CAPE MAY COUNTY, N.J. (KYW Newsradio) — Cape May County has a new title that no other county as a whole in New Jersey can tout. They have been designated as ‘StormReady’ by the National Weather Service.
To earn this, a locality must demonstrate the ability to keep residents safe and informed during a weather emergency.
“It’s mostly notification processes, 24-hour monitoring of emergency weather alerts, National Weather Service radar sites, different types of weather emergencies that we can broadcast out and put out on different media that we have to all the emergency manager coordinators in all the towns,” explained Cape May County Director of Emergency Management Marty Pagliughi.
Pagliughi said they’ve been working at this for the last year. They got the designation on their first application attempt.
“One of the processes we instituted that got us the designation,” he added, “we put a countywide reverse 911 system in, so we can put out a countywide blast. We’ve got 90-some-thousand phone numbers logged into the system.”
The county has been working with Atlantic City Electric to place emergency alert radios in spots that would allow the public to get instant alerts about weather threats. They’ve also developed a formal hazardous weather plan.
Pagliughi said being StormReady is a must for Cape May County.
“Because were surrounded by water on all three sides, we're actually a peninsula,” he said. “Weather events are very important to monitor.”
According to a news release on Cape May County’s government website, approximately 90% of presidential-declared disasters are weather related.
Now that they are StormReady, Pagliughi believes it’s the residents' responsibility to be on the lookout for their alerts.
“A lot of social media sites are second-, third- and fourth-party reporting systems, and they may not be the most accurate information,” he said, “so we’d like the Cape May County residents to actually pay attention to what county emergency puts out or the state emergency management puts out.”
The county’s StormReady designation lasts through March 1, 2025.
Some individual towns in New Jersey are StormReady, but this is the first county in the state.