Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The City of Buffalo and Erie County leaders are taking more measures to ensure the safety of Western New Yorkers going forward should another deadly blizzard come Buffalo's way.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) brought in a group of experts on Wednesday to give a four-hour executive education seminar to local, county and state leaders on emergency preparations in the event of a catastrophic incident, with a specific focus on blizzards.
"What I coordinate and facilitate is a program of executive education that we bring to cities like Buffalo, to basically engage them on best practices of preparedness and response and recovery from catastrophic incidents," said Clark Kimerer with the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School. "We did a lot of research, we found a lot of things to present to them by way of scenarios. It was a very, very rigorous and detailed examination of their preparedness."
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown explained this training was brought to the attention of the Buffalo Police Department through former Buffalo Police Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, and was a unique and important experience that will help strengthen communication between local, county and state leaders, and brought forth important lessons that the city will implement going forward.
"One lesson learned, and one thing that we all agreed to, on the topic of communication, is using language that is much more specific. With the December blizzard of 2022, saying that, this will be a life threatening storm. If you go out, you could die in this storm. So being very specific with the language in terms of the weather condition that we are going to be dealing with, so the public takes it seriously, so the public embraces the guidance that's being put out by city, county and state agencies."
In addition, Mayor Brown announced the city will be releasing their recommendations this week that were based on the Winter Weather Task Force that was assembled in response to the Blizzard of 2022.
"Those recommendations have been done in meetings between city county, state agencies, private sector organizations and residents of the City of Buffalo," said the mayor.
"It is a comprehensive look at last year's weather, both in November and December. We will be releasing those recommendations this week. Shortly following that, from the City of Buffalo, we will be filing the city's snow plan with the Common Council. All at the city, county and state level are doing everything that we possibly can as we committed to the community that we would to be even more prepared and more responsive in winter weather events in in the future. Preparation is the key. Pre-preparation has been done pretty extensively at every level and so we are much more confident going into this winter season."