By SHARON KILPATRICK

By SHARON KILPATRICK

Rappahannock Newt Staff Writer

Everyone praised the dedication of those who responded to the snow emergency during the past two weeks at a special called meeting of the Board of Supervisors Monday, but there were several suggestions made for improvements if such a storm hits the county again.

With Chairman Hubert S. Gilkey III absent from the meeting, vice chairman Charles K. “Pete” Estes served.as chairman. “What I’d like to see is we use this meeting as a learning experience rather than for finger pointing,” he said.

“The big problem was too much snow and not enough equipment,” said Dieter Knuepfer, the county’s emergency services coordinator. Col. Knuepfer said it was several days before he was able to get out and he had to handle the emergency by telephone.

He said if he had gotten out, he would have set up an emergency operations center in his office in the magistrate’s building. The Washington Fire Department has offered space for a center, he added. He said he would not ask for a dedicated center, but he would like a dedicated phone line and someone to answer it, but added “A fancy facility for the operation of emergency services will not add one snowplow to the roads nor one operator. They cannot clear the secondary and tertiary roads any faster...All Sunday night the roads were closing behind the plows again. I don’t know a solution. We just didn’t have the equipment, nor do I think anyone else had it.”

He said he would prepare a “snow annex” to the emergency operations manual and to make sure everyone knows when an emergency has been declared.

VDOT resident engineer Robert Moore said, “Meetings like this are good, to find out what we can do for the next storm. My feeling is with these weather patterns, we will be tested again. It was a major undertaking.” He said money was not an issue; it was finding the equipment to do the job.

Doug Bywaters said VDOT followed its procedures of clearing U.S. 211 and 522 and Route 231 as the first priority and Routes 729, 642, and 610 in Chester Gap as a secondary,, priority. He said all the other secondary roads are the third priority.

Local superintendent Ron Marshall said he had been in the hospital and was ordered by doctors to stay home. He .said he came in Tuesday but kept in touch by telephone before that. He showed the supervisors a map showing all the parts of the county that are supposed to be plowed by people under contract with VDOT. In several cases their equipment was not up to the job and they had to get heavier equipment, he said. He said the priorities of roads are assigned in Richmond, and that