Hagerstown, Washington County officials' scrambling response to cold leads to plan review

Hagerstown and Washington County officials intend to have an after-action review regarding the planning and response to the recent extreme cold weather that led to the city scrambling Friday to open a warming site.

Emergency officials were busy over the long holiday weekend with calls related to the extreme cold, including people needing shelter and residents dealing with broken water lines and flooding.

As of late Tuesday morning, Community Rescue Service Deputy Chief Robert Buck said he was not aware of any deaths from the cold.

The Hagerstown Fire Department worked with Western Enterprise Fire Co. in the West End to open a warming station Friday afternoon because the situation with the weather was becoming a "crisis," Chief Steve Lohr said Tuesday morning. That warming station remained open until Monday morning.

Among the eight people who used the warming site was a married couple who tried to supplement their inadequate home heat by turning on their gas stove burners and leaving the oven door open, Lohr said. A gas stove is not designed to be a heater like that, he said.

The warming center's first client was a homeless, diabetic man in his 70s who had frostbite, Lohr said. He was taken to the hospital.

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Buck said a CRS paramedic, who had a second pair of boots back at the station, gave his boots to a homeless man the crew was transporting to the hospital for frostbite when he saw the man's boots were torn up.

"That's why we're here, or supposed to be why we're here," Buck said.

The fire department opened the warming station after Lohr heard from Buck about shelters at or over capacity Friday with the cold expected to continue through the holiday weekend.

The Hagerstown-area low temperatures reached single digits Friday and Saturday with wind chills at 15 below zero after midnight Friday, according to local weather observer Greg Keefer's website at i4weather.net. The wind chill was below zero from mid-Friday into Christmas Eve night.

A high of 16 degrees was recorded Christmas Eve by Keefer's site as well as the gauge at the Hagerstown Regional Airport north of the city, according to the National Weather Service's website.

Reach of Washington County extended its shelter hours, bridging the gap between its daytime and overnight winter shelter to provide 24/7 shelter from the time the overnight shelter opened Friday until Monday morning, Executive Director Jeannie Asbury said.

They also expanded the number of adults they sheltered from 42 to however many they could safely shelter given the number of volunteers on duty, Asbury said. There were several nights 49 adults were in the shelter.

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Asbury said volunteers from houses of faith answered their SOS call, posted on social media, to fill shifts through the holiday weekend so the shelter could remain open.

Asbury said she was "so encouraged and touched by the community response."

The weather service is forecasting highs in the 40s on Wednesday and Thursday with lows in the 20s through Thursday night for the Hagerstown area. Friday's forecast calls for a high of 51 and nighttime temps above freezing with a low of 37 degrees.

Hagerstown officials critical of county emergency management process

Hagerstown Mayor Emily Keller said it's "unacceptable" that Washington County Emergency Management didn't have a plan, as she put it, for the extreme cold.

Lohr said the city decided to open the warming shelter in the West End, though it's "probably not our job." Fire officials set up the warming site and then had to leave to handle the many emergency calls, Lohr said. City volunteers and people from the Longmeadow Volunteer Fire Co. stepped up to handle the temporary shelter. Hagerstown Police provided security.

Lohr said his criticism was of the process.

"We knew for at least a week, maybe a little longer that this severe weather was coming," Lohr said. The only reports from county emergency management were that it was monitoring the weather, he said.

County spokeswoman Danielle Weaver, in an email Tuesday afternoon, wrote that emergency management responded to the cold weather event as it has with previous such events. Staff provided agency partners, including municipalities, with the most current weather info from the weather service and advised partners to contact emergency management if they had questions, concerns or unmet needs.

Emergency management contacts the county health department to get daily medical surveillance reports, which help in determining how the weather is affecting the public, Weaver wrote. The office also "interacts daily" with Meritus Medical Center's emergency management office and the Maryland Hospital Association.

"All parties collaborate to determine the effect the event is having on hospital census; requests staff from local shelters, such as the American Red Cross, be placed on standby; meets with the State Department of Emergency Management to get updated weather information, power and infrastructure updates, and State agency activities; and reaches out to the municipalities during the event to get an update on their situation and check for any unmet needs. Washington County Emergency Management has pre-determined warming center sites, which can activate quickly if there becomes a need," Weaver wrote.

The county didn't open any of its pre-determined warming sites during the recent extreme cold, Weaver wrote.

"Ten degrees below zero seems like a need to me," Keller said Tuesday afternoon.

Keller said the extreme cold wasn't just affecting Hagerstown residents.

"Everything is not just a Hagerstown problem all the time," she said.

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Weaver wrote that emergency management helped the city, providing bottled water for its warming site and working with the American Red Cross to try to find volunteers to staff the site.

Hancock Town Manager Mike Faith said Emergency Management Director Tom Brown called an Interfaith Services Coalition official, and Faith was looped into the call, to see if Hancock needed any resources to help with the extreme weather.

The coalition opened its Martha's House as a warming center for a few hours, posting that on social media, but no one took advantage of it, Faith said.

Officials also relied on word of mouth, Faith said. It's pretty challenging to get the word out, with Faith noting those probably weren't the most effective ways.

"At this point, I just think there needs to be a plan of action, just like in any other type of emergency," Keller said.

An after-action review is expected to give city and county officials and partnering agencies like CRS a chance to review the response to the extreme cold weather, officials said.

Frozen and broken water lines, collapsed ceiling and power outages

The combination of extreme cold and wind led to a variety of emergency calls, including many broken pipes and flooding.

Lohr said Hagerstown Fire responded to 22 calls on Christmas Eve and 29 on Christmas Day, predominantly related to water lines and automatic fire alarms. The fire alarms can be triggered by a number of things, including water intrusion. A number of the calls were about water running out of light fixtures and contaminating the electrical system, particularly in apartments.

Hagerstown Fire responded to the first block of Broadway on the afternoon of Christmas Day for a collapsed apartment ceiling after a frozen pipe busted in a vacant apartment and the water collapsed the ceiling of an occupied apartment below. Fire officials were on hand responding to the ceiling and water problem when they also worked on a fire because the collapsed ceiling distracted the occupant from food he'd left on the stove, Lohr said.

No one was injured, he said, adding a window in the vacant apartment had been left open, leading to the frozen water pipes. The water was shut off to the apartment building.

Paul Fulk, neighborhood services manager for the city, said it's his understanding that none of the tenants had to vacate due to the damage. The city had a work order to turn the water back on Tuesday.

Several residents at Potomac Towers were without heat after a water line break Friday, Hagerstown Housing Authority Executive Director Sean Griffith said. The line was fixed that day, but housing authority officials didn't realize until residents began calling Saturday that some units were without heat.

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The water line break caused air in the heating lines for the radiators for random units, not the entire high rise, he said. As tenants called to report a lack of heat, maintenance workers responded to bleed the lines and restore heat. Some people didn't realize their heat wasn't working immediately because they were away.

By Monday, housing officials went door-to-door at Potomac Towers and found a few more people without heat, he said.

Another dozen units among housing authority facilities also had water line breaks, but all had been fixed, he said Tuesday.

Faith, the Hancock manager, said there were about 40 people without power in the Hess Road area for a day or so after a live power line came across the road, knocking out power and keeping people from driving out. Potomac Edison did a great job in a combination of high winds and subzero temperatures, he said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Response to weather 'crisis' in Hagerstown, Washington County lacking