Oh Brother, Jonas! ​“Overpreparing” Pays Off

New Haven officials were told to expect 5 to 7 inches of snowfall Saturday. Now they’re glad they expected more.

That was the word from officials who spent the day, and are spending the evening, overseeing the city’s response to Winter Storm Jonas.

The storm has buried cities up the East Coast. The original forecast was for it largely to bypass Connecticut, dumping a half foot or so of white stuff.

By 7 p.m., a foot had fallen on the city, with hours of snowfall to come.

And the city had a plan for that much snowfall in place, said Rick Fontana, who oversees emergency response for the government.

“When we were told that 15 miles from us on Long Island there was going to be a blizzard — and across the water from New Haven to our coast we were going to get 5 to 7 inches — we weren’t comfortable with that” prediction, Fontana said.

So the city planned for a foot or more. It closed the libraries, rather than have people drive in. It opened warming centers for the homeless at noon rather than wait until 10 p.m., in order to get people off the streets. It put an extra fire crew on duty.

And it activated the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Saturday morning, which usually wouldn’t happen for only half a foot.

Fontana said up to 10 staffers have fielded a steady stream of calls all day from people seeking help. (The number is 203 – 946-8221.)

“We’ve gotten a lot of calls from people with plowing issues. People got blindsided. They were watching news. Everybody was saying it’s a small amount,” Fontana said.

Mayor Toni Harp has also issued a downtown parking ban starting at midnight and along emergency routes. Click here for details about where to put your car.

New flashing lights installed by the city informed drivers about the parking ban. (See video, contributed by Edward Anderson.)

One major storm move the city decided not to make: Banning parking on one side of the residential neighborhood streets.

In past major storms, such bans have enabled plows to get through narrow residential streets — and the absence of such bans has left some streets barely if at all passable, because once cars were snowed in, owners couldn’t move them.

City transit chief Doug Hausladen and Fontana said Saturday that they and their colleagues looked ahead to the weather forecast in deciding not to proceed with the residential ban. Temperatures are expected to hit the 40s in coming days, helping to melt the snow.

“The weather will help us out over the next five days. There’s going to be some sunshine — the sun’s the most important part. It’s going to be over freezing. That’s how we made the decision in this case,” Hausladen said.

Fontana said he also wanted to avoid declaring more emergency measures than the city could enforce with limited resources.

“We didn’t want to say we were going to do something that we couldn’t actively do,” he said.

Meanwhile, the storm offered a publicity opportunity for a certain heartthrob teen-idol band. And plenty of fun for the pooch population.