City of Lampasas employees have worked this week to keep Lampasans safe and warm as Texas endures its coldest weather in decades.
Several city officials offered comments about various aspects of the response to the icy weather and related utility outages.
LAMPASAS FIRE DEPARTMENT
Lampasas Fire Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator Jeff Smith said the fire department has provided provisions and a warming shelter to Lampasans at the fire station on East Fourth Street.
On Thursday, Smith said the department’s foremost concern was providing drinking water to residents whose pipes burst or who are unable to boil water at their homes. The city remained under a boil notice at that time.
Walmart and H-E-B are out of bottled water due to a surge in demand, he said Thursday. The fire department has run out of containers in which to distribute water, but it can fill containers residents provide.
Some gas stations have been without electricity and are therefore unable to pump or sell gas, he said. Other stations are out of fuel because supply trucks have been unable to traverse icy roads to deliver fuel.
Smith said the fire department topped off the fuel tanks of its vehicles on Wednesday.
The department responded to five house fires this week. Four houses were salvageable, he said.
Smith said as residents’ energy supply has been cut this week, many have turned to makeshift heat sources and space heaters to warm their residences. If not properly operated, alternative heat sources can cause fires. Alternative heat sources were responsible for several of the fires the department put out this week, he noted.
Smith said he is optimistic the supplies of energy and water will return to normal as the temperature rises.
“I’m hopeful for a big turnaround [on Friday] with the weather,” he said. “And on Saturday, before you know it, this will be a thing of the past that we all talk about.”
CITY MANAGER’S COMMENTS
City Manager Finley deGraffenried said staff members have worked diligently to improve road conditions, restore water to city storage tanks and monitor the city’s electric supply.
Street Department employees have sanded city roads every day since Sunday, deGraffenried said. On Thursday, they used a motor grader to improve especially slick areas. The city does not own any snow plows.
“We’re trying to give it what attention our resources allow,” he said. “This is a situation we don’t deal with very often.”
Staff members are working closely with the Kempner Water Supply Corp. employees to recharge the city’s water tanks.
“In order for our system to be completely restored and recharged, theirs must be restored and recharged,” deGraffenried said.
The Georgetown Tank still lacks water, the city manager said on Thursday, but water should be restored to all city connections. He said the city has turned off a number of meters at customers’ request due to burst pipes.
DeGraffenried said some city water mains are leaking, but water loss appears to have been minimal. Water and Wastewater Department employees will fix the mains once they have tended to pipes that burst.
City employees will send tap-water samples to a lab Friday and hope to find out Saturday whether it is fit to drink so they can rescind the boil notice as soon as possible.
DeGraffenried said the city staff has been keeping an eye on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas load forecasts.
“We’re not out of the woods in terms of the electric event,” he said. “But we’re hopeful that, as the weather warms and demand goes down, we’ll get beyond it.”
Electric Department employees replaced two or three transformers that were old and slightly overloaded, he said. When power was restored to certain areas, they tripped.
DeGraffenried commended city staff and council members for their response to the weather-imposed predicaments.
“We’re not perfect, but as we look around the state, we see lots of communities that did not fare as well,” he said. “That’s a credit to our staff and our elected officials.”
The city plans to solicit, via a formal process, after-action reviews of its work this week, deGraffenried said.
LAMPASAS POLICE DEPARTMENT
Chief of Police Sammy Bailey said the police department helped Lampasans prepare for and grapple with weather-inflicted challenges this week.
Before sub-freezing temperatures set in, officers met with several local homeless people and advised them to seek shelter and warmth. Officers told them they would help find the homeless a place to go if they could not find one, Bailey said.
Early Monday morning, the police department established command at the police station for weather and electric-outage response, she said.
From Monday through late Wednesday, three to five city and police department employees took phone calls to answer questions about electric and water issues.
Bailey said the police station was able to run on generator power and offered its lobby as a warming center, allowing visitors to charge electronic devices and offering them coffee and hot chocolate.
“During this incident, we provided food items that we had here at the [police department] or from our personal cabinets to folks that did not have food and blankets,” she said.
Police department employees also provided transportation to elderly residents, which allowed them to travel to seek provisions and medical services.
Bailey said the police department posted information on its Facebook page about how to drive safely on icy roads and how to turn snow into drinking water.
Call volume increased on Monday and Tuesday, Bailey said, and officers responded to reports of reckless driving, family violence and other misconduct. They patrolled unoccupied businesses that lacked electricity to prevent burglaries, and looked for broken pipes and water leaks.
Electric outages in southeast Lampasas crippled the police department’s radio communication, and officers and dispatchers used their computers and cell phones to communicate.
Bailey said there was only one weather-related accident this week, and the drivers involved reported no injuries.