Learning to fail from others' errors

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 5:16 PM CST

All the post-disaster analyses that flow from governments ought to do more than lay blame. They provide clues about how to change so that the same mistakes aren’t repeated and service improves, yet this use was apparently lost on state officials.

We all remember Feb. 6 and the mountain of snow that fell on southern Wisconsin, and we remember the people stranded in 2,000 vehicles on Interstate 90 between Madison and Janesville. Pennsylvania had a similar incident in February 2007 on Interstate 78. Just as in Wisconsin, heavy snow and sleet caused trucks to jackknife and block the road, stranding thousands of motorists for hours.

Pennsylvania issued a report on the crisis and the response, the Wisconsin State Journal reported on Monday. The newspaper quoted Wisconsin State Patrol Superintendent David Collins as saying that he and other senior patrol officials had read the Pennsylvania report last year and that he couldn’t recall any changes made as a result. That’s too bad because the Wisconsin people might have learned a great deal.

In addition to a similar cause of road problems, in both states a similar chain of errors prevented swift aid. Information about the problem didn’t reach top officials for hours, preventing them from realizing the scope of the crisis. Emergency command centers in both states failed to coordinate an effective response, and both states failed to quickly shut down their highways. Neither governor learned about the problem until after 7 p.m. meaning neither had time to mobilize the National Guard to help.

It is easy to haul out the old aphorism of philosopher and writer George Santayana (“Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”), but it is not something we should have to do when the information needed to improve was already in hand.

That is one main action managers are supposed to take — to look for the best ideas and practices to adopt. It’s also not as if the agency involved was a municipal or county department where staff is sometimes thin; this was a state agency which is expected to be the expert among experts.

Given the degree of urbanization here in southeastern Wisconsin, it’s unlikely we would have a similar crisis along our portion of interstate highway, yet it is to be hoped that everyone here looks at the Pennsylvania report. One never knows what good ideas are hidden within those pages and what grief they can prevent. We apparently cannot trust the state to be competent at its job and must look after ourselves.

So the task for the rest of us is to review our response or potential response to a similar situation, and this mainly means an application of common sense. If you see someone in trouble, a phone call or two or a radio call to a dispatcher may help to bring a faster resolution to a crisis. If you have a desire to go motoring, realize that nature is bigger and more powerful than your car and that you can’t always satisfy your whims, especially during a Wisconsin winter.

Collins told the State Journal that he now would absolutely reread the Pennsylvania report and look for improvements which his agency could make. Oh, good.

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