Seattle may hire consultant to examine snow response

The Seattle City Council will consider hiring an outside consultant to look at the city's response to December's historic snowstorms.

City departments will give the mayor a report Jan. 30, but Councilmember Tom Rasmussen said this morning that an outside party could help city officials figure out what went wrong.

The storms stranded bus riders and left ice and compact snow on many streets for nearly two weeks.

In a meeting this morning, council members questioned whether the city could have better used its emergency-operations center to solve the problem of streets being impassable for Metro buses.

The operations center was not fully mobilized until Dec. 20, when snow was already on the ground and forecasters were predicting a second major windstorm.

"It seems to me that the system broke down at the very front end," said Councilmember Nick Licata. "The EOC (Emergency-Operations Center) should have been mobilized earlier ... and that wasn't done until we were already in a crisis mode."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com