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As the first flakes in the new storm fell on him, and nearby cars bumped down roads still littered with the packed and frozen leftovers from Friday's snowfall, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl on Tuesday said the plan for clearing streets and ensuring public safety would be more muscular and effective this time around.
PDFThe nearby Fire and Police Training Academy was bustling with firefighters and National Guard members, who were dispatched in Humvees to shovel snow, procure medicine and transport residents in need of non-emergency care. Ambulances and fire trucks were equipped with chains and shovels so they wouldn't get stuck and have to pull public works vehicles away from clearing snow. Twenty contractors with a total of 50 trucks -- at around $65 an hour each -- were supplementing a slightly larger city fleet. And the city reached out to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, hoping to have it pick up some state-owned roads that the city has traditionally agreed to salt and plow.
"We hope that this plan is better," Mr. Ravenstahl said -- meaning better than the one that failed to get Friday and Saturday's snow cleared before Tuesday's started. "It's going to be a difficult 24 hours, 48 hours, and really the remainder of the week," he said, but the city would reach those with life-threatening emergencies and try to open the roads.
Even as the mayor grappled with the physical storm, a potential political squall brewed as City Council prepared to take on the snow clearance problems that have incensed residents and commuters.
"Four days after the storm there are still thousands of people across our city who are snowed in," Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak said in announcing the creation of a council snow removal task force. "People are angry that it is taking so long to get power restored and streets cleared, and there needs to be accountability."
Councilman William Peduto said he secured an offer of free technical route mapping help from Carnegie Mellon University.
Mr. Ravenstahl said that while the city would evaluate its performance and the effectiveness of its routing system, the week's problems were to some degree rooted in numbers: 30 inches, five days, and only so many dollars.
"Our fleet is not adequate for the storm that we had this time, with 20 inches of snow," and a follow-up storm of perhaps another 10 inches. "We could very easily purchase more equipment, but of course we have to balance that with our budgetary constraints."
Mr. Ravenstahl said a big problem over the weekend was the diversion of salt trucks from routes to assist stuck police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.
"That's not going to happen" this time, the mayor said. Public safety vehicles "all have chains on them now. They all have shovels.
"All public safety vehicles now are self-sufficient."
Activated Tuesday afternoon were all 630 city firefighters, some assigned to the training center, others to their usual stations. As calls came in from the city's 311 response center -- its capacity doubled to 16 lines -- a single firefighter would jump into a Humvee with two National Guard members, and head off to provide requested assistance.
The training academy was strewn with dozens of cots as soldiers and firefighters prepared for a long night. Many have been working 12-hour shifts.
Police also were on 12-hour shifts, even though the mayor acknowledged that many were "sitting around right now."
"We want to have those officers in the zones, in their areas because they might not be able to get there if the snow hits," he said.
The mayor acknowledged that even with backup from private crews, the city didn't clear all secondary roads before renewed snowfall forced them to return to main streets.
"I know they made progress," he said. "Are they completely done and [are] we satisfied with their work entirely? No. They could've gotten more done. But they made a great effort of it."
Mr. Ravenstahl said city road crews have a plan.
"They'll go back now to their plans as previously described to them on a normal snow fall," he said. "So they'll be on the main roads, the primary roads, in each of their divisions."
Ms. Rudiak will head council's snow clearance review, starting with a meeting late this week, and hopes to produce recommendations for handling future snow emergencies. The full review will not begin until the snow emergency is deemed over. In the meantime, council will cooperate with the mayor's office to respond to constituent snow needs.
Mr. Peduto said CMU President Jared Cohon has offered to marshal faculty, staff and students to create a "state of the art" snow removal tracking system that identifies priority areas for snow removal, maximizes the use of city equipment and follows through after emergencies with studies to guide budget decisions. It could also include geo-tracking of snow plows and treated streets, which is used in Maryland and elsewhere, he said.
The offer includes help from the engineering and computer science departments, the Heinz College and other CMU departments, said Mr. Peduto, whose district includes the Oakland campus.
He said he is working on the offer with Ms. Rudiak and council's public works chair, Bruce Kraus, and plans to reach out to the Department of Public Works and the Ravenstahl administration.
Mr. Ravenstahl said staffing levels and the 60-truck snow-fighting fleet seem to be big enough to handle a typical storm. The city's resources, though, are constrained by its status as an Act 47 distressed municipality, with its budgets and spending monitored by two state oversight groups.
This year's budget includes salaries for 56 truck drivers. The 2003 budget -- the last before major budget cuts -- included funding for 62 drivers. Laborers can step in and drive if they have commercial driver's licenses.
The city has, in the past four years, invested in new trucks to replace aging hulks that were prone to breakdowns. But Mr. Ravenstahl acknowledged that the current fleet isn't free from problems -- as he learned while he was a passenger on a street clearing run a few days ago.
"We actually overheated in the middle of the road," he said. "We were stuck there for 25 minutes on a hill in Homewood.
"I got to see firsthand just how difficult it is out there."
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