Conn. City Designates Storm Committee

--

Dec. 13--NEW BRITAIN -- A deputy fire chief and a police officer are among the six people the city expects to name to a task force charged with examining the city's response to the late October snowstorm.

The council is expected to create the panel when it meets Wednesday at 7 p.m. city hall. The nominees include three put forward by Democrats: Deputy Fire Chief Tom Ronalter, Jaclyn Falkowski and Paul Zagorski. The council's Republican minority is proposing three members, too: police Officer Peter Scirpo, police commission member Howard Dyson, and Dan Davis.

Recently elected Democratic Mayor Tim O'Brien and the heavily Democratic council want to know why the city didn't open its emergency operations center during the damaging storm and why the emergency shelter didn't open until Sunday night.

Former Mayor Timothy Stewart has lashed out at the idea since it was first raised last month, saying it's a partisan attempt to discredit him.

But Democratic council member David DeFronzo has emphasized that the city's plan for dealing with major statewide or municipal emergencies calls for the mayor to open the emergency operations center, an office where public safety and public works managers can plan strategy.

"The failure to open the city's EOC may have made it more difficult for power to be restored quickly and may have impeded New Britain residents from receiving state assistance and mutual aid from other communities," according to a council resolution creating the task force.

As with most of Connecticut, New Britain sustained extensive damage from the storm and thousands of homes lost heat, light and hot water for as long as a week

Stewart has said the emergency operations center wasn't useful in previous crises, and that managers there spent too much time watching the Weather Channel rather than working. Some Democrats have replied that if that's true, Stewart should have improved the system during his eight years in office.