Washington-area officials have decided that they cannot count on human cooperation when creating a solution to regionwide emergencies such as the Jan. 26 snowstorm that left commuters stranded. “What we haven’t really taken into consideration here is human behavior. We can have plans that can work really, really well, but if human behavior doesn’t kick in, we all knows what happens,” Fairfax County Supervisor Penny Gross, D-Mason District, said at Wednesday’s Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments meeting. Some commuters took as long as 14 hours to get home during the Jan. 26 storm, which hit during the evening commute after rain had washed away the road-treatment chemicals and then froze.
“What today’s report to the COG is about is not just better preparation for the next snowstorm, but improving our response generally,” said Montgomery County Councilman Phil Andrews, D-Gaithersburg/Rockville, and chairman of the National Capital Region Emergency Preparedness Council.
D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, said COG officials need to come up with a response system that will fit any emergency.
“Both what happened on Jan. 26 and the discussion that’s gone on since then is eerily familiar to the discussion that happened after September 11, 2001,” he said. “The point I want to make is that I think we need to do something radically different.”
COG approved a plan Wednesday to try to improve weaknesses in the area’s emergency-response plans, stressing the importance of sharing timely information.
By November, they want to improve the access to real-time information among local, state and federal government agencies, as well as strengthen regional coordination and decision making. From there, they want to share up-to-the-minute information with the media and public. And they want to figure out the best plan for regional incident management.
Frank Principi, a Prince William County supervisor from the Woodbridge District and COG vice chairman, said he was disappointed the “five-letter word Pepco” was not represented because the electric utility’s cooperation is necessary to come up with a viable plan.
In addition to the thousands of homes and businesses that lost power during the January snow, traffic signals across the region
were powerless, adding to the already difficult traffic situation.
