The Municipality of Princeton, in partnership with Sustainable Princeton, has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

With the goal of reducing emergencies during climate crises, this project includes a series of activities to proactively prepare for climate related emergencies and to better anticipate the needs of Princeton’s most climate vulnerable citizens — thus, ultimately reducing the demand for emergency response, allowing improved call response to address un-preventable emergencies for the entire community.

A June 18 “table top exercise”  kicked-off the grant’s activities by pulling together emergency response personnel with managers of Princeton’s affordable housing facilities, nursing homes, and other facilities housing vulnerable residents, to run through a mock climate crisis. The exercise helped identify Princeton’s emergency response strengths and where improvements can be made. Grant activities also focus on improving emergency response communications and updating the Emergency Operations Plan for climate related emergencies.

Coordinated by municipal staff Bob Gregory, director of emergency management, and Jeff Grosser, assistant administrator and health officer, and in collaboration with Sustainable Princeton, a nonprofit which led the efforts to develop Princeton’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) in 2018-2019, the grant will support execution of key strategies outlined in the CAP to strengthen the community’s resiliency to the impacts of the changing climate.

“As Hurricanes Sandy and Irene and the increased frequency of violent storms have demonstrated, climate change is already bringing intense weather to our region.” said Sustainable Princeton Executive Director Molly Jones. “We are so grateful to the Health Impact Project for its forward-thinking partnership to help put in place the preventative processes required to better prepare our community as a whole, and in particular our most climate vulnerable community member, for climate crises.”