Employees from all over the National Park Service are part of the response to Hurricane Sandy. Among them are four trainees from the Service’s Historic Preservation Training Center who are currently working on the bathhouse at Jacob Riis Park within Gateway NRA, restoring the facility.

The trainees – exhibit specialist trainee and project manager Trevor Thomas, exhibit specialist trainee Mike Owens, work leader Tom Valentine, and staff carpenter Brian Crampton – are currently boarding up missing windows and doors to improve the building’s security. They have also framed-in the stairwell and installed a locking door to secure the second floor lifeguard office and have stabilized damaged walls. Their long-term goal is to evaluate damage at parks affected by Hurricane Sandy and help develop a long-term rehabilitation plan.

Along with a three-year training program for NPS exhibit and preservation specialists, the Historic Preservation Training Center rehabilitates NPS, federal, state, and locally-owned historic properties and holds extensive outreach training programs aimed at building the skills of personnel responsible for the maintenance and preservation of historic properties.

More information on the response can be found at these websites:

• Hurricane response and recovery – A webpage with current information on the NPS response to Hurricane Sandy.
• Resource needs shopping list – A ”shopping list”  of incident management team positions that still need to be filled, updated daily.
• Hurricane Sandy relief fund – E&AA has set up a relief fund web page where you can make donations in support of employees who were affected by the storm.
• Facebook – A Facebook page managed by the IMT with updates on the response.
• Twitter – A Twitter page managed by the IMT with updates on the response.
• Flickr – A Flickr page managed by the IMT with images of the response.

Contact Information
Name: Warren Bielenberg, Incident Information Officer