Sandy Damaged Hoboken's Fire Houses

Hoboken has hired an outside company to clean out the four fire stations in town.

A contract was awarded — for an amount not to exceed $30,000 — to Polygon.

Hoboken's fire houses suffered serious flooding during Superstorm Sandy. The basements of the fire houses were flooded. The water was as high as seven feet, according to Fire Chief Richard Blohm.

At the Observer Highway station, three feet of water flooded the ground floor of the building.

All of Hoboken's fire aparatus was moved to the fire station at 1313 Washington St., which was the only viable station during the storm, Blohm said.

Much like the police department, the fire department was plagued by technical difficulties and failures during the storm.

Beside the massive flooding in three fire houses, the department's computer system was moved because of wind gusts, making communicating with each other very difficult, Blohm said.The fire dispatch had to move to higher grounds.

During Sandy, the Hoboken Fire Department received 935 calls for service, which is almost a third of the total calls in 2011. Some of the calls, however, couldn't immediately be reached.

"We had a report one evening of a transformer fire," Blohm said. The incident was called in from 83 Madison St.

"We couldn’t get within six blocks of that building to even determine if there was a fire," Blohm said. "We threw an inflatable boat into the water and paddled for five blocks."