“This year has been a year where we have worked very hard to shake things up so that we will be better-prepared," Mayor Kirk Watson said. "I feel very strongly, and I said it back at the beginning of the year when we were in that storm that there were parts of what was going on with the city that the city was not prepared. And we have worked to make changes to get us to a point where we are prepared."
The approach
Winter Storm Mara brought widespread power outages across Austin alongside complaints of lacking communications and response efforts by the city, issues that contributed to City Council's removal of former City Manager Spencer Cronk two weeks later.
Since then, Austin's utilities, emergency management office and other relevant departments have been improving their preparedness policies and beefing up their resiliency, officials said. Dozens of fixes were proposed in the aftermath of recent weather events, and city offices continue to address that work.
- Watson said the city continues to invest in readiness upgrades and increase its public communications on the topic.
- Travis County Judge Andy Brown said the county is collaborating with the 20-plus municipalities within its border on emergency response.
- Ken Snipes, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said citywide preparedness and response efforts are underway, with ongoing collaboration across city departments and partner organizations in the community.
- Austin Energy General Manger Bob Kahn said the utility has been weatherizing and inspecting equipment for months, expanded its emergency management team, kept up mutual aid agreements with outside entities, and ramped up tree trimming work near power lines.
- Anna Bryan-Borja, Austin Water's assistant director of business services, said the utility's infrastructure is ready for winter and that its incident management team has been enhanced.
- Robert Luckritz, Austin-Travis County EMS chief, said the agency aims to keep the need for 911 responses low during disasters. Proactive engagement with community members is taking place, including the Community Health Paramedic team's outreach with those experiencing homelessness to provide information on shelter, warming centers and transportation.
- Ana Urueta, Austin Public Health's emergency preparedness manager, said the agency is seeing an uptick in medical visits for respiratory issues and urged residents to get updated on their flu and COVID-19 vaccines.
- Richard Mendoza, director of the Transportation and Public Works Department, said his crews are ready to respond after also shifting to a more proactive stance and updating training this year. Mendoza said more of the city's 1,000-plus signalized intersections now have battery backups in case of outages, and asked drivers to stay off the roads in extreme conditions.
- Brenda De La Garza, assistant director of the Development Services Department, said Austinites should document any weather-related damage their homes or businesses may experience before working on repairs. She also said department staff are ready to issue emergency permits as needed.
While pointing to the many updates made inside Austin city government, officials also asked residents to make their own plans and precautionary steps before a storm or other emergency hits. Additionally, Watson noted that even the best response efforts can be hampered by extreme situations.
"There will be things that are unexpected. There will be things [that] happen that we wish had happened differently or we had a better response, but we will work very hard to be the kind of resilient city that we need," he said. "That also means we need folks to also be prepared for a winter storm event, because there is likely to be a winter storm event."
Austin and Travis County residents looking for assistance or advice on personal emergency preparedness can find resources through the Ready Central Texas website, its emergency toolkit guide and its neighborhood readiness guide.
Preparedness pop-up events are also scheduled to take place across city next year.
Kahn and other officials also asked Austinites to make sure Austin Energy has their current contact information, and to register for AE text alerts in case of events such as a power outage.
Utility customers can sign up or those alerts by texting "REG" to 287846.
“It’s really important that you sign up for these text alerts. We want to help you, but you need to give us your text numbers so we can contact you if there’s a problem," Kahn said.
Free winter weather toolkits will be offered at Austin Water customer service centers around the city. Distribution events include:
- Jan. 10 from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. at 8716 Research Blvd., Ste. 115
- Jan. 11 from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. at 2800 Webberville Road
- Jan. 12 from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. at 1901 W. William Cannon Drive, Ste. 100
