Richmond Heights along with the majority of Northeast Ohio experienced heavy snowfall and extreme cold this past week. However, Fire Chief Marc Neumann said that they did not have any residents access the Community Center, 27285 Highland Road, on Jan. 25 when temperatures dropped to nearly 2 degrees . But he said opening it was a good training exercise and that it’s ready to be reopened if the weather turns again. He said that the weather causes several issues for the fire department, from finding fire hydrants in snow, to having to use battery powered snow blowers to clear ways for medical stretchers. “To ensure community safety, we took the following actions,” Neumann told City Council during a Jan. 27 meeting. “We put out public messaging in our media to encourage residents to prepare for the storm… snow parking ban and increased staffing level of our public safety services through the storm.” He said that many factors go into deciding when to activate the warming center, adding that the site was selected and approved as a shelter four years ago, because it is one of the few places the city owns that has access to ADA bathrooms, showers, kitchens, storage space for emergency supplies, and a backup power generator. Although the weather has improved for now, they will be constantly monitoring any changes and can re-activate the center very quickly if they need to offer shelter to residents. “It was a good drill, it’s always best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” Neumann said in an interview. “…We didn’t have any electrical outages, in the city… and when I look at events like this when we have a lot of cold but not a lot of snow we will probably have minimal power outages. “If we do have another front come through we will open it again… It could be reopened anytime this week; it could be reopened on the weekend. We have everything there prepped and ready to go. All of materials that we need are in totes and we can deploy the totes very quickly, generally, getting the staffing in place can take hours if not minutes.” ...read more read less