Officials share lessons from floods

WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) - Emergency officials on Tuesday met with Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts to share with each other the lessons they learned from the historic floods in March.

One of the problems that officials discovered during the floods is that the city of West Warwick doesn't have an emergency notification system installed to call its residents and, in this case, warn them to evacuate because of rising flood waters. Instead, police, firefighters and the Rhode Island National Guard had to go door-to-door to evacuate residents.

Jim Thomas, the town manager in West Warwick, said a system was purchased in 2007 but never installed.

"The old administration dropped the ball, the former police chief and deputy police chief," he said. "I'm very disappointed in that."

Robert Johnson, vice president of the Exeter Town Council, said another problem was compensating volunteer firefighters for the pay they gave up from their day jobs.

"When I asked FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) or the state if we could reimburse these firefighters for the time that they were out of work the answer was no," he said, "and I think that that is unacceptable."

The town's fire department is a volunteer department.

"Yes they are volunteers," he continued, "so if your house is on fire they can choose whether or not to show up, and I don't think as a taxpayer in the community we want to have that hanging over people."

In late March, heavy rains caused several Rhode Island rivers to break their previous flooding records, causing some of the worst flooding the state has ever seen.

• More flooding coverage