Snow days

When winter weather turns treacherous, public works crews are put to the test. Clearing roads for residents and businesses can be a demanding round-the-clock battle against a formidable opponent: snow and ice accumulation.

Last winter, several damaging winter storms hit communities across the country, stalling travelers and commuters, and causing enough trouble to warrant help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Oswego County, N.Y.; Multnomah County, Ore.; and Calhoun County, S.C.; were hit with unusually severe storms that kicked public works operations into high gear. Relying on salt, sand and chemical concoctions; heavy-duty trucks, plows and spreaders; and a little kindness from Mother Nature, crews tried to keep pace with the frozen precipitation and learned a few lessons in the process.

Multnomah County, Ore.

On December 26, 2003, Multnomah County, Ore., got a belated Christmas present — 19 days of wintry mix. Although Portland, the county seat, typically receives two to four inches of snow annually and the county’s higher elevations receive about 20 inches, the duration of the late-year storm made it the worst the county had experienced since 1996. County personnel worked 24 hours a day in 12-hour shifts for 11 days de-icing, sanding and plowing 350 miles of roads. Cleanup lasted another 96 days — until March 31, 2004.

The storm hit the 435-square-mile county with varying degrees of severity. “The county’s like a big bowl,” says Don Newell, program manager for the Multnomah County Land Use and Transportation Department. “It really has three different climate areas.” Around the Columbia Gorge, about seven miles east of the city, the storm brought 19 inches of snow, with 12-foot drifts and three days of single-digit temperatures — all followed by nearly three inches of freezing rain. Portland, where the elevations are lower, had eight inches of snow — a rarity in a city prized for its temperate climate. On the west side of Portland, elevation rises again, and the snow fall was about 12 inches.

County personnel knew to expect severe winter weather before the storm arrived. Multnomah County contracts with locally based ERF for weather forecasting services. The company delivers reports twice a day plus provides non-stop, one-on-one contact during severe weather. “You keep looking at weather monitoring and then manage resources, personnel and equipment accordingly,” Newell says.

Before the storm hit, the county de-iced roads and bridges with calcium magnesium acetate (CMA), which was applied through a computerized spray truck distribution system. “That helped reduce the amount of sand we needed,” Newell says. “CMA costs a little more than magnesium chloride (a common anti-icing agent), but it’s minimally corrosive and better for the environment.”

To save the life of the county’s bridges, it does not use salt. “Salt isn’t really part of the Northwest culture,” Newell says. “It rusts the rebar on the bridges, and it’s not good for the fish.”

After the second day of cold temperatures, the county’s sand froze, making it ineffective. To keep the sand spreadable, the county loaded 23 combination plow and sand trucks with sand and kept them in a heated garage. “If the sand freezes, then it becomes one big rock,” Newell says. “We just had to park the trucks in heated areas when possible to be able to continue sanding operations.”

While 60 employees took to the county’s roads, another 11 were dedicated to maintaining the county’s four moveable bridges, which have trouble operating in subfreezing temperatures. Besides vehicles and boats, pedestrians and light rail routes also depend on the bridges to operate properly. “River traffic has the right of way, so if we have a problem, we have to lock them open, which can really cause transportation issues,” Newell says.

Accumulated snow and ice from the storm caused the Willamette River draw bridges to be inoperable. With the bridges unable to be raised for four days, the U.S. Coast Guard closed river traffic until the county could restore service.

The governor declared the storm a “significant event,” which allowed the county to apply for FEMA help. The county received $452,000 from FEMA, and about $164,000 of that was dedicated to clearing roads. “FEMA money was used for labor premiums paid above straight time,” Newell says. It also paid for 100 percent of equipment repairs. The county typically spends about $300,000 for emergency management services, budgeting $40,000 for winter storms annually. But in fiscal year 2004, the county spent $648,000.

Following flooding in 1996 caused by a wintry mix that ended with a quick rise in temperatures and a lot of rain, the county learned that it needed to coordinate information sharing and severe weather response with the Oregon Department of Transportation and surrounding regional governments. Today, the county participates in several regional planning meetings to prepare a synchronized response to winter storms.

“For this storm, regional communication worked out well,” Newell says. The county used a new 800 megahertz radio system that improved communications among road employees and with law enforcement and fire departments. “If we had a wish list for next time,” Newell says, “we’d like to expand our anti-icing operations so that we can put down more chemicals and reduce our sanding.”

Calhoun County, S.C.

A storm of freezing rain brought three inches of ice to Calhoun County, S.C., last winter, loading down trees and power lines in a wide band across the 380-square-mile rural county. “It started raining one evening in January, and, by morning, we were at a standstill,” says Woody Rucker, the county’s public works director. “They had predicted some frozen precipitation, but we didn’t expect something of that magnitude.”

Because the southern farming county with a population of just over 15,000 residents rarely receives snow, it does not own any snow plows or de-icing tools, and it does not budget for snow or ice removal. “It doesn’t take much to cripple us in the South,” Rucker says.

Driving on the roads, while treacherous, was not the biggest problem during the storm; it was the debris spread all over them. “The weight of ice on the trees just broke all the limbs down,” Rucker says.

The ice also felled many trees in the county that is approximately 70 percent wooded or farm area. Power was out in much of the county for five days — the result of trees falling onto lines and blowing out transformers. “It sounded like cannons going off all night,” Rucker says. “Some roads were almost closed off, but we really worked hard to get folks out that were stranded.”

Four personnel in the county’s Road Department traveled throughout the area pushing debris to the sides of roads or collecting it. “The equipment and personnel to cut brush back from off the roads on a regular basis would have really helped us,” Rucker says. Currently, one employee is dedicated to that task. After three months of storm cleanup, the county disposed of more than 2,500 tons of woody debris at its landfill.

The storm showed the county the value of providing clear and specific information to residents about how, when and where to place debris for collection. After the ice storm, which affected multiple counties, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control began requiring each county to have a disaster debris implementation and debris management plan. “We didn’t have a plan at the time, but we do now,” Rucker says. “With these new plans, we now have an outline to go by, contacts and an order for getting things done.”

In addition to developing a debris management plan, county leaders learned about the rules of using FEMA funds for winter storm cleanup. “We now know a lot more about what we can and cannot get reimbursed for,” Rucker says. “We didn’t know that with this storm, but you learn fast. You just can’t assume that certain things are going to be covered.”

The county asked for reimbursement of about $82,000, which included overtime labor for clean up, rental equipment and some supplies for the storm. By the end of July, the county had received half of the requested funds, with the remainder expected after a final inspection. FEMA will pay 75 percent, the state has agreed to pay 12.5 percent and the county will need to pick up the remaining 12.5 percent.

Although Calhoun County leaders were taken by surprise when the ice storm hit and had few personnel available to clear roads, the county still was able to be effective at clearing roads for residents and businesses. “Our main objective was to make a path, and we were really able to do that,” Rucker says. “We got people out and opened [the roads] up in a reasonable amount of time.”

Oswego County, N.Y.

“It was not your everyday storm,” says Don Morey, superintendent of public works for Oswego County, N.Y., “but county public works pretty much did its everyday business.” For a county that averages more than 200 inches of snow a year, Oswego County is ready for almost anything — even 84 inches in three days, which is what it got last winter.

It started out a typical January snow storm. Then on January 29, 2004, it began to snow hard — averaging 6.6 inches an hour, which is a complete whiteout condition — and kept snowing hard for three days. “They closed the major interstates because you could not see to drive,” Morey says.

Meanwhile, the Oswego County Public Works Department did what it does best. “Throughout the whole storm, we just kept plowing because the snow [kept] coming,” Morey says. “You have to shift the guys and keep going. Otherwise, you can get a foot of hard-packed snow and all kinds of problems.”

Oswego County’s 120,000 residents are scattered across 970 square miles, including one city and six towns, along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. Because the lake does not freeze, moisture is picked up and moved off the lake in whatever direction the wind blows, usually east, which regularly results in heavy snowfall for the county. The heaviest snowfall during the January storm (84 inches) was in the town of Parish, southeast of the lake. Other areas in the county averaged about 78 inches. “We were ready for it,” Morey says. “We get hit with these types of storms quite often.”

During January’s storm, about 80 public works employees were on the roads plowing continuously for five days. The Oswego County Public Works Department primarily plows state roads, and the towns plow county and town roads. At one point, five of the county’s 35 snow plows were broken down, but the county fixed them in five to six hours and got them back on the roads.

A mixture of salt and sand was used to cover plowed roads, and the county also used snow blowers — either truck-loaded or self-contained — to open up roads and blow back the snow banks. “We plow 165 miles of road for the state of New York,” Morey says, “and in January alone when the storm hit, we used over 14,000 tons of salt.”

Persistence paid off, and most businesses were open within a day or two once roads were clear. However, more than 100 structures in the county were damaged from the weight of the snow on their roofs. “Some buildings had about seven feet of snow on top of them,” Morey says.

The governor declared a “state of emergency” during January’s storm, so FEMA helped the county pay for any costs above normal operation, including employee overtime and equipment repairs. “The FEMA reimbursement was probably about $200,000,” Morey says.

In all, the county spends close to $3 million a year for snow removal on its roads alone. “We’ll still budget about the same for next year,” Morey says, although he is concerned about fuel costs, which will be intensively reviewed when planning next year’s budget.

Although most businesses and residents had recovered from the storm by the end of February, remnants of the unusually large amounts of plowed snow still remained on the sides of some streets in July. “There is just no room to put the snow. There’s still snow left from a massive pile in the city of Oswego,” Morey says. “Last year’s snow pile finally melted in August.”

— Conni Kunzler is a freelance writer based in Arlington, Va.