City and county officials are working to prevent another catastrophe like Winter Storm Uri.
At the Dec. 8 Taylor City Council meeting, city leaders heard an update from Fire Chief Daniel Baum about the city’s preparedness for a potential winter storm event.
“Good progress has been made,” Baum said. “Some of the bigger projects are just longer-term items due to expense and longer lead times. (But) any kind of catastrophe we are never going to be fully prepared.”
In February 2021, thousands of area residents were left without power and water for about a week after unprecedented sub-freezing temperatures coupled with snow and an ice storm triggered the worst failure of infrastructure in state history.
At the meeting, Baum provided an update to the After Action Report the city conducted one year after the storm, which provided key recommendations for the water utility, coordination with other utility providers, providing additional generators for critical infrastructure as well as contracts with vendors for items that are not needed by the city on a regular basis, etc.
“I think it’s good for folks to see the progress that has been made in the wake of Winter Storm Uri and the After Action Report and the items that have been addressed and those that are still outstanding, but I think this is reassuring that things are being addressed,” said Mayor Brandt Rydell.
Baum said the biggest priority for preparedness involved water, and he outlined steps the Brazos River Authority, which provides water to Taylor, had taken.
“BRA… has made a lot of improvements,” Baum said. “So as we discussed last year, they had a plan for installing backup generators. That has been done to maintain a 7.5 million gallons per day capacity should they have complete power failure.”
In addition, BRA has a thousand-gallon diesel tank to fuel those generators, plus portable heating equipment they purchased, Baum said.
“If you recall, some of their water manifolds froze solid, so once they had power again they had trouble distributing water again because those lines were frozen so they have heaters onsite to hopefully maintain that so the pipes don’t freeze through,” Baum said.
In addition, BRA is now categorized as critical infrastructure with the Public Utilities Commission and Oncor Energy, Baum said.
“For whatever reasons, they hadn’t been previously, that’s why they weren’t at the front of the line to get power restored, so that should be a big step, and as per a new state law after the storm, they developed an emergency preparedness plan dealing with extended power outages for critical infrastructure like that,” Baum said.
The city has also taken preparedness steps, including examining the 27-inch waterline that feeds the city coming out of Circleville, as well as adopting an emergency action plan as well as spare parts for repair, Baum said.
What’s more, the city is looking at adding another water source or a “secondary feed from an existing source,” Baum said.
In addition, the city is adding emergency generators at different facilities and the city’s engineering firm HDR has already figured out where they need to be and how to hook them up, according to Baum.
“We are ready to pull the trigger on that,” he said. “The one thing we are waiting on is grant funding even though we set aside budget money.”
Baum cautioned, however, that with supplychain issues generators can take time to acquire.
The chief also covered miscellaneous preparedness facts, including that the city had tire chains for vehicles in need, additional four-wheel drive fleets in the pipeline, thousands of pounds of sand and a spreader, and plans to use the Dickey Givens Community center as a warming center if need be.
“We need to reiterate and caution that the city doesn’t really have the ability to shelter people overnight and feed them and house them, but for a warming center, that is something we think we can do as needed,” Baum said.
County officials have also developed a county wide sheltering plan and has stockpiled emergency food and water.
“Preparing for any worst-case scenario is very costly and not always practical and we have to maintain and do a good job of community outreach and encourage a sense of self-sufficiency among people,” Baum said. “With most disasters, you are through the worst of it within the first 72 hours, and if we can encourage people to be supplied for that period of time, we should be in good shape,” Baum said.
After Baum’s presentation, District 1 Councilman Gerald Anderson proposed looking into providing vulnerable populations with hotel rooms.
“For people that are on tanks or who need electricity to survive or our most vulnerable homeless citizens, could we have some type of money to possibly put people in hotels?,” he asked.
District 4 Councilman Robert Garcia agreed.
“I would like to reiterate that,” Garcia said. “If we could try to look at that chief, as a part of another program because we all have to give a shoutout to some of the hotels they put people up for free and the Bill Pickett Foundation actually helped feed a lot of those individuals and house those individuals, so working with the local hotels for those that need the electricity for medical equipment would be an option.”
