‘Public safety issue.’ Lexington council members critical after more snow problems
Two Lexington Urban County Council members were critical Tuesday of the city’s response to winter weather after a blast of snow hit Lexington roadways early in the morning, quickly freezing over and leading to over 150 collisions Tuesday morning.
Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton told the Herald-Leader “no one saw ice coming.” after the city woke up to accumulation from overnight snow that caused significant road issues and led Fayette County Public Schools to cancel in-person class. But some members of the Urban County Council say the city should have been more prepared to respond.
“It’s unfortunate timing that something has happened so close to (Winter Storm Fern), and I was really hoping that the next time something happened, we would have a little bit better response,” 9th District Council member Whitney Baxter said in Tuesday’s council meeting. “Actually, a lot of a bit better response.”
“For (my) husband to sit on New Circle Road for two hours this morning for a 6 mile commute — that’s unacceptable,” she continued.
Lexington pre-treated roads on Monday, focusing on hills, bridges and areas known to be slick in snow events.
But the sudden snow bursts that hit Lexington around 4:30 a.m., then quickly froze, were not on the city’s radar, city officials say.
Nancy Albright, commissioner for the city’s department of environmental quality and public works, told the council Tuesday that snow plow crews were up overnight waiting for reports of crashes or traffic complains.
Very little news came through until around 5:00 AM this morning after snow had started to fall harder. It takes about an hour between crews being “activated” and plows actually hitting city streets, she said.
“It took us a little over an hour to get everybody in and back out. By then, things had gotten out of our reach a little bit,” Albright said.
The National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory at 5:32 AM Tuesday morning. But Rob Larkin, the city’s emergency management director, told the council that the weather service sent a “special weather statement” about upcoming weather at 12:58 a.m. Monday.
“They said we could get a dusting to a half inch of snow and would reduce visibility, and that may briefly accumulate on roads and leading the slippery condition,” Larkin said.
But that statement did not indicate the type of snowfall Lexington ended up getting.
“We saw from Kroger Field camera footage at around 4:30 this morning (that) we received a significant snow squall that lasted approximately 15 minutes,” Larkin said.
Chris Bailey, chief meteorologist at WKYT, said on social media Monday that this type of snow could hit Central Kentucky and impact schools and commutes. On Tuesday, he said city officials should’ve been aware due to the forecast.
“Public officials saying no one saw snow coming this morning are 100% wrong,” Bailey said on X. “I specifically said on WKYT and via social media that snow would impact this morning’s commute causing delays and cancellations.”
Emma Curtis, who represents Lexington’s 4th District, said the city needs to be more responsive to winter weather, particularly because these weather events are happening more frequently and unpredictably. Curtis said the city continues to “allow ourselves to be caught off guard by this.”
“At the end of the day, municipal government is about providing competent city services ... and we’ve had a clear difficulty meeting needs in ways that I don’t really know how to fully apologize for,” Curtis said.
“This is a public safety issue, and we cannot accept a world where our delayed response leads to dozens and dozens of car accidents to dozens of injuries, and we can’t ask our neighbors to put their lives on the line just to go to work because we haven’t responded in a prompt enough matter,” she added.
Gorton has said an after-action review from the city’s response to Winter Storm Fern will be wrapping up soon. That review will inform a newly written winter weather plan that will include more ways to tackle ice as well as snow.
