Mayor O'Connor, Pittsburgh officials working rapidly in response to historic winter snow storm

Sunday's record-setting snowstorm is the first major weather event for Pittsburgh's new mayor, Corey O'Connor. 

Set up in what's being referred to as a new "command center" at the City-County Building, Mayor O'Connor was surrounded by some of his top deputies as they monitored the storm from live cameras set up across the city, through a virtual operations center, and a website that tracks the location of snow plows across the city. 

"We have cameras up on every major intersection and side streets, so we are monitoring the situations everywhere," Mayor O'Connor said. "This has been a great setup. We are in constant communication with every department. We can see websites. We can see live cameras. We're getting feeds for everything that's happening in the city right now."

The city said it has 85 plow trucks on the road until 2 p.m., and then from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m., they will have 60 operating on the roads. So far today, there have been issues with four trucks, and they have been taken to the city garage to be worked on. 

According to the mayor, the online snowplow tracker has been down for about a year, and they've taken steps to get it back online. 

"Plow tracker has been down for over a year, and to get the system that we put up today was a credit to our office for making sure that we could be as transparent as we possibly could," O'Connor said.

But he cautions it's only reliable to an extent and is delayed 10 to 15 minutes.

"It's not going to be as detailed as we would like it," O'Connor said.

That website can be found at this link. 

With the information in front of them, Mayor O'Connor says they are obviously reacting, but can also be proactive.

"When you look at the screen and say, 'Hey, we haven't hit this part of the city yet. Is somebody on their way?' Making those certain calls like that, we are able to see that, and with the capacity that we have for communication, we can get that word out to the Department of Public Works."

O'Connor said when it comes to road conditions, the emergency routes look good, but they're expecting to be in snow response mode for the next 24-plus hours. 

"Our crews have been going 24/7, at this point," O'Connor said. "We're getting to as many streets as we possibly can. I think people should be patient at home. If you have to go somewhere, stick to the primaries."

The "command center" was set up ahead of the storm. 

The City of Pittsburgh does have a building in the Strip District designated as an Emergency Operations Center. The mayor can activate the center either in-person or virtually, allowing for easy communication across city agencies. 

"They're doing their thing over there as well," O'Connor said when asked about if the snow command center was replacing the emergency operations center, and if it was being activated in-person. "This is just for us to really monitor and be able to contact everyone. But yeah, emergency department's still doing their thing."

O'Connor said having their command center at the City-County Building was an easier setup for them compared to if they were at the Emergency Operations Center building. 

"We're not getting in their way when they're handling emergencies," O'Connor said. "We don't want them to conflict with, you know, snow tracker or plowing. You know, emergencies are, for one thing, this is a little bit different of a situation, which is why we are here."

A virtual Emergency Operations Center was activated for the storm, and was tied into the snow command center via Zoom. 

In the future, the command center will be used for snowstorms on a case-by-case basis, a spokesperson for O'Connor said.