Brooks-Powers and Farrell discuss Red Cross contract limits and communication gaps
Brooks-Powers says Red Cross could not take certain directives from NYPD because the scene was a crime scene and asks whether communication should run through NYCEM. Farrell explains the HPD-Red Cross contract covers vacates from fires, power outages, and water outages, not primarily police scenes, and says Red Cross housed families using private funding in this case.
To that point, because I know in talking to Red Cross that night, there were certain decisions that they couldn't make unless it came from HPD, for example.
And I'm not sure if through NISM they communicate because it's an emergency there or if the regular channels have to kind of communicate during normal business hours.
Per se, in the sense of making certain calls.
So like, in their mind, the fire has been handled, they can go into their home.
But then it was an active crime scene, and so they could not go back into their home.
But there was a disconnect with Red Cross, and they could not take that directive from NYPD.
Do you feel that there should be a different, I guess, communication stream in moments like this, where maybe it runs through NYSIM, since you're connecting all the agencies in these moments of crisis?
So the contract with HPD and Red Cross is for vacates and usually outside of the fire investigation, which can, of course, result in criminality.
Usually these vacates that they respond to and that they put people into hotels, they're based on
you know, fires that make a house uninhabitable or an apartment building, things like extended power outages and water service outages through a water main break or other situations.
So this situation, as we've mentioned, was different in that
You know, it was primarily a police scene, and that is not what this contract is set up for.
Red Cross was able to house these families.
They didn't do it through the HPD contract.
It's my understanding that they had other funding, private funding that they used, that they can use unlimited.
occasions.
But this is really a different type of incident than what the Red Cross contract is set up for, which is more, you know, the typical fires and the things that come with those vacates.
Because also the power was out.
And so in terms of the connection from PSEG, that communication to HPD, to Red Cross, that communication tree wasn't happening either.