The City of Ames will not release their work plans as to approximate dates for return of electrical power. They guard these knowledge as if they were the invasion plans for Normandy. They could tell us, but then they’d have to kill us. Their stupidity knows no bounds. People can’t plan without this knowledge. They might take a trip if they are on the ‘still a week away list’. They might buy a generator if it was looking like 5 more days. Any number of things. But if your power is coming on tonight, you’d wait it out. You wouldn’t drop $3K.

“This area 1-2 days. That area 4-6. That area over there7 or 8.” But they always act with this bureaucratic nonsense like they are going to get sued if they tell someone maybe Thursday and its not till Friday. There’s not a court in the world that would hold them to that. But it would let people have some idea, so they could make some kind plans. If all you’re looking at is 24 hours you can ride that out. Just asinine.

The lack of information manifested itself in another way. Anyone who has listened to radio knows that annoying, “Beep! Beep! Beep! This is an alert from the Emergency Broadcast System!” They completely missed it on warning us for this storm. That’s one issue. But the other more obvious failure was the lack of follow-up. Its not just “the event”, the tornado, the flood, the ice storm, the blizzard, there’s the aftermath. People need to know: does the next town over have ice? Power? Water? What about Des Moines? Were they brought to there knees? Is there a charity somewhere handing out items? Where to you signup to be put on the cue for volunteer help with the cleanup? There’s a ton of questions people need answers to when they don’t have TV or internet, and no gawd damn AM radio station on the air!

What the sam hell is the point of having an Emergency Broadcast System is it breaks during the emergency? And they don’t have anything so basic as a generator?? Or a makeshift emergency tower to transmit with? What are we, Mexico? My gawd. I know we’re talking City workers here. You accept they’re going to be lazy, stupid, slow and  incompetent, we get that, but there has to be minimum standards. There has to be some threshold where they walk and chew gum at the same time. The City Administrator makes like have a million a year, and this is their response to an emergency?? 

Doesn’t the County have some responsibility? The State? My gawd, from top to bottom its incompetence. They didn’t even coordinate with the college radio station to be its communication point for people needing information. Those guys would have loved to have a responsibility. Or do what rest areas in Nebraska and Colorado do, “For more information tune to 1250 am on your radio”. They don’t even try to be useful. Part of the problem is the local paper does not hold their feet to the fire. I don’t know if its cronyism or stupidity. The only time bureaucrats respond is when they are called out in public.