(Spencer)– The city of Spencer is re-visiting it’s protocol for communicating with residents during times of emergency. It’s in response to the June 22nd flood that ravaged the community, leaving a number of people homeless. Interim Deputy City Manager Kevin Robinson who’s also a former Mayor of Spencer, told the city council Monday evening one of the big factors behind the lack of warning is how quickly river levels rose…
“The speed at which. I believe it went up five feet in approximately 45 minutes or so, 50 minutes. So what happened was best effort, we’ve got to go do this, right? Well by the time you’re actually able to try to do this, to what the chief eluded to early, all of a sudden we realize we’ve got to deploy resources to the south end of the bridge and I can speak from experience from before that was always on our radar. If this would ever happen we immediately have to get resources on both sides of the bridge, otherwise we’re locked out of half of a community because all of our home-based resources are on the north side. So as the event unfolds, it’s unfolding so fast you literally do not have the time to actually deploy and organize response or warning and then the city ends up just like the residents, in scramble mode.”
Robinson says the city has heard concern from some residents as to why it didn’t sound the sirens…
“Were we prepared and planned? We were for what we thought would happen, it’s just the reality of what happened is not near what we planned for. That’s why there was no warning. I’ve heard a lot of comments about sirens, you know, the city could have at least sounded the sirens. So while that sounds good, maybe as an initial response, just like an awareness. We hear a tornado siren, we are trained to go to our basements. And that’s the last place we want to send people during a flood.”
Robinson says the city is gathering new modeling information for the rivers that flow through Spencer to better prepare and warn for similar events in the future…
“What we’re committed to today moving forward is developing a protocol looking at what happens to our river system on predictions; how do we better prepare the city for three basic things. Number one, general awareness to be prepared for severe weather. We have to do a better job of communicating that. Number two, we need to look for variables beyond what the National Weather Service is looking at as it relates to our river system. There’s actually three river systems within the city of Spencer city limits that impacts us. People see the Grand Avenue bridge, that’s actually about 500 yards after the confluence of the Ocheyedan River and the Little Sioux River, so different parts of town are impacted in different ways. And number three, developing a standard easy to go to one place resource that talks about what level of danger we’re in and what level of danger is predicted.”
Robinson says the city is also revising the way it communicates with residents. He says they’ve brought in a familiar face to help with that. Jeremy Parsons, former Clay County Fair General Manager and Executive Director who’s is now the Executive Director for the Iowa State Fair, has been brought in to assist in those efforts.
