State Emergency Management officials are gearing up for the possibility of another crippling winter storm, following a major snowstorm last February that left thousands of motorists stranded on Interstate 39 near Madison.
Emergency Management's Lori Getter says a recent state exercise was designed to make sure that doesn't happen again. It brought several state and local agencies together to test new plans developed after the storm, along with communication systems put in place to determine if roads should be closed and what should be done to help motorist.
The exercise put responders in the situation of a major storm hitting during the holidays, knocking out power and closing roads down. Getter says it helped show the importance of having emergency responders prepared.
A report on the failures of the Interstate back-up put a great deal of blame on poor communication between agencies during the snowstorm. Getter says they've made a great deal of progress in addressing those problems, which they were able to demonstrate when the state responded to massive flooding in June.
