After more than a year of preparation for the winter storm, city leaders think they did a great job keeping the public safe and some people agree. They said there was a lot of lessons learned from the blizzard a few years ago, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. Lubbock’s City Manager, Jarrett Atkinson said they’ve been working on snow clean up since before the storm hit.
“Just in your EOC alone there have been 1,400 man hours to this point in committed in supporting the effort and if we want to pick just one fact out as we talk about public works. They distributed about 610 tons of salt and sand across our street and that number will go up,” said Jarrett Atkinson, Lubbock’s City Manager.
Along with the city, police controlled the roads.
“Before they could be treated we would go ahead and have officers shut down a roadway to prevent cars to getting up to particular overpasses near areas we know would be very slick to try to avoid accidents,” said Chief of Police Greg Stevens.
Stevens said LPS responded to 183 accidents since Saturday morning. He said they anticipated a lot more.
“We weren’t overwhelmed with accidents or other calls for service so we didn’t have to call upon those additional resources,” said Stevens.
Atkinson said the plans in place thankfully worked. The snow routes and new equipment especially helped clear the roads.
“Your city possesses a lot of resources. We possess a tremendous number of very skilled operators. We didn’t leave anything on the table. We put that out to go to work and again we have the full support staff behind that to make it go,” said Atkinson.
