Team approach when deciding storm closures
While its municipal colleagues in St. Catharines, Welland and Niagara Region decided early to close offices and cancel services due to the snowstorm, Niagara Falls kept its facilities opened until noon.
At 6:10 a.m., the City of Niagara Falls reported on its website all city facilities would open Tuesday, but that more updates would be posted if the storm progressed.
At noon, the city sent out a news release — and updated its website — stating city hall and all city facilities, with the exception of Gale Centre, would close for the day.
John Morocco, operations superintendent with the city, said the thought process into closures involves a number of staff from the mayor’s office, chief administrative office, director of human resources, fire chief, director of transportation for transit, and all affected operations.
He said media relations staff are involved to prepare and send out messaging. Staff are all connected by conference call and speak directly with operations staff.
Morocco said the decision to initially not close facilities was based on operations staff’s opinion that staff capabilities could “effectively manage” the storm based on the forecast at the time.
He said if the forecast changed and/or events on the ground changed, the management team would reconvene and make any required adjustments, which is what happened.
CAO Ken Todd said the city is mindful of other closures across the region.
“But I would say probably early (Tuesday) morning, you were getting hit more in say Grimsby or St. Catharines coming off Lake Ontario then we were up the escarpment and maybe in the south end, so our conditions changed and … we were getting a little bit heavier snow (in the afternoon) maybe than the west end,” he said.
Todd said when it became apparent snow was going to continue to fall “fairly heavily” throughout the afternoon, it was decided to allow those working in non-operational positions an opportunity to leave early.
He said the decision to keep Gale Centre open was made because the arena was hosting a minor hockey tournament.
“There’s over 120 teams in town and there was a conversation with the tournament organizers and we thought, we got all these people from out of town, we got to do our best to keep that facility open, so we were working hard to keep the parking lot plowed. A lot of the teams are staying here and were in town already.”
Morocco said throughout the weekend municipal officials had been monitoring the forecast and creating an operations plan.
He said overnight Sunday into Monday, the city’s 24/7 winter shift staff conducted anti-icing operations on all designated routes. Overnight shift staff “actively” maintained arterial and collector roads. Full-scale, citywide plowing operations began at 4 a.m. Tuesday, including sidewalk routes.
“This operation involved 40 pieces of equipment and operators,” said Morocco, adding fleet (mechanics) and other staff worked to support the operation.
By late morning, he said, staff completed one full-scale clearing and started a second operation.
Morocco said the second operation included 14 additional pieces of equipment to clear culde-sacs and crescents to address accumulations.
He said operations staff would continue to monitor weather conditions throughout Tuesday and would respond accordingly until the storm has subsided.
Todd said the city’s operations staff are well versed in knowing “exactly” when to have crews out on the roads.
“Maybe sometimes the public gets a little frustrated with us, but there’s a science to it because our drivers can only drive for so many consecutive hours,” he said.
“If you pull the plug too early and you say, ‘OK, let’s get out there,’ if that storm continues (like it was Tuesday) and we had of had our guys in earlier in the night, they may not have been able to plow past a certain time this afternoon. They’re very mindful of when they start, when they stop — they have to keep a clock on the hours, they have to look at how long the storm is going to (last).”