Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Erie County is working on ways to better determine who may or may not be deemed essential employees during emergency situations, like a winter snowstorm, when a driving ban is implemented.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz was joined on Thursday by Commissioner of the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, Dan Neaverth Jr. and other county officials to announce the implementation of a new essential employee exemption portal to be used by employers during winter storm events, and other emergency situations when a driving ban has been declared in the county.
"We've run into this situation, unfortunately, far too often in the last few years where we have a state of emergency in place and a driving ban is announced, and then people are still driving who are not emergency personnel," said Poloncarz on Thursday during a press conference at the Rath Building. "As we saw last year during the November storm, but specifically in the blizzard, they were getting stuck on the road and then they were blocking our ability to respond from our Department of Public Works, as well as all other Public Works Departments."
The travel exemption portal will define specific categories of workers using a tiered concept to identify who would be exempt from a travel ban in order to commute to-and-from their place of employment. The list of essential employees will be reviewed annually, and employers will be asked to provide updates when an essential employee’s work status changes for any reason that warrants removal from the exemption list.
The online emergency travel request form, which employers can access now by visiting www.erie.gov/dhses/, will help define who is deemed an essential employee permitted to drive during a winter storm travel ban.
The portal will be used by employers to apply for such status for employees who work in specific industries that require critical operations.
"We are introducing this new online portal as a way for employers to identify essential employees who would be exempt from a travel ban if one were put in place during a major winter storm or some other major emergency," Poloncarz said. "It is crucial to have essential and emergency workers who perform critical and necessary services to be able to travel to and from their workplaces. We hope to work with employers in determining whether an employee should have essential status and help eliminate any gray areas when it comes time to make travel decisions during a major weather event or some other type of catastrophe."
"We only know what we know, and there's a lot of businesses out there post-storms, that we've had a lot of experience with, that have information we can use in our database, and we can connect with them a little bit better down the road. That's the whole purpose behind this is to pull information, to pull data to be able to work with those companies, maybe that are currently being missed as essential," said Neaverth Jr. on Thursday. "There are a lot of businesses out there that we don't maybe necessarily know how critical they are, maybe to the defense industry or other types of industry where we have to keep that going. So that's essentially where we're going."
Employers with access to the online portal will provide the name of their business or company, the names and work site addresses of the employees they want listed as essential and the name and contact information for each employee’s immediate supervisor. Correspondence between county officials and each employer would then result in a determination on which employees will be granted status to travel to and from work when a driving ban is in place.
"What we're asking is for the businesses that are kind of quasi, they have something associated with them that is essential that we know about," Poloncarz stated. "I'll give you a good example: Media. Reporters, you're not necessarily essential driving around, but your engineers at the studios are. Your engineers at the radio station are, because we want to keep you on the air. But we don't want, truthfully, the reporters and everybody driving around our community in a horrible storm."
Law enforcement officials can discipline motorists for violating a travel ban if the operator of a vehicle is not defined as an essential worker. However, Neaverth Jr. says those officials will have access to the database to gain further information on if a certain individual has been granted essential access.
The categories for specific industries that are "essential" include the following:
Law Enforcement/Public Safety:
- Police, fire and rescue, emergency medical services and search and rescue personnel.
- Workers who provide information about and access to emergency services.
- Workers who respond to abuse and neglect of individuals and who support childcare and protective service programs.
- Hazardous materials technicians or specialists National Security sensitive operations.
Healthcare:
- Emergency medical service workers.
- Urgent care workers.
- Nurses, home care workers and other inpatient and outpatient support workers.
- Workplace safety employees Pharmacy staff (pharmacists, technicians, and equivalent).
- Hospital and laboratory workers.
- Human services workers including social workers, nutritionists and case managers.
- Workers who perform cybersecurity functions at health care and public health facilities.
Public Works:
- Workers involved in the operation and maintenance of public works facilities.
- Workers such as plumbers, electricians, carpenters and technicians who maintain basic safety and operations in these facilities.
- Highway/Roadway clearing equipment operators.
Food and Agriculture:
- Farmers, ranch workers and farm support staff.
- Employees responsible for food safety and quality.
Utilities, Waste, and Wastewater:
- Workers involved in construction, maintenance, operations, engineering and logistics across the energy sector (electricity, natural gas, propane, etc.).
- Operational staff at water authorities, community water systems, wastewater treatment facilities, collection facilities and those involved in distribution.
- Workers responsible for digital systems supporting water system operations.
- Laboratory staff performing water sampling and analysis.
"It's an ongoing project. The big takeaway of this is communication, collaboration, cooperation. This is the first step to get that communication out there, who have we missed, and get that, gather that, put it into a format where now we have a better situational awareness," Neaverth Jr. said. "We have multiple tools at the emergency services level that we can actually roster these businesses, where we can push notifications instantly to them with regards to not only what is on the horizon, the current situation, and then the post situation too, to gather that feedback to make things more efficient, to push this beyond where pretty much everybody has been, which is that Tier 1."
For more information on the Erie County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, visit www.erie.gov/dhses.