City council reviews winter readiness presentation with Homeland Security and Emergency Management

Photo: CBS Austin

CBS Austin
by Jessica Taylor
Tue, November 28th 2023, 6:17 PM GMT-7

AUSTIN, Texas — City leaders receive a briefing on winter readiness this afternoon. Ken Snipes, director of the city's Homeland Security and Emergency Management department pointed out what challenges the city faced in years prior and how they're trying to remedy them this year.

"New for the upcoming winter weather season, the National Weather Service is adding an ice storm warning for Central Texas. This is important because it signals a need to change our expectations and our thinking around how we prepare for winter weather," said Snipes.

In a presentation for the council, they shared challenges from past events, like communicating with the public.

"Some of the challenges in the past have included language access, communications and outreach, community preparedness, emergency fatigue, and staffing," said Snipes.

Snipes says that they've remedied most of those areas, including hiring additional staff.

"Some members of the staff have been on call or on standby every three weeks for several years. Some have been on standby for even more time than that. I'm happy to say that all new positions are filled now," said Snipes.

The presentation was comprehensive but the public still has lingering questions. One is what proactive work is being done to manage vegetation. That falls under several different city departments, including Austin Energy. Their spokesperson told CBS Austin Tuesday that they have ongoing tree trimming for trees in their service area or trees that could cause damage to their infrastructure.

Council members also brought forward their questions, ranging from managing food and water at shelters, and resilience hubs, and how the unhoused community should find overnight shelter.

"How will the intake process, registration process, for overnight sheltering work?" said councilmember Vanessa Fuentes.

"Plan as it exists today is to for us to have our people experiencing homelessness come to a centralized [center] to receive them, and then we'll work with CapMetro to move people [...] to a shelter facility," said Austin's Interim Homeless Strategy Officer, David Gray.

There are several departments that have a hand in vegetation management, like the parks department, and watershed, but there are also private versus public considerations.

We're working on following up with the multiple departments to see if there have been improvements since the ice storm.