State prepares new tools for snow storms
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By PATRICIA SIMMS
Lee Newspapers
Saturday, November 15, 2008 9:47 PM CST
State officials are preparing new physical and virtual tools to avoid a snow disaster such as the one that stranded more than 2,000 vehicles overnight in February on Interstate 39-90 between Madison and Janesville.
For openers, retractable barriers have been installed at every Interstate on-ramp from the Badger Interchange at the intersection of I-39-90 and I-94 on Madison’s Far East Side south to the Wisconsin-Illinois border, said Doug Dembowski, supervisor at the state traffic operations center.
And soon, the state Department of Transportation will launch a 511 phone line for weather information and an improved Web site with latest information about road conditions, construction delays and incidents.
The state’s emergency operations center already has been activated almost three times as frequently this year than previous years, responding to criticism that it wasn’t activated early enough in February, said Lori Getter, spokeswoman for the state Office of Emergency Management.
And an imaginary disaster
exercise with 60 participants from 15 agencies was held in the Eau Claire area in September.
“A lot of good has come out of the February snowstorm,” Getter said.
A half-dozen highway cameras for Interstate 39-90 in Rock County, which rested in their boxes last February due to the cost of installation, have been mounted.
But they still are not hooked up, Dembowski said, because work on fiber-optics is delaying activation. Officials are hoping all will be in place before winter comes.
State meteorologists aren’t expecting a season as severe as last year’s. In fact, National Weather Service meteorological intern Bill Borghoff said climate predictions lean toward a winter with above-normal temperatures and normal snowfall, which is around 49.5 inches in Madison.
’Tough lesson’
Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney recalls vividly the disastrous three-day blizzard last February. Communication broke down, he said.
“Everybody expected somebody else to do something,” Mahoney said. “This year everybody is prepared to do something.”
The traffic backup began at about 11:15 a.m. Feb. 6 when a pickup truck with a trailer jackknifed on a stretch of the interstate in southern Dane County, blocking all the lanes.
In the aftermath, a Wisconsin National Guard report criticized the Wisconsin State Patrol, the state Department of Transportation and Wisconsin Emergency Management for being slow to recognize a rapidly escalating traffic jam at the foot of a slippery hill, slow to shut down the highway and slow to communicate with the public.
“It was a tough lesson learned,” State Patrol Superintendent David Collins said Thursday. “We didn’t have a trooper at the scene. We didn’t have good information. We became overwhelmed by the number of vehicles driving into it. We made that mistake that day. We haven’t made it since.”
State emergency officials say it was the legendary flooding in June that bolstered their confidence in their ability to react to weather crises.
The emergency operations center activated quickly and functioned for three weeks, she said. Public information officers from state agencies rotated through 12-hour shifts to get information out to residents, she said.
“The big test was the flooding,” Getter said. “So many of the lessons learned in February were implemented in June.”
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