City crews work long hours to fight snow

    Washington County experienced quite the storm over the last few days. Employees of the city of Washington have worked nearly around the clock to clean the streets. J.J. Bell is the city?s maintenance and construction supervisor, and he said the storm was among the most severe he?s ever seen. He estimated that Washington received 18 inches of snow during the storm. 

    ?I?m not so sure it?s not the worst one in 30 years,? he said. ?We had a bad one in 1979, but this is the worst I can remember.?

    Bell said that after a ?normal? snowfall, he?s able to use the blade on his truck to push the snow onto the curb.

    ?Today, if I try to plow the snow to the curb, it comes right back behind the plow,? he said.

    By early afternoon Wednesday, the city had plowed all residential streets at least once. Bell said that it will take a little while for the city to clear the whole width of the street. He said that in some places, the snow is still sticking out 8 feet from the curb. He said the city will spend the next week hauling snow to the swimming pool. 

    The city crews made their first pass at the storm on Tuesday at 1 p.m. They were out for a few hours, plowing the priority streets, such as the streets that lead to the schools. At that time, the wind was howling and blowing snow all over the place. The city took a break and then began plowing again at 5:30 p.m. The city plowed the main thoroughfares a second time and then all the residential streets.

    ?From 4 to 6 p.m., we probably got 10 inches of snow,? said Bell.

    By 10 p.m. that night, the plows were having trouble keeping up with the snow.

    ?We usually work in tandem, where two trucks do the south end, two trucks do the north, and then a single truck does the east and another does the west,? he remarked. ?Tuesday night, two trucks couldn?t cut it.?

    Bell said there was no reprieve from the blowing snow until Wednesday morning.

    ?It basically snowed the entire night,? he said. ?It let up at about 8 or 9 a.m. Wednesday. When you get that much snow, it starts collecting on your windshield, which fogs over. Then you have to get out of your truck all the time to brush the snow off.?

    Bell said the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) withdrew its workers from the road at 8 p.m. Tuesday because of the unsafe driving conditions. The DOT didn?t dispatch its snow crew until 7 a.m. Wednesday morning.

    ?There were times Tuesday night when I couldn?t even see the hood of my truck,? said Bell. ?We got a deputy unstuck twice. They got bottomed out and couldn?t move.?

    The weather was so bad that Washington?s crew spent Tuesday night at the maintenance shed. 

    ?We don?t have beds at the maintenance shop,? said Bell. ?There is one couch, which I slept on, and the other guys slept on chairs or in vehicles. There was no sense in trying to go home, because you?d just have to turn right back around. I didn?t get to bed until about 1:30 a.m. We got anywhere from two to four hours of sleep. We started plowing again at about 3:30 Wednesday morning.?

    Bell said there were a number of people who made his job easier on Wednesday.

    ?Rick Wagenknecht at the cemetery helps quite a bit,? he said. ?He?s worked all day, since 3:30 a.m. this morning (Wednesday). He did 15th Street, which was pretty bad. So was 17th.?

    Bell and the other snow-movers got some help from a wise investment, snowfences. The snowfences are picket-fences that are just under four-feet tall.

    ?We have snowfences in about 20 places,? he said. ?We put a new snowfence up on East Adams. We hear a lot of compliments about them but also a lot of criticism. I think they definitely help.?

    Bell drives a truck with a blade attachment on the front. He manipulates the position of the blade via a hand-hand device inside his truck. He can adjust the blade left or right, up or down, and also give the blade more specific commands. He has a button called ?scoop? that tells the blade to lift and carry the snow. He can turn the blade into the shape of a ?V? so that he pushes snow off on both sides.

    Instead of its normal teams of two, the city worked in teams of three Wednesday. Bell led one of the teams, using the ?V? configuration to blaze a path through the snow. Two trucks followed Bell, one on each side, pushing the snow toward the edge of the street.

For more, see our Feb. 3 print edition.