City Employees Shine After Severe Weather

The storms that rolled through Madison on Tuesday evening were incredibly destructive. The good news is there were no injuries. The clean-up however, will take not just days, but in some cases, weeks. Our City teams, though, anticipated the event and were ready.

It was an intense and long night. Even as the rain continued, staff drove every street and learned where roads were blocked so crews could begin their work as soon as possible, in conjunction with crews from our local utility company, MG&E. Workers from Streets, Forestry, Engineering, Parks, Traffic Engineering, Fleet, Madison Police and Fire worked through Tuesday night into Wednesday, and there is still much to do.

Madison and Dane County Public Health staff are reaching out to vulnerable populations. Madison libraries are notifying residents if they are open so phones can be charged, and computers can be accessed. Once again it has been a total team effort, and I could not be more grateful or more proud. We have amazing employees who work here because they care about this community, and we are all better because of it.

I hope we can all be patient in the coming days and weeks as branches are chipped into mulch, debris is swept from streets and brush piles are again collected from terraces. Following the clean-up, there will be a plan for replanting the lost street trees, which of course, is another priority for our City.