Sandy Volunteers Laid The Groundwork For Hoboken To Handle COVID-19

HOBOKEN, NJ — When Superstorm Sandy wiped out the power in most of mile-square Hoboken in October 2012, the city's relatively new CERT team of Volunteers were pressed into service to deliver prescriptions and water and help in other emergent matters.

Eight years later, some of the same volunteers — now older and wiser — were called up when a new pandemic arrived and people had questions.

"I participated in our CERT COVID Call Center almost daily," said volunteer Maggie Shields recently. "I think the experience of having supervised and staffed the Call Center during Sandy taught me how to research and reach out for solutions from different agencies."

She added, "There was also the lesson that there were a few times when there just was not a solution, and the best I could do was to sympathize [and] empathize with the caller."

From spring 2020 to 2021, Hoboken's CERT team put their Sandy training into action, making testing appointments for people, answering questions, or just assuring them they were available to help.

Jack Silbert, a lieutenant in Hoboken CERT, said this week, "Sandy was our then-new team's first experience running shelters, operating points of distribution for basic goods, and other skills that have become routine for us in the years since. And membership increased tenfold in the year after Superstorm Sandy, as many residents realized the importance of helping out their community in trying times."

Current CERT volunteer Barry Grossman said that while he wasn't on the team during Sandy, he was close to those who were, and it inspired him to get involved soon after.

"Seeing the teamwork and collaboration with professionals inspired me to take the training class and volunteer as time permitted," he said this week. "Helping out at the City COVID Center was at times challenging and inspiring, under the CERT leadership of John Dalton and Jack Silbert."

He noted, "The resources from the city, county, state and federal level were changing on a regular basis, as was the knowledge of the virus — we were seeing the medical research in real time."

“At every stage, we got what seem to be weird call at first,” said COVID hotline coordinator John Dalton last year. "One morning, someone called and said they had ‘covid toes.’ We didn’t know what ‘covid toes’ were at the time.”

Sandy was also practically unprecedented in the modern era: the NOAA says that Sandy was the second most costly hurricane to hit the U.S. since 1900. It also made a rare direct hit to New Jersey.

Hoboken has weathered both pandemic waves and severe storms in the last two years, and CERT is still there to help. READ MORE: Sandy Bright And Dark In Hudson County: A 10-Year Lookback

The CERT team's COVID call center closed in spring of 2021, a year after the pandemic reached the U.S. READ MORE: Year At Helm Of Hoboken Coronavirus Hotline: What Volunteers Saw

Find out more about CERT here.