00:00We do want to focus on the nation's capital because tomorrow they're going to be dealing
00:04with kind of the brunt of this during their morning commute with the winter storm. And
00:08Clint Osborne is the director of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.
00:14Thank you for joining us, Director Osborne. We want to talk about the snowfall because
00:18it's going to be one of the more significant ones that your team has seen at least for some time.
00:24Yeah, good morning, Lindsay, and thanks for having me, and thanks for helping us get the
00:27word out. We're looking at a pretty significant snowfall over the next 24 hours starting at about
00:3311 o'clock tonight, five to nine inches, potentially up to 12. Okay, and with all of
00:40this snow that will be coming down, how do you manage to stay on top of it? Because it'll be
00:45coming down possibly one to two inches an hour or even more than that. Are you going to have
00:49crews out throughout the overnight hours into tomorrow morning? Yes, Mayor Bowser's activated
00:55the district snow team, so we'll have over 200 vehicles out throughout this event.
01:02They'll start this evening, and they'll work through, and they'll just plow through the areas
01:06as the snow comes down, and then they'll cycle back and plow those areas again.
01:11Now, how is the city planning for the several days of cold weather that's going to come in after the
01:16storm? Because we won't be melting snow quickly, and then also folks will be stuck in these cold
01:22temperatures for quite some time. Yeah, we've really got two focus areas there. The first is
01:27the roadways, so our crews will stay out and clear those roadways and then treat those roadways
01:33so that we can minimize that refreezing on the roads with those cold temperatures.
01:37The other thing is with those cold temperatures, we're really focused on our residents who are
01:41experiencing homelessness, and so we expand our homeless services system throughout the
01:47throughout the district, and we use our 3-1-1 system so that residents who
01:52see someone experiencing homelessness can call 3-1-1 and get that person
01:56transportation to one of our shelters. Now, I'm always curious. With D.C., you kind of
02:01straddle around the Maryland area as well as Virginia. How do you coordinate with those
02:06teams in the area to make sure you're doing the best job for these types of storms?
02:09We do a regular call with the entire National Capital Region, so that's all of the locals,
02:15the state DOTs, as well as our federal partners, and we do those nightly when we have these types
02:23of events so that we can make sure that we're all sharing what we're doing and learning from
02:27each other so that we can sync up our decisions. Is there any message that you want residents or
02:34any message that you want residents or visitors in the area to follow?
02:39Well, this is shaping up to be a really significant storm, and if you can avoid
02:43being on the roads, do avoid being on the roads. But if you do have to go somewhere,
02:47we want to make sure that your car's in good shape, that you've got a full tank of fuel,
02:52but leave yourself extra time to get where you're going. Check a GPS, like one of your maps
02:58applications on your phone, to make sure that the route you want to follow is passable, and take
03:04your time and leave extra distance for these extra vehicles that we're going to have on the road
03:10treating and plowing the roadways. Great advice there from Clint Osborne,
03:15the Director of D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Thank you again for
03:19joining us this morning.
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