It may have been the shortest State of Emergency declaration the District has ever seen — imposed on Tuesday night in response to two days of heavy rainfall, only to be quietly rescinded on Wednesday. But as the city dries off, residents are starting to wonder whether the declaration was needed at all. More importantly, concerns are being raised over what the response to heavy rain says about the city’s ability to deal with a real emergency.

Ultimately, the city’s ability to respond to emergencies may have been exposed on Constitution Avenue. As flooding knocked out power to street lights along the vital traffic artery (some 50,000 vehicles traverse it daily), overwhelmed police were forced to shut down portions of the road. The resulting traffic may go down in D.C. history books — hours and hours spent bumper to bumper, often to go a few miles. Williams admitted that the response was bad at best, while Michelle Pourciau, director of the D.C. Department of Transportation, claimed that the generators necessary to restore power to key street lights were still on order. Reports the Examiner:

Michelle Pourciau, director of the D.C. Department of Transportation, said the traffic signal issue should be resolved later this summer when the city — using Homeland Security money — receives an order of 70 generators which can be connected to signal boxes during an outage. “By the next storm, we should have those,” she said.