From Press staff reports
TRENTON - A committee approved legislation Thursday designed to improve how people get away from the shore in a disaster.
The bill came from recommendations made a year ago by the Assembly Coastal New Jersey Evacuation Task Force. It would require the state Office of Emergency Management to come up with annual informational campaigns.
Officials from that office and others would also have to find critical infrastructure that would need a generator, identify people with special needs who would need extra help, locate schools that could be used as short-term shelters, as well as any potential long-term shelters, and come up with lane-reversal strategies on the Garden State Parkway and Atlantic City Expressway to use both sides of the highway to evacuate.
The bill was sponsored by Assemblymen Matt Milam and Nelson Albano, both D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, as well as Assemblymen Brian Rumpf and Dan Van Pelt, both R-Ocean, Burlington, Atlantic. It now goes to the full Assembly. A Senate version remains in committee.
