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Doyle criticizes slow response

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Also by Associated Press:

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by Associated Press

Monday, February 11, 2008

Gov. Jim Doyle said Friday that authorities did not initially grasp the scope of a traffic backup that left thousands of motorists stranded for as long as 12 hours in a snowstorm.

The governor said law enforcement may have treated it as a routine traffic delay for too long rather than a situation that required an emergency response.

“We’ve got to look very, very hard at whether they made that transition in a timely way and did the things that were needed to protect people,” he said. “I just don’t think there was a recognition of how serious it was out there.”

Doyle said he also wants to know why he wasn’t informed sooner and whether the delay means he could have activated the Wisconsin National Guard earlier to help deliver food and water to motorists.

Doyle stopped short of apologizing to those stranded, saying he would wait for the results of a review he ordered.

“I think everybody feels very bad about what happened out there, but the key here to me is to find out what happened,” he said.

The backup on a stretch of westbound Interstate 39-90 started early Wednesday afternoon when semitrailer trucks were unable to get up a hill because of the storm that dumped more than a foot of snow on southern Wisconsin.

The trucks blocked the freeway lanes, and traffic backed up as far as 19 miles from near Madison back toward Janesville. At one point, the State Patrol counted more than 2,000 trucks and cars stopped and stranded.

Some motorists complained they were stuck for 10 hours and saw no one from law enforcement and received no aid. Others said they had received no warning to avoid that stretch of highway even hours after the standstill started. Once they were stuck, they said they received little official information, even when they called 911.

After media reports describing the problems Thursday, Doyle announced he was ordering a review of the response. He called a news conference Friday to elaborate on the questions he wants Adjutant General Donald Dunbar, who heads the Wisconsin National Guard, to answer in his report due next week.

Doyle said he wants to know how the 911 calls were handled and who was responsible for assessing the information.

“I’m very concerned about whether the information was flowing here in a way that people got the picture of what was going on,” Doyle said. “Who was it deciding that this really wasn’t that serious of an event? Who made the decisions not to pass it up the line?”

Doyle said he did not learn of the backup until after 7 p.m. Wednesday, several hours after the first drivers became stuck. He was informed by Natural Resources Secretary Matt Frank and not the State Patrol, which has said it learned about the situation around 4 p.m. Radio stations were reporting the standstill even earlier.

Doyle said he contacted State Patrol Superintendent David Collins after speaking with Frank.

Collins described the backup, “But he also told me they were making contact with everybody along the line, they were knocking on the windows making an offer for food, water,” Doyle said.

Soon after, Doyle said his staff was in touch with the National Guard, which started mobilizing members to help with the response. He said he gave the order for them to officially move in at 9:15 p.m.

“One of the things I really am interested in, what was the situation at 5 o’clock?” Doyle said. “Was it something that our office should have been notified of and we should have been talking about calling out the National Guard at that time?”

Doyle said he also wants to know whether it would have been feasible to close the interstate or take other steps to stop drivers from entering the back of the line.

“There may well have been ways that we could have avoided a lot of those people getting into that situation,” he said.

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