States Learn From Disaster Preparation
CaltransWASHINGTON — Directors of four state transportation departments said handling natural and man-made disasters has played a role in preparing them for the next one, even as 1,000-year storms and 500-year floods become much more common.
They made the comments Jan. 12 during the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting.
California’s Malcolm Dougherty showed a photo of Highway 58 consumed by a mudslide that closed it for a week and forced the abandonment of 200 vehicles, more than 70 of them trucks. But Dougherty, whose large, geographically varied state also was hit by such disasters as drought and forest fires in 2015, said that Interstate 5 was more of a priority to reopen after the storm abated “based on the volume of vehicles as well as the types of vehicles” as it is a major freight corridor.
Dougherty said that when the highway was reopened, “the first 20 minutes, [there was] nothing but trucks because they had limited other routes to take. When I-5 was closed, people could [cancel] their trips or take other paths, but trucks could not.”
Delaware’s Jennifer Cohan, whose state has the lowest average elevation and is therefore especially concerned about flooding from rising sea levels, concurred about the critical nature of reopening freight routes in the wake of a disaster so that fuel trucks and grocery trucks can get through to people who otherwise have been left isolated.
In contrast, Pennsylvania’s Leslie Richards advocated for closing major roads, including freight corridors, when potentially hazardous and disruptive weather events are expected so that truckers and their vehicles don’t get stuck.
“Sometimes it’s important to shut an interstate,” said Richards, who discussed her experiences with the “Storm of the Century” in 1993, a record-setting blizzard in 1996, a historic heat wave of 1998, Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Superstorm Sandy in 2013.
“It’s never popular. We did it during Hurricane Sandy in our township, and we were able to get back operational within hours while other townships that did not take that approach and tried to keep things open as long as possible, it took them days to get back up.”
Colorado’s Shailen Bhatt noted that trucks have few places to park in his state when a blizzard hits, a factor that must be considered when deciding whether to keep roads open when a major storm is predicted.
“The first thing you have to do is inventory what your assets are that are at risk and what your plan is if the worst occurs. Things are changing,” Bhatt said in reference to the increasing prevalence of once-rare weather events such as happened in much of the country last month. “We have to adapt. We have to design and build systems that are going to be more resilient.”
