emergency Management. They’re all gathered in the emergency operations center.
In this instance Prokop receives a call that a car with New Jersey plates is sticking out obstructing a safe lane of traffic on Stanley Street going north to Ella Grasso Boulevard. Emergency vehicles wouldn’t be able to get through.
Prokop takes the report and walks it over to Sgt. John Haddad, a police supervisor. He then calls CCS (Central Coordinating Services) unit of the police and fire services and orders a tow.
City Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts says that the city has nine towing companies at the ready, each with a range of trucks that deal with big vehicles or small.
Haddad says the tow guys will likely address the Stanley Street obstruction in between 20 minutes and a half hour.
10: 46:Kemp fields a call from someone in Plainfield who would like to know about clearing her roof of snow.
It turns out that WTNH broadcast the EOC’s phone number statewide. As a result Kemp has to explain (and she does patiently) how the caller should contact with her own town’s officials to get a recommendation for a snow removal company.
In the interim, Kemp’s seatmate, Felicia Green, who normally is John Prokop’s assistant at DPW, has fielded at least two calls from contractors, one as far away as Tennessee, offering snow removal services, for a fee.
10:47: Kemp fields a call from a Spanish-speaking woman in Fair Haven. “Can you take this?” she calls over to Kisha Rodriguez at the desk across the room (foreground in photo with fellow operator Shawn Brown). This is the caller anxious about access to medical personnel if her Fulton Street apartment is snow-blocked.
Rodriguez tells her to call 911 if there’s a medical emergency. She says the woman complains she called the EOC 13 times yesterday. Perhaps she didn’t get a Spanish-speaker; the city keeps one one duty at all times.
“I calmed her down and told her to be patient. She said ‘Gracias.’”
10:50: So far this hour, Kemp and other operators have fielded about 15 to 20 calls each. Kemp observes that now, with the third storm, citizens are getting it, and many are requesting that cars blocking the plows be towed.
Now Kemp is back from a bathroom break to field a caller from Gilbert Street who says a buried car is blocking her driveway. “I read back her information and asked if it’s accurate. She said, “Thank you. What’s your name?’ I said ‘Tee.’ Then she said, ‘Have a beautiful day.’”
No further information available on whether the trailer driver is able to dump his load of snow at the East Street site. Smuts also says that he had requested all 30 aldermen refrain from calling John Prokop, deputy public works chief Howard Weissberg, and city transit czar Jim Travers directly.
“A half hour spent talking to an alderman” has the potential to hamper the work of Prokop and the others, who are key to the EOC operations, said Smuts.
Instead, all calls from aldermen to ordinary citizens are being fielded through the central system — which means people like Tee Kemp.
The city’s Emergency Operations Center, which has been open 24/7 since Friday, will stop taking civilian calls at 203 – 946-8221 as of 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Anyone with questions or concerns can call the police front desk at 203 – 946-6316.