On the scale of emergencies, the deadly tornado that struck Salt Lake City on Aug. 11 amounted to a minor disaster. But it still pointed out serious weaknesses in the Salt Lake City-County Health Department's ability to respond.
According to Lewis Garrett, director of Family Health Services, failures included:
Telephone systems that did not work.
At critical junctions, health officials had no idea what was going on until they heard news reports.
The emergency-response plan turned out to be confusing.
The department had no role to play in Salt Lake City emergency coordination efforts, even though it serves 12 cities within the county.
Garrett outlined the problems during a report Thursday to the Salt Lake City-County Board of Health, at the group's monthly meeting in the Salt Lake County Government Center, 2001 S. State.
"At the time that that tornado hit, a significant portion of the leadership of the health department . . . was downtown very close to where the tornado hit," Garrett said, who with department director Dr. Kathryn N. Vedder and other officials were meeting with University of Utah officials about a new study.
They assumed it was just a bad storm. "Power went out. We sat there until the rain stopped and just thought it was a storm," he said.
When they went outside, they realized a disaster had occurred. "Emergency vehicles were descending . . . traffic was very bad." Making their way to their car, they heard on the radio that a tornado had struck. Initial reports were of many injuries.
"As Dr. Vedder and I discussed whether the county was going to activate their emergency operations center, we tried to reach the government center by cell phone to confirm or figure out what was going on. We absolutely could not get in."
So many telephone calls were made by people concerned about the safety of relatives and friends that the phone system was swamped. Without other means of communication, the top officials had no way to talk with leaders of other agencies and find out what they should do.
"It was clear quickly that our ability to talk to each other was severely compromised," Garrett said.
They made their way back to the county building. Once they arrived, they discovered through media reports that the county was activating the emergency operations center. So they went to the center, which is located in the basement of the county jail.
The emergency operations center had what should have been a great telephone system. But it worked only at times, he said.
"We had no radios and our cell phones were not working. So that really hampered our ability."
Meanwhile, they had pulled out copies of the official emergency response plan, written years previously and were trying to coordinate the staff's activities.
"We had not really looked at those disaster plans in quite a while. . . . When we actually dusted them off for real and looked at them, there were parts of them that weren't as helpful as they should have been. They weren't clear. The department is reviewing its plans to make sure they are up to date. Radios will be purchased so that officials can coordinate better during telephone outages.