Equipment Deficencies to Blame?

This isn't rocket science.

Officials screwed up royally, leaving thousands stranded on I-39/90.

Nonetheless, Judy Robson wants an audit to determine if officials had adequate communications equipment to deal with the situation.

From the Wisconsin State Journal:

Wisconsin officials knew about a report detailing the state of Pennsylvania's botched response to a severe winter storm there last year.

But they still made the same mistakes during the Feb. 6 blizzard here.

In both states, thousands of motorists were trapped on an Interstate after state highway patrol and emergency management officials failed to communicate the size of the problem. They also failed to quickly shut down the Interstate and inform both the governor and National Guard about the mounting crisis.

...In Wisconsin, Brig. Gen. Don Dunbar, the head of the state's Department of Military Affairs and the author of the report on the state's response to the storm, read the Pennsylvania report's summary before the Wisconsin storm happened, spokesman Lt. Col. Tim Donovan said. Donovan was unable to get more information late Friday on what lessons, if any, Dunbar learned from the report.

Wisconsin Emergency Management administrator Johnnie Smith said Friday he learned about the Pennsylvania report from press coverage at the time. Smith said the Pennsylvania mistakes moved his agency to start up their Emergency Operations Center more readily this year in response to winter storms, including the Feb. 6 blizzard.

Smith said he hadn't read the report last year but would "definitely" read it now, along with information from other states.

...A state senator will seek an audit into whether emergency responders had adequate communications equipment to deal with the Feb. 5-6 blizzard.

The district of Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, includes the section of Interstate 39-90 where 2,000 cars were stuck overnight in the snowstorm. Robson said she was "very concerned " about the state 's poor response to the crisis detailed in a National Guard report issued Thursday.

State officials should be as prepared to deal with extreme winter weather as they are to deal with floods or tornadoes, she said. "We live in Wisconsin. We get bad snow, " Robson said. "We should be prepared. "

Robson said she wanted to know whether a lack of adequate equipment contributed to a failure of communications among state agencies and local governments in Dane and Rock counties during the crisis.

Robson said she would seek a legislative audit to determine whether money awarded to Wisconsin by the federal Department of Homeland Security was spent correctly to ensure good communication systems.

This is really a joke. All the communications equipment in the world wouldn't have made a difference.

The fact is authorities failed to recognize that there was a problem. It wasn't a matter of lacking the equipment to get the message out. They didn't act. Agencies didn't work together properly.

The mess had nothing to do with equipment deficiencies.

That makes the fact that Gov. Jim Doyle isn't going to discipline anyone for this massive failure all the more absurd. It wasn't an equipment problem. It was and organizational and people problem.