Today’s scheduled meeting of the Animal Safety and Welfare Advisory Board was canceled after Ward 1 Councilperson Kevin Butler failed to show.  A handful of disappointed citizens waited for about 15 minutes before leaving.

The board was conceived by the city as part of the compromise to get the pit bull ban passed. The board met infrequently during its first year in existence, but has gotten together more often of late.

Butler was likely tied-up with a family situation, but a council representative should have been present in his absence to conduct the event. The next scheduled meeting will be in two months.

Based on the pre-meeting chatter, it seemed like there was plenty to discuss regarding the city’s on-going enforcement of the pit bull policy and the July court date with Rocky River regarding the dog park. One person who was present at the meeting observed that the noise situation is just one of a plethora of problems at the park which warrant a public discussion.

Update: This event was rescheduled for June 9th. Notice appeared on the bulletin board located on the second floor of city hall, but was not posted on the city’s Web site.

Warm weather usually means more crime. And so far, that seems to be holding true in Lakewood. In the months since the weather warmed up, there has been a noticeable uptick in the uneasy kind of crime that makes you want to move to Canada.

Late yesterday night, for instance, a woman in an apartment building near John’s Diner on Detroit Ave. spotted a male clad in black clothing and a ski mask stalking around the popular breakfast spot.

An officer arrived on the scene and a footchase ensued from Riverside to Mathews to Detroit. The suspect ran past Blackbird Baking Company, toward Harbour View, and disappeared down the steep hill behind the apartment building. Police surrounded the area, but couldn’t locate the suspect in the thick woods.

More serious incidents

The Fighting 4th Ward, in particular, has been the site of some attention grabbing incidents. One evening a couple of weeks ago a man in Birdtown fired a few gunshots into the air after some kind of confrontation with a passing car.

And early Monday morning, as many local news outlets have reported, there was a shooting outside of the Colonial Club Apartments at 1437 Newman Ave.

Four distinct chalk marks were visible at the scene of the crime.

The details are sketchy and sure to change, but a young black male armed with a gun attempted to rob a 35-year-old North Carolina resident who also had a gun. The young male suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the stomach and was transported to Metrohealth Hospital.

Officials were initially unable to identify the male, and released photographs of his tattoos to the media. His identity is now known, but hasn’t been publicly released.

A tattoo reading "July" appears on the shooting victim's chest.

A spider is tattooed on his right shoulder

Here’s a recording of police dispatch at around 12:08 am Monday. The scene was contained fairly quickly. The shooting victim was badly injured. The shooter had the wherewithal to unload his gun after the incident, and set it down on the ground. The recording is a little tough to follow at points because the police and fire channels overlap. The clip has been edited to remove the gaps between responses. You may also download an .MP3 of the clip here.

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This overgrown lawn at 1480 Cordova Ave. is surrounded by fairly well-maintained properties. Its existence is evidence that city administrators and elected officials still have not solved the city's tall grass problems.

In a city as densely packed as Lakewood, it’s difficult to understand how citizens can tolerate a yard in their neighborhood that gets as out of control as the one at 1480 Cordova Ave. The grass is well over six inches tall. The mailboxes are jammed with junk mail. The house is clearly vacant.

The grass didn’t grow this tall overnight. Have nearby residents complained to the city? Where is the Ward 1 councilperson, or any one of the three recently elected at-large councilpeople? Where is the leadership?

This is the same kind of scene I saw last year and it is now being repeated all over the city again and again.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

The tall grass ordinance was revised last summer to give the city greater latitude in remediating this kind of problem. City administrators are reasonably responsive to these situations when they are made aware of them.  City lawn crews are definitely active. I’ve witnessed them tame wild yards in 15 minutes flat.

And yet, properties like 1480 Cordova Ave. still exist.

Residents talk with a CEI representative on Lake Ave, just to the west of Webb Rd., on the morning after the May 7th storm.

Lakewood Mayor and Public Safety Director Edward O. FitzGerald said the city’s severe weather warning siren system failed during the most damaging storm to hit the city in 20 years.

Councilperson Nickie Antonio (At-Large) asked FitzGerald at yesterday’s city council meeting why the alarm was not sounded. “We don’t know yet. It should have gone off, and it didn’t,” he said.

FitzGerald said the system had been tested prior to the storm, and was believed to be in good working order. He explained that upon receiving a severe weather warning alert from The National Weather Service, a member of the police department twice tried unsuccessfully to enter the code to activate the system. FitzGerald said the problem could have been human error, but the matter is still under review.

Overall, he felt city personnel did a very good job of handling the mess the storm left behind. “We didn’t get a single complaint about the city’s response,” he said.

Richland Ave. resident Kyle Weigand  concurred. Speaking on behalf of his parents who could not attend the meeting, he praised the city’s response as being very prompt across the board.

FitzGerald said the city incurred “a few thousand dollars” in overtime due to the storm. He has consulted with State Representative Dale Miller, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich in an effort to determine the city’s eligibility for FEMA aid. Although the storm primarily affected what he described as “the most insured part of the city,” FitzGerald estimated there was more than $4 million in damage to 120 homes.

Public Works Director Joesph Beno told Antonio the city lost about 30 trees, none of which were covered by insurance.

The scene in the backyard of a residence located southwest of Clifton Blvd.

Lakewood was battered Friday night by severe weather that hit its northern edge hardest.

A combination of high winds, large hail, and rain struck just prior to 9:00 p.m. and generated numerous calls to the city’s police and fire dispatch regarding downed trees and power lines.

The first report of damage concerned a fallen tree at Clifton Blvd. and West 117^th St. Fire personnel ordered to the scene delayed their departure for several minutes due to poor visibility caused by the ongoing storm.

Within moments, a deluge of other weather-related damage was reported:

• The intersection of Clifton Blvd. and West Clifton Blvd. was blocked because of fallen trees and electrical wires which ignited a fire in the street.
• A tree struck the house at 1055 Wilbert Rd.
• The utility pole at the intersection of Wyandotte Ave. and Athens Ave. caught fire.
• Someone was trapped in an elevator between the 10^th and 11^th floors of The Carlyle.
• Tree strikes occurred at the houses at 17900 and 17849 Lake Rd.
• A house was on fire near the intersection of Webb Rd. and Clifton Blvd.

Difficult balancing act for fire department

To get an appreciation for the difficult job the fire department faced as it was overwhelmed by emergency calls, consider the house fire reported at Webb and Clifton.

Without an exact address, and in the darkness and rain, the fire crew had to find the fire. After many minutes of searching, they determined there was no fire. The elderly female driver who phoned in the incident likely saw the street fire and commotion at Clifton and West Clifton and mistook it.

The call had to be taken seriously due to its nature, but it turned out to be nothing. The fire crew was forced to waste valuable time searching for a fire that didn’t exist – a no-win situation.

Left in the lurch

Emergency response teams have little choice but to focus on the most serious situations first, and sometimes citizens can be left uncomfortably in the lurch.

The person stuck in the elevator at The Carlyle, for instance, was not an immediate priority. After a period of waiting, he pried open the elevator door, and climbed to safety.

Radio dispatch traffic in the first hour following the storm can be heard through the audio player located at the bottom of this post. The file is about 20 MB, and runs 50 minutes. Nothing has been edited out except the silences between responses. Communication between dispatch and police and fire is fairly continuous throughout. The .MP3 file can also be downloaded here.

The power lines behind your house

The electrical lines that are part of the backyard landscape near many Lakewood homes can be deadly. A primary power line running between Wyandotte and Wascana broke loose during the storm and caused at least two garage fires.

The garage at 2084 Wyandotte caught fire after it came into contact with a downed power line.

Structure damage

Luckily, no one was killed or seriously injured during the storm. Dozens of trees fell over and several of them landed on houses. Wires and trees fell Friday night and throughout Saturday. Here are some photos of the damage the morning after the storm. A photo gallery can be viewed here.

One of the first calls the city received during the storm occurred after a tree fell into 1055 Wilbert.

The brick house at 17849 Lake Rd. was gashed open by a falling tree.

One of the nicest looking brick houses on Lake Rd. south of Clifton Blvd. was hit by a tree.

A giant crane was in front of this damaged West Clifton Rd. home removing huge tree limbs from the backyard.

Damage to a home in the Clifton Park area

Warning sirens and replacement trees

Considering a severe weather warning was issued at least as early as 11:00 a.m. on Friday, it is curious that the city failed to sound the severe weather sirens. Even as late as 8:00 p.m. weather radar freely available on the Internet showed that the city was in the path of a nasty storm. Was someone asleep at the switch? It seems like it.

With a decent number of city trees destroyed during the storm, it will be interesting to see how quickly they move to replant them. It will also be interesting to see if the city follows through on their long talked about plan to permit residents to take advantage of their pricing to purchase trees. Here’s the city’s price list (.pdf) for the trees they purchased for the most recent planting season. They cost about $200 each.

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