Update November 8th From DFSD Gary Renfrow

Good morning Team!

Mother Nature continues to be a Mother…thank you all for your continued dedicated service. Airport operations are slow this morning, but picking up the pace to be back on schedule for the afternoon, so thank you all for slugging your way in!

For those that are in need, we have fueling operations daily between 0700 and 2000 until further advised. As a reminder, here are the rules:

• 1.        Limit of 5 gallons of gas per person.
• 2.       Must have less than one quarter tank of gas.
• 3.       Must come on your way to work, or while leaving from your shift. Lateness to work due to waiting on the gas line will not be excused.
• 4.       Must have either SIDA ID or Government ID on your person.
• 5.       CANNOT be on the Mass Transit Benefits list.
• 6.       No walk-ups with gas cans. You must drive your vehicle up to the tank.
• 7.       No gas for personal use – Gas is for Mission Critical use only (i.e. driving to work).
• 8.       Be prepared to offer basic information requested by Fueling Team for record keeping purposes.
• 9.       Gas will be given out at: 230-59 Rockaway Blvd Hanger door #21.
• 10.   Gas provided for POVs is Regular Unleaded gas only.
• 11.   Limit of one POV per employee.

Any exceptions to these rules must be approved by me or the FSD. Any abuse/misuse/unprofessional conduct may result in loss of privilege or disciplinary action. This policy will remain in effect until further advised.

Last item. Supervisors, Managers, and payroll – please excuse any early departures from work yesterday afternoon/evening, and do not count early/late arrivals this morning and this afternoon against employees given the weather. Thank you all again for your continuing to “well and faithfully” secure America through JFK!

Honored to serve,

Gary Renfrow

DFSD

A Message from Acting FSD Mark Hatfield

Good afternoon team JFK,

I’m excited to be returning to NYC as your Acting FSD from Miami International.  First, please let me say a huge thank you! This has been a very difficult week for all of you, and a horrific one for those that have suffered significant losses...yet most of you are making it to work despite these challenges. While things are improving bit-by-bit, I know that gas remains scarce. I ask that those of you who have reasonable access to mass transportation to please continue taking advantage of that; and to those who can carpool to continue sharing the burden. However, there are many of you that I’m aware rely principally on your personal vehicle to get to work.  We have secured some emergency fuel to ease the pain but, we have very limited resources so I’ve put the following rules in place:

• 1.      Limit of 5 gallons of gas per person.
• 2.      Must have less than one quarter tank of gas.
• 3.      Must come on your way to work, or while leaving from your shift. Lateness to work due to waiting on the gas line will not be excused.
• 4.      Must have either SIDA ID or Government ID on your person.
• 5.      CANNOT be on the Mass Transit Benefits list.
• 6.      No walk-ups with gas cans. You must drive your vehicle up to the tank.
• 7.      No gas for personal use – Gas is for Mission Critical use only (i.e. driving to work).
• 8.      Be prepared to offer basic information requested by Fueling Team for record keeping purposes.
• 9.      Gas will be given out at: 230-59 Rockaway Blvd Hanger door #21.
• 10.  Gas provided for POVs is Regular Unleaded gas only.
• 11.  Limit of one POV per employee.

Any exceptions to these rules must be approved by me. Any abuse/misuse/unprofessional conduct may result in loss of privilege or disciplinary action. This policy will remain in effect until midnight tomorrow, Wednesday 7 November, and is subject to availability. We will keep you advised as best we can.

Again, I am truly excited to be here, proud to be a part of the JFK team, and proud of the tremendous effort and sacrifice that you have made to secure America through JFK over the past week. Keep it up, and I look forward to meeting all of you face-to-face over the next few weeks.

Sincerely,

Mark Hatfield Jr.

Acting FSD, JFK

A Message From DFSD Gary Renfrow 11/5/12

Good evening team,

More and more of you are getting electricity back, and more and more are getting gas – albeit not quickly, and not for many of you. You’re doing a great job of continuing to secure America through JFK while many are still struggling with loss, and we are trying to put you in touch with resources to get you through these difficult times. FEMA representatives are with us…they will be working in T5 from 1200 to 1800 tomorrow and Wednesday to assist you getting the help you need. I ask that Supervisors and Managers work hard to get officers in need to see them. When you come to see FEMA have the following information available to speed up the process:

·       Your Social Security number

·       Current and pre-disaster address

·       A telephone number where you can be contacted

·       Insurance information

·       Total household annual income

·       A routing and account number from your bank (only necessary if you want to have disaster assistance funds transferred directly into your bank account)  Lookup your bank routing number.

·       A description of your losses that were caused by the disaster

After you've completed your application for assistance, you will receive a FEMA application number. Write down this number and keep it for future reference.

It’s a start. We have accounted for all but one officer who is on annual leave (and we visited his home to find it in tact). Getting 100% accountability took the better part of a week because of poor telephone connectivity, incorrect or missing contact information, and officers who did not call in. 

Please, as we face more weather in the next 72 hours, please update your contact information in AIM immediately. 

Gas is still hard to find…please continue to maximize your use of carpooling and mass transportation this week and conserve the gas you have. As there were practically no takers for the Long Island shuttles, the last one will run this evening and we will stop trying and conserve our fuel. 

Our brothers and sisters across the country have done us a great favor in volunteering to help here at JFK, but as things become a bit more “normal”this week, we will release them to return to their families. Please join me in thanking them.

I couldn’t be prouder of the JFK team – many of you have reached out to your extended TSA family to assist. Thank you, and keep it up!

Honored to serve,

Gary Renfrow 

DFSD

Ttransportation Cancellation Effective 11/6/12

Transportation Cancellation Effective 11/6/12

Effective 11/6/12 we are suspending all rally point pick-ups for the below listed locations

Suffolk County/Long Island

· 0600 and 12:00: Route 110 (Broad hollow Rd.) and Farmingdale Rd.

· 0600 and 12:00: Route 25 (W. Jericho Turnpike) and Walt Whitman Rd.

Nassau County/Long Island

· 0600 am and 12:00: Old Country Rd. and Glen Cove Rd.

· 0600 am and 12:00: Peninsulas Blvd. and S. Franklin Ave

Important Information Regarding Monday November 5th

Transportation

Beginning  Monday November 5, 2012  TSA vans will pick up employees at the following locations and times.

Suffolk County/Long Island

·         0600 and 12:00: Route 110 (Broad hollow Rd.) and Farmingdale Rd.

·         0600 and 12:00: Route 25 (W. Jericho Turnpike) and Walt Whitman Rd.

Nassau County/Long Island

·         0600 am and 12:00: Old Country Rd. and Glen Cove Rd.

·         0600 am and 12:00: Peninsulas Blvd. and S. Franklin Ave.

For drop off TSA vans will pick up employees at Federal Circle at 1500 and 2100 to return to Suffolk and Nassau /County locations.

FEMA

FEMA will be at the JFK TSA offices (The Rock) on Monday November 5, 2012, at 1200pm to provide guidance and directions to our displaced employees and to assess any immediate needs.

Donations

Donation boxes are located in each Terminal in the TSA employee break rooms. Anyone who would like to donate blankets, clothing, non-perishable foods, batteries, flashlights, water, etc. can leave items in these containers. We will have a van come pick up boxes each day and bring items to a staging area at the Rock, where items will be organized and distributed.

TSA JFK Disaster Assistance Blog Created

All,

After the Day after Christmas Blizzard of 2010, JFK Ops management and I decided to create the TSA JFK Emergency Status Blog as a way to communicate with the workforce during an emergency situation. In the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy and during the storm, I was able to post important information from Senior FSD staff out to all JFK employee's. We have received very positive feedback about our ability to keep everyone informed, the proof being that over the last 7 days the blog has nearly 13,000 hits.

With that being said, in the days ahead, there will be tons of new information from local officals and TSA management that we will need to share. So as to not clog up the Emergency Status blog, we have created a new blog just for Hurricane Sandy assistance.

Here is the address..

WWW.TSAJFKDISASTERASSISTANCE.BLOGSPOT.COM

This new blog will be just as easy to use and access from either a computer or a smart phone. It will be updated often, so please check it whenever you can.

Also, i urge everyone who uses Twitter to follow the Coordination Center twitter account which is @TSAJFKOPS

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thanks,

Anthony Stabile
IT Specialist
US Department of Homeland Security
Transportation Security Administration
JFK International Airport

Update from DFSD Renfrow Nov. 1st

Good evening, Team.

Awesome work today, and I know that none of it is easy for many of you with distractions and loss to deal with personally, so thank you. I have received many accolades from our visiting teams deployed here as well as the airport community today…keep it up! Tomorrow will be heavier.

We continue to work for 100% accountability, but we still have not been able to contact nearly 75 of our fellow officers.  We will not stop until we account for every TSA JFK employee.

Many of you have suffered significant damage and loss...our hearts go out to you. We’ve stood up a Damage Assessment and Assistance Team in our HR offices that will reach out to everyone that indicates that they’ve had severe damage to determine howwe might help. We’ve already begun to collect resource information and are in touch with FEMA to get some dedicated help for the TSA force here at JFK. If you have had significant damage, please call the Team at 718-917-3921, 718-917-3832, or come see them in person in the HR offices.

We will do everything that we can to assist you through these difficult times, and understand fully that life will not be back to normal for some of you for a very long time – let us help, and please help each other.

Honored to serve,

Gary Renfrow

DFSD