State and local officials met Tuesday morning to plan ways to better respond to catastrophic events on Interstate 70.The meeting was requested by Missouri Department of Transportation officials after the ice storm that shut down I-70 for much of the evening of Saturday, March 1, and the morning of Sunday, March 2.Some motorists were stranded up to eight hours on I-70. A few ran out of gas and were taken to warming shelters set up at the Warrenton Knights of Columbus hall.The meeting, held at Warrenton Fire Station 2, was attended by officials from MoDOT, Missouri Highway Patrol, National Weather Service, Warren County Commission, Warren County Emergency Management Services, 9-1-1, Warren County Sheriff’s Department, Warren County Ambulance District, Warrenton Area Fire Protection District, the Wright City Fire Protection District, Warrenton Police Department, Warrenton city leaders and Skyline Wrecking Service.According to Warrenton Mayor Jerry Dyer, the takeaway from the meeting was that there “needs to be one command center to funnel all of the information through and one person to be in charge of everyone.”Dyer said a spokesman for the Highway Patrol told the group, “Usually in these situations we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians to address all the problems. In this case there weren’t enough chiefs or Indians.”Warrenton Police Chief Houdyshell said a lack of communication among agencies hampered the emergency response.“Usually the fire department takes the lead in these emergencies,” said Houdyshell. The fire department, however, suffered the loss of a pumper truck just minutes after the ice storm hit. “They were trying to regroup from that,” he said.Houdyshell said the freak nature of the storm made any response problematic.“The wreckers couldn’t get to the scenes of the accidents because the ramps were too slick to drive down,” Houdyshell said.“We had enough wreckers and emergency vehicles, but we couldn’t get them to where they needed to be,” added Dyer.The worst accident of the night involved four tractor-trailers. “They were side by side with no daylight between them,” said Houdyshell.Houdyshell noted that one state trooper decided to park his car on the side of the highway, rather than risk driving to an accident.“When he came back to his car it had slid off the road into the ditch by itself,” he said.Houdyshell said that MoDOT and the local agencies have had an emergency plan in place for years.“This was such a catastrophic event that came upon us so quickly it was really hard to put that plan in place,” he said.Houdyshell added: “Our plan was to use the service roads to move traffic around, but they were impassable as well and they were being used by emergency personnel to get the scene of the problem.”“You can’t predict what mother nature is going to dump on you but I think everybody put forth their best effort,” said Dyer.Officials evaluate response to 1-70 shutdown