Photo by Andrew Pasko-Reader.
Updated to reflect one casualty in Maryland.
D.C. has already seen 13 inches of snow, and we are still slated for another 6-10, city officials said at a morning briefing. They continued to emphasize that residents shouldn’t venture out into the storm.
“There are still too many people on the streets, both driving and walking,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said.
There have been no reported fatalities thus far in D.C.; one person has died in Prince George’s County after shoveling snow. Pepco responded to at least one small outage last night, but there are currently no power outages in the District. And 911 operators responded to 300 calls overnight that were all closed “successfully” and without delays, Bowser said, thanking the city employees who are working 12-hour shifts. While Humvees from the National Guard are standing by, the city has largely been able to use its own emergency vehicles.
But despite the relative calm—police officers even responded to a below average number of calls last night—officials warned that the storm is far from over.
“We are in a emergency response situation. We’ve seen half of it; the other half is yet to come,” said D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Director Christopher Geldart. “We are still in the emergent phase when really bad things can happen.”
He repeated Bowser’s refrain that residents shouldn’t be out, as did Police Chief Cathy Lanier. “We’re getting to the point that even four-wheel drive cars are getting stuck,” she said. Officers responded to a large volume of calls until about 1 a.m. to dig out stuck cars, and that picked up again this morning.
Geldart declined to speculate about when the city government and schools would reopen. “We’re still very much in the emergency response phase,” he said. “We don’t know what the rest of this day is going to hold for us.” D.C. has requested resources, including snow melters and additional dump trucks, from other states to speed up the recovery phase once we get there.
And for a little boy who was reported missing yesterday … turns out, he had just gone to a friends house and took a nap, Lanier said.
Rachel Sadon