Nation's capital bracing for dangerous winter storm

AccuWeather

AccuWeather speaks with Clint Osborn of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency about how the nation's capital is preparing for the winter storm that's to hit the city tomorrow.

Transcript

00:00We do want to focus on the nation's capital because tomorrow they're going to be dealing

00:04with kind of the brunt of this during their morning commute with the winter storm. And

00:08Clint Osborne is the director of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.

00:14Thank you for joining us, Director Osborne. We want to talk about the snowfall because

00:18it's going to be one of the more significant ones that your team has seen at least for some time.

00:24Yeah, good morning, Lindsay, and thanks for having me, and thanks for helping us get the

00:27word out. We're looking at a pretty significant snowfall over the next 24 hours starting at about

00:3311 o'clock tonight, five to nine inches, potentially up to 12. Okay, and with all of

00:40this snow that will be coming down, how do you manage to stay on top of it? Because it'll be

00:45coming down possibly one to two inches an hour or even more than that. Are you going to have

00:49crews out throughout the overnight hours into tomorrow morning? Yes, Mayor Bowser's activated

00:55the district snow team, so we'll have over 200 vehicles out throughout this event.

01:02They'll start this evening, and they'll work through, and they'll just plow through the areas

01:06as the snow comes down, and then they'll cycle back and plow those areas again.

01:11Now, how is the city planning for the several days of cold weather that's going to come in after the

01:16storm? Because we won't be melting snow quickly, and then also folks will be stuck in these cold

01:22temperatures for quite some time. Yeah, we've really got two focus areas there. The first is

01:27the roadways, so our crews will stay out and clear those roadways and then treat those roadways

01:33so that we can minimize that refreezing on the roads with those cold temperatures.

01:37The other thing is with those cold temperatures, we're really focused on our residents who are

01:41experiencing homelessness, and so we expand our homeless services system throughout the

01:47throughout the district, and we use our 3-1-1 system so that residents who

01:52see someone experiencing homelessness can call 3-1-1 and get that person

01:56transportation to one of our shelters. Now, I'm always curious. With D.C., you kind of

02:01straddle around the Maryland area as well as Virginia. How do you coordinate with those

02:06teams in the area to make sure you're doing the best job for these types of storms?

02:09We do a regular call with the entire National Capital Region, so that's all of the locals,

02:15the state DOTs, as well as our federal partners, and we do those nightly when we have these types

02:23of events so that we can make sure that we're all sharing what we're doing and learning from

02:27each other so that we can sync up our decisions. Is there any message that you want residents or

02:34any message that you want residents or visitors in the area to follow?

02:39Well, this is shaping up to be a really significant storm, and if you can avoid

02:43being on the roads, do avoid being on the roads. But if you do have to go somewhere,

02:47we want to make sure that your car's in good shape, that you've got a full tank of fuel,

02:52but leave yourself extra time to get where you're going. Check a GPS, like one of your maps

02:58applications on your phone, to make sure that the route you want to follow is passable, and take

03:04your time and leave extra distance for these extra vehicles that we're going to have on the road

03:10treating and plowing the roadways. Great advice there from Clint Osborne,

03:15the Director of D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Thank you again for

03:19joining us this morning.

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