Response
The storm resulted in a state of emergency being declared by Governor David Paterson in sixteen counties in New York. Up to 300,000 utility customers lost service in New York's Capital District. By Sunday evening, 14 December, 126,000 were still estimated to be without power.
Fire departments in Albany and Rensselaer County ran non-stop all weekend answering calls ranging from fires to wires down. It is estimated that both counties received tens of thousands of calls by the Saturday after the storm.
In Massachusetts up to one million residents and businesses lost power due to the storm, causing Governor Deval Patrick to declare a state of emergency and mobilize at least 500 national guardsmen to help the clean-up efforts.
Governors John Lynch of New Hampshire and John Baldacci of Maine also declared a state of emergency, and as of 13 December at least 400,000 customers were without power in New Hampshire, and at least 172,000 were without power in Maine. This total in New Hampshire was more than five times larger than those who lost power in the ice storm of 1998, previously the most devastating storm on record.
It has also been reported that over 30,000 customers were without power in Vermont and up to 3,700 were without power in Connecticut.
The American Red Cross of Northeastern New York opened multiple shelters around the Capital District to give residents a warm place to stay and eat.
Read more about this topic: December 2008 New England And Upstate New York Ice Storm
Famous quotes containing the word response:
“It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.”
—Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)
“What I’m saying is that a lot of behavior that you are talking about is a direct response of people not having a future, or feeling that they don’t have a future.”
—William Julius Wilson (b. 1935)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)