Providence Emergency Management Director Leo D. Messier is fired.

PROVIDENCE — Promising that students will never be stranded again, Mayor David N. Cicilline yesterday fired the city’s director of emergency management and suspended for 30 days the School Department’s deputy superintendent of operations.

Looking upset, Cicilline took full responsibility for the complete breakdown in communications between virtually every city department during the Dec. 13 storm, which left hundreds of young children stuck on school buses or stranded at schools well into the night, after schools closed two hours early, while their parents fretted over where they were.

“The responsibility rests with the mayor of the city,” Cicilline said yesterday. “I’m kicking myself that there were over 100 schoolchildren stranded on school buses.”

According to the mayor, none of his top administrators — the police chief, the fire chief, the school superintendent or his emergency management director — told him that a school bus crisis was brewing. And he blamed emergency management director Leo Messier for failing to realize that students were stranded and failing to organize a proper response once he did.

“I have lost confidence in Leo Messier,” Cicilline said. “An engaged director would have seized the moment.”

Police Maj. Monty Monteiro, commander of the Police Department’s Homeland Security Division, has been named acting EMA director.

Cicilline also said that he didn’t know where Messier was or what he was doing during the storm, which paralyzed traffic on the city’s streets and area highways for hours. He also criticized Messier for taking a cavalier attitude toward the children’s plight, referring to a comment in which Messier called the bus delays “inconvenient” and said that children could call home on their cell phones.

Messier did not return a phone call yesterday asking him to comment on his firing.

According to Cicilline, Tomas Hanna, the School Department’s deputy superintendent of operations, was trying to deal with the busing crisis but wasn’t aware of the extent of the predicament. That said, Hanna did not do a good job of sharing information with Supt. Donnie Evans in a timely manner, the mayor said.

“I’m very disappointed in Superintendent Evans,” Cicilline said. “Dr. Evans has acknowledged his failure.”

But the mayor said that he would not seek to dismiss Evans because the superintendent’s efforts to promote higher student achievement are still valued.Cicilline’s news conference came a week after he asked Police Chief Dean Esserman and Chief of Administration John C. Simmons to investigate why school buses were mired in traffic for hours during Thursday’s storm.

Yesterday, the mayor’s review team provided a detailed timeline of who knew what and when, compiled from more than a dozen interviews with school and city officials.

What emerges is a city in disarray. Although the police were responding to 911 calls about stranded school buses as early as 1:12 p.m., Esserman didn’t know about the magnitude of the problem until 8:30 p.m., when he received a call from the mayor’s chief of staff.

“I think the School Department is in serious trouble,” Cicilline chief of staff Deborah Brayton told Esserman.

“I called Evans immediately,” Esserman said.

The chief immediately activated a command center at the Police Department and gathered his top staff. Asked why it took hours for him to find out that 60 school buses were stranded, Esserman said, “I’d like to know the answer to that.”

Meanwhile, by 2:30 p.m., First Student, the bus contractor, began notifying the School Department’s director of operations, AndrÉ Thibeault, that school buses were running 60 to 90 minutes late. A few minutes later, school principals began calling the central administration to report that a number of buses hadn’t shown up at their schools.

As the storm intensified and road conditions worsened, school officials seemed unaware of the growing calamity. From the timeline developed by Esserman and Simmons, it appears that the information from First Student was sketchy and incomplete.

At 6:20 p.m., when Hanna e-mailed Evans about the busing problem, it was clear that Hanna didn’t have a complete picture of its severity.

Finally, at 7:15 p.m., First Student reported that 60 to 70 buses were still on the road, but no one knew exactly how many students were stranded. Fifteen minutes later, school spokeswoman Kim Rose called Evans about the busing situation. .

According to the investigation, “This was [Evans’] first indication that there may be a problem.”

But Evans said the day after the storm that he didn’t find out about the school bus crisis until 8 p.m., when he got a call from Esserman. Evans was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Although Messier and Hanna were singled out, Cicilline said there was plenty of blame to go around.

“There was a total breakdown in communication from the bottom up,” the mayor said. “There were communication gaps between First Student and the schools, the schools and the superintendent. This was a system that failed.”

Cicilline then described what steps he is taking to make sure that this disaster never happens again: the Emergency Operations Cabinet will be automatically activated whenever schoolchildren are being bused during dangerous driving conditions; communications between bus drivers and the bus yard will be improved; parents will be called every hour when there is a bus delay and Evans will establish a hot line to answer parents’ questions during a storm. To ensure students get home:

•The Emergency Operations Cabinet will be automatically activated whenever schoolchildren are being bused during extreme weather and dangerous driving conditions.

•First Student will improve the ability of bus drivers or monitors to communicate directly with the bus yard.

•School Supt. Donnie Evans will establish a communications plan that requires parents to be called every hour when there are substantial bus delays.

•Evans will immediately establish a dedicated hot line to answer parents’ questions during a storm and the hot line will be adequately staffed so parents will not be kept on hold.

•The School Department will bus the youngest children home first during weather emergencies.

lborg@projo.com