State of snow emergency

Snow is not an entirely uncommon occurrence in Portland. The downtown area usually gets one or two events of the white stuff during the winter every year. Keeping this in mind, I find it hard to believe how unprepared the city seems to be each time a snowstorm hits.

It would make sense if a city such as Los Angeles shut down because of a snow event, but a city that gets snow about every year should be much more prepared than the effort Portland recently demonstrated.

The first flurry of snow in Portland this year, which hit just before the big storm, brought a few inches to the metro area. Though this amount is not unusual for Portland, I recall watching the news and seeing the ticker at the bottom of the screen rattling off school closures, which included pretty much all of them.

Now perhaps it may be acceptable to have off the first day after a storm in order to allow drivers to prepare for the conditions and for trucks to plow the roads, but for some reason most of the schools in the Portland area stayed closed several days, until it was time for winter break.

I fault not only the city for being unprepared but also individual citizens as well. In my mind, the city only facilitates this lack of preparedness by allowing schools to remain closed and not requiring drivers to own chains for their vehicles.

Portland has many of its own issues. Its plow technology is years behind, not to mention that the city doesn’t have enough plows to cover even areas that frequently get snow. This does not work well for the amount of snow that Portland annually gets, let alone a storm the magnitude of the event that occurred this December.

Granted, the amount of snow accumulated the week of Christmas was far from typical. But I also find it hard to believe that a substantial metropolitan city that gets snow every year would be brought to its knees by about a foot and a half of snow. Cities on the East Coast get much more snow than Portland on a regular basis and somehow still manage. So what’s the difference between them and us?

The fact that our plow technology is so far behind is only one aspect of the problem. Due to the snow, many citizens were forced to take public transportation if they wanted to continue with some semblance of their daily lives.

Now it’s obvious that a large, heavy bus with industrial chains that bite into the snow and ice to gain traction is much safer than your average automobile. And this form of transportation worked pretty well until some of the bus chains, which are from the ’70s, ended up breaking, which left buses and people stranded in the snow or unable to get around at all. This further illustrates my point that this combination of city and citizen unpreparedness proved to be disastrous for Portland.

Having 30-year-old chains—older than many, if not all, of the buses themselves—is nothing short of irresponsible. Replacing these ancient chains is just one of the things that the city could and should be doing to mitigate problems in situations where there is inclement weather. My suggestion is that Portland buys new chains for its vehicles every 15 years, at the very least.

I know that Portland prides itself on sustainability and environmental awareness, and therefore does not use salt on its roads. There are many arguments against salting roads and I understand them all. It’s bad for people and the environment, not to mention the long-term damage it does to cars. But gravel and deicer can only take snow mitigation so far, making it clear that other methods may have to be implemented.

When we have Gresham declaring a state of emergency because trucks can’t get food to stores and people can hardly get out of their homes, let alone get where they need to go, salting the roads may be an acceptable solution.

The amount of money that Portland lost over this snow event, which some estimate was over $2 million, is reason enough to rethink our snow strategies and perhaps spring for some improved plows and new chains for buses. There is no reason for a city that gets snow every year to be this inept at dealing with the problem.