This report will be in two parts. Part one is about Ken Unger’s perspective on what happened during the January 2024 Hot Springs Village Weather Disasters. Although part of what is in this report has already been covered in the Gazette, Ken has his own unique views, and I think they are well worth publishing.
Part two will be about Unger and Staff discussing how the ice, snow, and rain events affected village roads and ultimately will impact the 2024 road preservation program plans.
Hot Springs Village staff members, Director of Public Services Ken Unger, Associate Director of Public Services Matt Broom, and Superintendent of Streets and Sanitation Todd Noles attended the Streets, Culverts, and Roads sub-committee meeting on Thursday, January 25, 2024. Board Director Larry Siener also was on hand. The topic of the meeting was “Paving Roads.”
Unger Gives General Insight into Inclement Weather Events
Before delving into “Paving Roads,” Unger gave a general insight into everything that has happened over the past ten days. He described the events in reverse chronological order from the most recent event on January 18 to when the events began on January 12. Unger said, “Noles’ team spread almost 800,000 pounds of sand and 18,000 pounds of ice melt over the course of the last winter event (ice storm on January 18). There was a snow event (January 14). The village was hit by several microbursts (January 12), which are basically small tornadoes. If you drove down Balearic Friday morning, you would have seen trees down and telephone and power lines down. Todd was notified about 4:00 in the morning, and I was notified about 4:30, and between 4:50 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., Todd’s team and other POA employees had removed over 300 trees from the roads. Before most people in the village were even awake or up and doing anything, the POA teams had literally cleared the roads of downed trees.”
“When people don’t know there is a disaster, that is when you know you did a good job responding to the disaster.”
Ken Unger, HSVPOA Director of Public Services
Unger continued, “There were a thousand people without power that morning because of the downed lines, but First Electric and Entergy, due to contacts that Todd made and their own preps as well, responded very quickly and re-established power very quickly within the same day to those residents.”
“The event on January 12 started this whole debacle that then rolled into Sunday, January 14, when Matt and Todd’s teams came in and started prepping our roads to deal with the incoming weather, stated Unger.
“We made multiple pleas to the public about staying inside. This was a fairly unique event for us because while the snow was initially light and there were only a couple of inches, it packed down, almost into ice as cars drove on it.“
“The crews main efforts were to keep main roads clear and hope that residents stay in until the weather warms up to its normal trend and this stuff melts. We are not equipped like the northern entities. We don’t have that army of sanders and plows. We have two sanders for 468 plus miles of road. When we ask people to stay inside, unless they absolutely have to go out, there is a reason for that. The ability of the crews to plow streets goes downhill when we have to spend a lot of time pulling people out of ditches. There are multiple pictures that Todd took of people who thought they could handle this and then realized when they got out there they couldn’t. “
Ken Unger, HSVPOA Director of Public Services
“Another problem we encountered was that when we put our material down [sand and ice melt], it started to thaw, and then that night, it refroze. So people who thought they had clear roads no longer had clear roads. We don’t have events like this often.”
“Then we had people on the east side telling people, ‘It is fine. Go ahead and go out.’ It wasn’t so fine for people living on the west side, in the mountains. People need to be aware of the environment in the village and not recommend things that they don’t know about to other residents. That compounded the issues that we had,” said Unger.
“We can’t proactively go out there and plow everybody’s street. We don’t have enough equipment. Like everything else, we recommend that people submit an online request so that we can, in an organized fashion, attack these areas as best as possible. People who didn’t have their roads plowed didn’t notify us and expected us to plow their roads. Guess what? That’s not going to happen here in the village,” explained Unger.
Unger said there is a short priority list of 115 miles of primary roads. There are also various hills we know need to be shut down or sanded. “There are innumerable hills in the village, and in an event like this, it doesn’t take much of a hill for somebody to slide down. I have heard everything from shows of appreciation from some villagers to people who thought we should have been out there the next day plowing their streets. They are probably new residents who don’t understand that we live in the south. They don’t have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, and they don’t have snow shovels or chains. We also don’t have all the equipment necessary to plow every street in the village in a two-day period, and we won’t. Hopefully, this is an education.”
Unger stressed, “I am very proud of Todd and his team and all the other teams within the POA that volunteered. The Police and Fire Departments were out every night, pulling people out of ditches and helping those who fell – who went outside and shouldn’t have been outside. POA crews spent a lot of time assisting in emergencies. I don’t know the final stats, but there were many rescues, and many people helped during this event. Hopefully, people will stay inside during the next serious weather event.” Hundreds of people were helped. (Stats will be coming soon.)
Broom said, “Ken covered it all. It was a very unusual event, but I couldn’t be more proud of our response from Todd and all the guys who helped. It was a great team effort. We got through it the best way we could. Not everybody was happy, but we knew that would happen.”
Siener stated, “Let me weigh in here and add my thanks from the Board perspective. There may have been some injuries that required Life Net support, but to my knowledge, nobody died in a crash. None of our POA team were hurt. There were a lot of cars in ditches because people shouldn’t have been driving. But at the end of the day, we broke a lot of ‘stuff,’ but nobody got seriously injured. Your crews worked in foul weather and on bad roads. You very easily could have had an incident. Good for you for staying safe. I hope people will learn their lesson about trying to drive in terrible weather.”
Unger said that we have people who have moved here and have not been in this type of climate situation, maybe from California or further south, where they don’t deal with this type of environment. “They don’t realize what they are getting into. Then you have people from the far north who think they can handle it. It runs the extreme. But this is an opportunity for us to communicate better. That is part of what we ask from the Public Services Committee; we want them to talk about our challenges. We’re not set up like a northern climate. We are not going to be able to respond the same.”
“People need to have expectations established here and an ongoing dialogue about what the POA really is, what the POA’s capabilities are, and what the POA can and can’t do.”
Ken Unger, HSVPOA Director of Public Services
“That is why I do all of the ASK KEN columns, and I am working with Cheryl, Matt, and other media to get information out to residents so they have their expectations set and don’t do something stupid,” said Ken.
Inclement Weather Events Have Created Road Damage Issues
“We are still responding to issues. This isn’t really over because the rain has complicated things even further. That is what I am about to talk about today because that has caused issues with drainage and our road system,” said Unger.
Mother Nature has Refined the 2024 Village Road Preservation Plan
“I asked to talk about paving today because we were going to lay out some of our [road preservation] plans and wanted to get direction from the Public Services Road, Culvert, and Sanitation subcommittee. Mother nature has helped us refine our plan,” said Unger.
Due to the storm damage to village roads, Unger has asked the subcommittee to help re-evaluate the 2024 Road Preservation Plan. This discussion will be in a subsequent article.
Stay tuned for part two of this discussion, published in a subsequent article. Let me know what you think in the comments.
By Cheryl Dowden
CONTACT INFORMATION FOR HSVPOA PUBLIC SERVICES DIRECTOR
Ken Unger
Director Public Services
Hot Springs Village
501-226-9609
Kunger@hsvpoa.org
Click here to visit the Hot Springs Village POA Official Facebook Page.
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I commend the POA for many hours of risky work and appreciate all you do and have done to protect us.
Considering the size of the Village, the rarity of the event, and the quick responses to tree clearing, sanding, and subsequent road repairs, I think the POA is to be commended! Most of us were able to stay home for a few days and wait until better weather.
Very well said Ken! Thank you for sharing this information with us. Also, the communications sent out by the POA to the members during the recent storms was excellent and MUCH appreciated.
Also, thank you to Cheryl for publishing this report (and many others).
Regards,
You are welcome, Frank. I am always happy to write reports for the wonderful people in this community. Thank you for commenting. – Cheryl