Portage city manager reflects on Portage tornadoes, revamps emergency management plan
PORTAGE, Mich. — Sirens rang out across Portage during last May's tornados, and so did Portage city manager Patrick McGinnis's cell phone.
"My phone was blowing up with some other managers I met over the years," McGinnis said, "giving me advice."
It was much needed advice for the manager of a city that hadn't seen such severe weather in over ten years.
"Anybody coming through afterwards looking at the carnage of the trees and the buildings and everything tore up, would have guessed there was considerable loss of life," McGinnis said.
Nonetheless, zero fatalities or serious injuries followed the disaster. McGinnis credits that to the city's swift response times and preparedness.
"We're always doing training, we're always doing exercises, trying to prepare for the 'what if this happens?'" McGinnis said.
When the "what if?" became reality, Portage saw a traffic gridlock despite warnings to avoid hit areas.
"You couldn't get anywhere, mostly because of the extreme amount of traffic, people wanting to come and gawk and take a look," McGinnis said.
McGinnis recalls biking to work to avoid the traffic, faced with what would turn out to be $30 million worth of property damage.
"That's a big scar across the city that we're going to have to wait for that to heal," McGinnis said.
A year later, about $16 million worth of building permits have been issued to repair what can be fixed, and McGinnis is left with room for improvement in case tornadoes visit Portage once more.
"We're going to have to talk about that, that, if anything like this that happens in the future, and messages to other communities that might have events, shut the roads down, local traffic only, you know, only the people who live there who have a reason to be there, and in some cases, not even that," McGinnis said.
