Stormy Weather

evere weather events have been happening with increased frequency in the past few years. According to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Scientific studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense with human-induced climate change.”

With that in mind, Mt. Lebanon’s storm preparation efforts have risen to meet the challenges, including meeting the National Weather Service’s requirements for a Storm Ready community:

• A 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center
• More than one way to receive severe weather warnings and forecasts and to alert the public
• A system that monitors local weather conditions
• Promote the importance of public readiness through community forums
• Develop a formal hazardous weather plan which includes severe weather spotters and hold emergency exercise

“LeboAlerts and LeboEmergency serve as the warning points,” said Kurt Christofel, Mt. Lebanon Fire Department’s deputy chief in charge of operations and safety. LeboEmergency is a customized notification system that lets you pick how you receive alerts about life-threatening situations. LeboAlerts is a more wide-ranging notification system, offering users a variety of topics they can choose. You can sign up for both services through the “Additional Tools” section of the municipal website, mtlebanon.org.

Christofel urges residents who haven’t signed up for LeboEmergency to take a few minutes to get on board.

“The cool thing about LeboEmergency is that it’s part of the CodeRED system, and it follows you wherever you go,” he said. “We pick a boundary, and we send it to any mobile device within that boundary that is signed up for CodeRED. Let’s say that you’re in Florida and there’s a hurricane that’s coming through, and they use CodeRED. You’ll get that alert if you’re in Florida. If somebody’s up here from Florida and they have CodeRED, they’ll know about something happening here.”

Although Mt. Lebanon does have an emergency operations center, responses to weather emergencies typically do not call for a full activation.

“Our operations center is support based,” Christofel said. “The watch commanders—police and fire—get together, and we’ll set up a list for public works of areas of concern: This is where our areas of concern are. This is our high-priority area. We’re triaging them.”

As the weather worsens, firefighters will drive through town in SUVs or squad vehicles, assessing damage and potential hazards. “We’ll look at it very quickly and say, ‘All right, so this is a low priority. There’s no wires, just a tree blocking the road. This one’s a high priority, with high tension lines on the road. One’s a medium priority—a tree that’s down, maybe it cut off power to one house, but the rest of the people still have it.’”

“We can’t touch anything until Duquesne Light comes out,” said Public Works Director Rudy Sukal. “So the fire department will put barricades up, block the roads, make everything safe for the public. If we’re already out, we’ll stay. But if we are not called out yet, they’ll let us know, ‘Hey, there’s a tree down, but we can’t touch it yet because there are live wires. So we’ll call you whenever Duquesne Light gets on the scene,’ and then they de-energize the system, and we’re able to go in there and do our work.”

Summer storms typically bring two major types of damage: fallen trees and flooding. The public works department has a three-man forestry crew on staff, and is also prepared with sewer equipment.

“We have the vacuum unit, we have the flusher, the jet truck and we have people who know how to use that stuff,” said Sukal, “and we have camera equipment where we can put the camera in the sewers and investigate.”

Christofel says the municipality has done a lot to mitigate potential storm damage. “We had an issue in the Sleepy Hollow area for years and after Hurricane Ivan came through, the municipality redid the entire storm sewer system on Sleepy Hollow Road. And we have not had an issue since.”

In 2011, Mt. Lebanon was one of the first communities in Pennsylvania to create a storm sewer fund to address infrastructure issues. Several communities have followed suit, creating a separate fund to pay for stormwater infrastructure repairs, easing the burden on a town’s day-to-day
operating budget.

Another Storm Ready requirement involves holding severe weather drills. “We’ve done some tabletop exercises,” Christofel said. “We did one a few years ago, a freak microburst during a planned event at the golf course, and we played out some scenarios there.”

In September, members of the Mt. Lebanon Fire Department and Public Information Office attended an Integrated Warning Workshop with the National Weather Service (NWS) at the Allegheny County Emergency Services building in Moon. Meteorologists and other NWS staff worked with first responders from around the region to remind them of reports, maps and research available to them before, during and after weather events.

Weather services can predict the weather with skill up to nine days ahead of time. But that’s it. Beyond that, the services must use climate data rather than prediction skills.

The municipality used to subscribe to a meteorological service, Air Science in Bridgeville, but Sukal said the company was having trouble finding meteorologists to provide continuous coverage.

“They (Air Science) were pretty accurate, but with the technology now, National Weather Service and NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), there’s so many apps now that you can kind of see the movement of what’s coming and kind of talk it out, with weather maps and things like that.”

The fire department receives warnings from the National Weather Service. “It’s like broadband radio,” said Lt. Steve Quatchak. “It would work even if the phones were out. So a lot of times you’ll watch the Weather Channel and you know there’s a storm coming in. You’re hanging out in that room and all of a sudden it starts buzzing and scares the heck out of you, and just repeats like a robot voice, ‘Incoming storms expected in the next two hours.’”

“If there’s a predicted storm coming, whether it’s a snowstorm or some sort of a rain event, we make sure all the trucks are fueled up, and make sure that all of our pumps and generators and things like that are ready, and that our employees are rested and ready to go,” said Sukal.

A full snow and ice callout requires nine drivers and one person to oversee the loading of the salt trucks. The department’s two mechanics are on duty for emergency repairs.

“Sometimes we’ll have them come in prior to the storm because we don’t want them fighting the traffic and  bad roads on their way in. And if a storm hits or if it’s predicted to hit somewhere around rush hour, we’ll hold in position.

“If we get a storm on the weekend or off hours outside of our normal 7 to 3:30, the police will give us a call when they think that it’s getting to a point where we need to treat the roads.”

A winter storm watch means winter precipitation (snow, ice, sleet) is possible. A winter weather advisory means it is imminent. A winter weather/storm warning means there is an 80 percent chance of 6 inches or more of snow in 24 hours.