CRANBERRY TWP — Township officials were well prepared for the Route 228 shutdown last week because of a regional program that teaches disaster preparedness.

Manager Jerry Andree said the township has been involved for the past two years with a Traffic Incident Management program through the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission.

Andree said the group, comprised of local governments, the state Department of Transportation, the Turnpike Commission and other entities, meets quarterly to discuss blueprints for emergency management situations.

“It helped us build a framework and relationships for how to manage that kind of situation,” Andree said. “We were already way ahead of the curve by participating in that kind of planning.”

Now that Route 228, which carries more than 40,000 cars a day, is reopened, Andree said the groups will reconvene and talk about what could be done better if there is another incident.

“Now we're doing an after-action report,” Andree said. “Everyone is saying how they felt it went in surveys and then we'll all meet in-person.”

Jeff Schueler, the township's director of public safety, said he's still catching up on sleep missed last week during the road closure.

“A lot of us are,” he said. “But we're very pleased with how things were handled.”

He said a water line break along Route 19 last year helped township officials in coordinating emergency preparedness.

“We did learn lessons from that, and we incorporated it into this response,” he said.

Schueler also praised the traffic management system mentioned by Andree as a program that has gone a long way in helping agencies coordinate responses.

Schueler, who has been with the township for 35 years, said he had never had to deal with a situation like the one on Route 228 last week.

“We did have wind damage at the Cranberry Mall a while back, but this was the most prolonged incident I've been involved in,” he said. “It was definitely the biggest impact we've seen on the motoring public.”

High winds caused nine utility poles to fall, which closed Route 228 about 7 p.m. June 24 and kept it closed until just before midnight June 26.

The National Weather Service said winds of up to 85 mph hit the area. That storm forced utility crews to work around the clock to install new poles and wire new heavy utility lines.

Route 228 was closed from its intersection with Route 19 to Cranberry Woods Drive, a stretch that includes the ramps to and from Interstate 79.

Kelly Maurer is a traffic engineer for Cranberry Township and worked closely with officials during the shutdown. She split her time between the township municipal center on Rochester Road and the township's traffic command center off Route 19.

She said officials were forced to adjust the timing of traffic lights on Route 19 to help move the additional traffic that had spilled over to secondary roads such as Franklin and Rowan roads.

“We watched the morning and afternoon rush hours on Wednesday and thought that was going to be it,” she said. “Then on Thursday it was the same thing.”

It was a busy week for everyone involved, she said, as she continued changing the traffic signals to meet new demands on roads.

She echoed Andree's sentiments and said it was a learning experience for everyone involved.

“We will definitely have many follow-up discussions in the future,” she said.

Andree previously said this was the first time in his 23 years in the township that Route 228 had ever closed.