INDIANAPOLIS – Seconds count when an emergency strikes, but if you needed an officer Saturday night the nearest one might not have been able to respond to your call because many were left waiting for crews to clean up from the storms.
Thousands of calls flooded the 911 center on Saturday after severe storms uprooted trees and took out power lines among other damage from the high winds through Marion County.
Because of the widespread damage, many police officers and firefighters were stuck blocking traffic after trees fell across roads – some waiting hours for crews to come to clean up the mess.
Blocking traffic is common after a storm, and in Marion County, the first responders are expected to safely block those roads until the Department of Public Works can get a crew to the scene and clean it up. But during Saturday’s wind storms, Call 6 has learned that some police officers were stuck blocking those roads for hours on end, which left them unable to respond to other emergencies in the county.
Some IMPD officers and IFD firefighters were forced to wait several hours for DPW crews to clean up storm debris over the weekend. I think this Marion County dispatcher summed up the situation best: #20HundredBillionThings @PLewbel @rtv6 https://t.co/j7mcanzB9I pic.twitter.com/oekOJFOCjp
— Michael R. Hartz (@MikeThePhotog) October 23, 2018
The reason?
Call 6 has learned that the Department of Public Works only had two forestry crews (seven people) working the entire county.
Officials with DPW say they also had crews on-call, and as the damage reports began piling up, they called in those crews throughout the night. Four additional forestry workers and one dispatch operator were called in between 7-8 p.m.
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