Lessons learned: Huntsville officials review January ice storm response

HUNTSVILLE – There were no sweeping changes announced in the wake of the ice storm  that paralyzed the city and region for most of a week in January, but some changes were or are being made by the City of Huntsville after criticism circulated among residents in the aftermath.

That was the message from City Administrator John Hamilton at last week’s regular meeting of the Huntsville City Council. Hamilton; Kelly Schrimsher, the city’s director of communications; and department heads spoke or were available for questions during an hour-long presentation to the council.

“(We’ll) kind of talk through how the city responds,” Hamilton said. “What I hope to accomplish is I’m going to go through some slides that will help, one, remind us of exactly what happened using National Weather Service data, but then also compare that to the typical type of event that we would have here in Huntsville.

“The reason that we’re all spending so much time talking about January is because of how unusual it was for us. But, go through the typical event, which kind of lays out why we are equipped the way we are, why our current strategy is the way it is.”

The entire video presentation, including slides showing who and how much all city departments respond, can be found at www.huntsvilleal.gov. 

Main themes regarding the response: When expected snow did come, but mostly it was ice followed by a second front that kept roads icy nearly a week after the first wave; residential roads are not and have not ever been in plans to deal with transportation issues.

Winter weather events in Madison County 2014 to date:

• 67 total snow/sleet dates
• 55 of those involved trace amounts less than 0.1 inch
• 5 recorded accumulations above 1 inch
• 3 events with snow/sleet on ground for longer than 72 hours (February 2015, February 2021, January 2024)

With just three prolonged travel-related events in the past 10 years, more and expensive heavy equipment to deal with ice, such as can be found in the North, are not cost effective. However, Hamilton did point out some changes to deal with severe weather in the future.

“There’s clearly some lessons learned out of this event,” Hamilton said. “There’s some things that we do believe need to be modified going forward.”

Changes:

• Continue EMA-led countywide planning and coordination
• More centralized city management of response and city-specific reporting
• More plow and spreaders; smaller models (10-12 apparatus attachment on 1-ton trucks)
• Maintain primary focus on elevated areas, routine “hot spots’’ and closed roads
  – Add roads serving manufacturing job centers to high-priority roads list
  – Use increased fleet to address a broader array of roads/highways
  
• Exploring more pre-treatment options (equipment and materials)

Schrimsher advised residents to sign up for alerts at wwhuntsvilleal.gov.

“You will see right under the the photo sliders where the news center is. There’s a link that says ‘Media Center’,” she said. “If you click on that, you will see at the bottom of the page text alerts and you can sign up for multiple alerts, and road work closures if there’s just road work during the year.

“HPD has alerts, EMA has alerts. So there’s a number of systems there that you can sign up for. You can also just search for it in the big search bar, ‘text alerts’, and it will come up.”