ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. — Erie County released its internal blizzard action reports on Friday without much fanfare. No press release was issued, and there was no public comment from county executive.
The release comes after The Buffalo News questioned the county over its resistance to release the documents.
The 50-page document contains after action reports from each department within Erie County government.
2 On Your Side reached out to the county executive's office to respond to the reports. He, nor any other county official, was available to speak Friday night after the report was released.
The report highlights how several departments were overwhelmed keeping their staff informed and operating during the storm. The impact of this was particularly felt at the emergency operations center.
The Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services reported that "staff were quickly overwhelmed with tasks normally associated with other departments or jurisdictions. The cascading effect fragmented the limited staff beyond sustainment."
The NYS Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services criticized the county in their report for not having the same disaster response software.
While the county dismissed those claims, the after-action report did indicate that more people needed to be trained to operate the DLAN system. DLAN is used to coordinate emergency response resources.
Hospitals were overwhelmed with the number of dead bodies that were occupying their morgues, "not necessarily because of storm-related deaths," the report reads.
Funeral homes weren't able to pick up bodies from the hospitals, so even leading into the storm they were near capacity.
The report indicates that "police attempted to deviate from normal practice by dropping off bodies at ME's Office or the refrigerated trailer at the EOC without clearing with the MEO and obtaining a tracking number for the body."
The Medical Examiner's office also felt that "storm-related death data was shared with the media too freely throughout storm event," and a better system needs to be put in place.
While the 858-SNOW helpline was quickly established to provide the community with important non-emergency services, the system was overburdened with the overflow of 911 calls.
There was also a shortage of volunteers to help operate the hotline, according to the report. For example the Department of Medicaid Inspector General reported that they had asked for helpline volunteers and all of the staff declined.
The report outlines a lot of requests for additional resources, training and standard operating procedures. But it's unclear from the report released by the county how many of these requests have been fulfilled.
You can read the full report below.