Erie County, N.Y. (WBEN) - Snow plan, snow plan. What's the procedure? Are we updating our systems and protocols?
The City of Buffalo unveiled their snow plan two weeks ago and later last week included the announced hiring of the new emergency coordinator and fleet manager, in place for the upcoming winter season. Erie County has added new equipment to the winter weather fleet which includes more trained staff and a task force, unveiled during an announcement Friday. Having gone through a deadly winter blizzard almost one year ago, are we, as Western New Yorkers, adequately prepared should another extreme weather event arise?
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"Since 1950, there's been nine official blizzards in Erie County. Five of them have occurred while I was county executive," noted Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. "A blizzard in January of '14, a blizzard in March and '14, a blizzard in January of '18, a blizzard in January of '19 and then, of course, the December Blizzard last year. So we know with climate change, we're going to be dealing with more of these because we've had more blizzards just in the last less than 10 years since, than we had in the period before then so we have to be prepared and that's what we're doing here in Erie County."
Erie County's Commissioner of Public Works Bill Geary says the added equipment and the employee training is great, but it's the communication aspect that was an important lesson learned from Erie County and will make all the difference heading into the winter weather this season.
"We can have all the equipment in the world, but it's the communication aspect, and especially getting the communication out to the public. We have to really use sincere language that sometimes we probably wouldn't have used in the past, that's the biggest aspect and the biggest pivot that we're going to make."
The county will be using the IPAWS alert system, which is an system that sends you alerts to your phone, like an amber alert. This type of system has been incorporated to the City of Buffalo's snow plan as well.
"What we learned last year is if anything, is we need to communicate," said Poloncarz. "Probably including in the City of Buffalo and in more languages, not everybody speaks English, and it's important that the information be sent out in additional languages that we normally don't use during a press conference."
Greg Butcher, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Homeland Security Emergency Services for Erie County highlights training of members of different departments within Erie County.
"We've taken the opportunity post-Blizzard to do some extensive training. We have actually not only trained staff, but we have trained trainers to continue to expand our cadre of individuals who are capable of manning this equipment.
In addition to that, we took an opportunity to create a task force. This task force is made up of members of the parks department that will be able to operate some of this equipment, as well as our sheriff special operations crew, which are trained in cold weather rescue. In addition to that, members of the Erie County EMS division are going to be part of this to help render aid to individuals who may need that."
Poloncarz mentioned on Friday that Erie County doesn't necessarily have to unveil a detailed snow plan like the City of Buffalo does. They have had protocols and procedures in place for a number of years. Geary says more than one plan is in place.
"It's been an ongoing continuum of just not just education and training with myself and the team in public works, but with the emergency services. We've been redeveloping our plans, trying to make that shift from plans that were probably written 10, 15 years ago that we know, these events have become more frequent. The 100-year storms are almost a normal here when it comes to a rainstorm, so we've had to pivot just like the weather has," noted Geary.