Lexington has reviewed Winter Storm Fern response, identified 6 key problems
Mayor Linda Gorton announced Monday afternoon the city’s review of the troubled Winter Storm Fern response is finished, and the city plans to take immediate steps to address the problems that led to a string of difficulties in trying to clear roads across multiple winter weather events.
The review looked at the city’s response to the late January storm that covered Lexington streets in snow and ice for weeks, despite increased investments in winter weather response last year. Just weeks later, another snow event led to over 150 crashes throughout the city. The next day, Lexington’s environmental quality commissioner resigned.
“(The review) identifies six key findings that need attention and points to a lack of a clearly defined, adaptable operational strategy that hammered our efforts this past winter,” Gorton said Monday. “It’s not necessarily easy to hear the results of an after action plan, but what this does is it tells us what we need to do better for our people, and so I’m really excited about the possibilities.”
Rob Larkin, the city’s director of emergency management, led the review and laid out the six issues:
- Lack of an operational strategy that differentiated between snow-dominant and ice-dominant conditions. Operational decisions were reactive, rather than guided by a defined strategy.
- Resource capacity and logistical constraints, including staffing levels unable to sustain extended, continuous operations, extended travel times for salt resupply, equipment downtime, and limited availability of specialized equipment in ice conditions.
- A need to improve incident management, with full implementation of emergency response procedures.
- Inconsistent internal and external communication.
- Training gaps, especially concerning ice-dominant conditions.
- Lack of a formal incident management structure.
Larkin said he interviewed over 100 city employees across four departments and six divisions to put the review together.
“I appreciate all their honesty, candor and willingness to help make this review accurate so that we can do better and serve our residents,” he said Monday.
Now that the review is done, Gorton said the administration will take further steps to prepare for future winter weather events.
8 contractors will be hired to help with winter weather
Among those actions will be adopting new agreements with eight contractors to provide emergency services during winter weather or other weather events. Gorton will ask the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council to approve the list of eight contractors at an April 14 council work session.
Gorton will share details of the cost of those contracts at 3 p.m. Tuesday while making her budget address, releasing her proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
Gorton did share Monday, though, that her proposed budget will include a total of $5.1 million for trucks, salt and beet heat, staffing, contracts and other equipment for winter weather management.
Gorton is also creating a work group that will use the after action review as the basis for rewriting the city’s winter weather plan. Gorton said the group does not have a meeting schedule yet and did not share the membership of the group.
This story was originally published April 13, 2026 at 1:57 PM.
CORRECTION: Mayor Linda Gorton’s proposed budget will include a total of $5.1 million for trucks, salt and beet heat, staffing, contracts and other equipment for winter weather management. This information was incorrect in a previous version of this story.
