(12/18/08 photo by Raymond Overgaard)
Quick notes from this morning’s Seattle City Council briefing on snowstorm response, third one in one week (our coverage of the previous two: Monday 1/5 and Tuesday 1/6). Today, councilmembers heard from – and questioned – city Emergency Management director Barb Graff. Here’s what it all came down to: Who really had a handle on the big picture, the fact that the roads were in bad shape, buses weren’t running because of that, and more reinforcements needed to be called in? Read on for what was said, who said it, and what next:
Graff said the city’s Emergency Operations Center ramped up to a “higher level” on the 20th-21st — after being in a heightened state since 12/11 — mostly because of a forecast for high wind (which you’ll recall didn’t materialize).
Councilmembers asked why not sooner, since the snowfall December 17th-18th (when Mayor Nickels, who has the ultimate emergency-management authority, was out of town) was clearly causing emergency conditions. “By (the 18th) the bus system was pretty much cut in half … seems like things were not working,” Councilmember Nick Licata observed. “Wouldn’t it have been better to (ramp up) when the storm began on the 17th?”
Graff said, “SDOT was using all resources the best way they could, but it was a bigger storm then they had planned for … They were plowing 24 hours a day and not keeping up.” Councilmember Tim Burgess said he was less concerned with EOC mobilization dates than with “the EOC’s ability to see the big picture … I’m curious if anyone in EOC waved a big flag to say, we’ve got a big problem with bus transportation, and what are we going to do about it … It’s about resource management. We didn’t take advantage of private contractors soon enough.”
Graff said they weren’t considered sooner “because those resources had not been planned for in SDOT’s Snow and Ice Plan … Every time we thought we were going to get a handle on this and the snow would start melting, another three inches came.” A question from Councilmember Jan Drago then drew an admission from Graff that emergency-management leaders were not getting the same input as councilmembers and the mayor, regarding public feedback that things were a mess. The council is going to figure out how to fix that for the future; as Councilmember Sally Clark noted, “One of the knocks we are all getting is that the city didn’t realize how bad it was, and why DIDN’T the city realize how bad it was and change the plan?”
Councilmember Tom Rasmussen wanted to know more about whether emergency managers could have helped the apparent communications gap between SDOT and Metro, in which Metro’s Kevin Desmond had said he wasn’t getting his phone calls returned. Don’t Desmond and SDOT director Grace Crunican have each others’ phone numbers? he asked. “Well, I’m sure they have them NOW,” Graff replied, adding, “We accepted a lot of phone calls from Metro that I can say we channeled to a ‘live person’ at SDOT.”
Rasmussen also went on to note that sites like WSB were doing an “amazing job” of keeping up on the situation, and “couldn’t they help?” Graff replied, “We’ve asked our public-information team to consider being in communication with blogs.” (For the record, WSB is already involved in that line of communication, as a news-media outlet, which you know if you were here during the storm coverage; we published plenty of official information, but WSB’ers provided huge amounts of eyewitness reports and information on roads, buses, and other important services that was not available in specific detail any other way.)
Graff eventually went on to acknowledge, “We were not flexible enough to pay more attention to the one pressing issue, more passable streets.” Councilmember Jean Godden suggested that flexibility might also involve creative ideas such as utilizing private shuttle buses; she recalled seeing many of them go by (for large employers such as Children’s Hospital), nearly empty, while she waited more than an hour for a Metro bus that never came (or, if buses did come, they passed by because they already were full).
Clark reiterated her question, “Where is the good management that says ‘we are off the plan’ … Whether it was the 17th or the 19th or the 21st, you have to realize you are in a hole and you can’t see out of it and are way beyond ‘plan’.” Rasmussen also suggested an independent review of the storm response, as was done post-December 2006 windstorm.
While the city briefing was under way, a concurrent briefing was taking place a few blocks away at the County Council chambers in the county courthouse downtown; we will recap that later – Metro boss Desmond was still being questioned when we tuned in after the city briefing concluded, and he promised a major overhaul of the Metro website, as briefly mentioned when he appeared at City Hall last week.
Metro also has been asked to be on hand for the mayor’s storm-response open houses next week, including the one at 6:30 pm Thursday at Southwest Community Center.
| 20 COMMENTS