Road Crews Tackle Epic Storm Cleanup
Highway Departments in All Six Towns Labor Tirelessly Around the
Clock to Remove Mountains of Snow
By JAMES KINSELLA
Vineyard road crews worked through the teeth of last weekend's
storm, battling white-out conditions and drifting snow to keep the
public ways clear.
When the snow slowed, workers in down-Island towns began hauling
away tons of the white stuff, building small mountains in designated
dumping areas.
"It was not the biggest but I'd say it was probably the
most powerful storm we've seen here in a long time - the
wind, the cold, the blowing snow, near-zero visibility," said
Stuart Fuller, Edgartown highway superintendent.
SRC="http://www.mvgazette.com/news/2005/01/28/content/blizzard_bobcat_sm.jpg" "You couldn't see the road, you couldn't see the
trees on the side of the road, you couldn't see the fences at
Katama - you were just guessing," he continued. "Out
on Atlantic Drive, my heaviest dump trucks couldn't keep up with
the drifting. The drifts are conservatively eight feet tall."
"The storm was pretty hectic," West Tisbury highway
superintendent Richie Olsen said. "It was blinding snow. The guys
really had a hard time."
Over in Oak Bluffs, highway superintendent Richard Combra Jr. said,
"This storm was like no other. My guys had to take things to a
different level, shoveling out driveways and walkways of elderly
residents. Town roads, private roads, they were all the same. We had to
try to get everybody out. We just did what we could."
The storm shredded or overwhelmed overtime accounts set up by the
towns to cover emergency snow plowing. Tisbury without a doubt doubled
or tripled its overtime budget of $15,000, public works director Fred
LaPiana said.
While Oak Bluffs had set aside $15,000 to cover potential overtime,
Mr. Combra said the town expended $40,000 on this storm alone. In
Chilmark, highway superintendent Keith Emin said the town blew past its
overtime budget of $7,000. Chilmark crews worked 27 hours in a two-day
period at the height of the storm.
Towns threw every bit of equipment they could at the storm, whether
their own or that of private contractors. Oak Bluffs deployed 11 pieces
of equipment, including a front-end loader, and hired private
contractors to bring in six trucks with plows, four front-end loaders
and four Bobcat plows.
SRC="http://www.mvgazette.com/news/2005/01/28/content/snow_removal_sm.jpg" Edgartown used two full-sized dump trucks, two small one-and-a-half
ton dump trucks, four pickup trucks, one large front-end loader, two
backhoes, a Bobcat with a snow blower for the bike path and two
walk-behind snow blowers for the sidewalks.
At any given moment, Tisbury had five to six plows, two sanders, a
Bobcat and a backhoe with a front-end loader on its roads. The town also
contracted for two more front-end loaders and two large dump trucks to
help load and carry snow out of town. Tisbury was bringing snow from
downtown to the park-and-ride lot off State Road.
Oak Bluffs was moving snow to the Steamship Authority terminal on
Sea View avenue, to the North Bluff parking lot near the Island Queen
dock and to town parks. Edgartown was dumping snow in the parking lot at
Lower Main street and in the trolley parking lot on Upper Main street.
The towns weren't the only government entities pushing snow
out of the way. The Martha's Vineyard Airport used 12 employees
and seven pieces of equipment: two trucks, two smaller trucks, two
front-end loaders and a large snow blower to battle the wintry
onslaught.
Assistant airport manager Sean Flynn said airport crews first had to
plow snow off the airport runways, then use the snow blower to spread
the snow out into the surrounding airport infield. Because of the
potential hazard to aircraft, the airport cannot allow snow to pile in
high banks along the runways, but rather must keep the snow immediately
to the sides of the runways below the two-foot safety lights that line
them.
Mr. Flynn said crews faced a problem before they could even get out
to the runways. Winds from the north blew the snow into drifts up to
nine feet tall against the doors of the truck facility south of the
strips. Wind and the snow ended up closing the airport for about
two-and-a-half days: from 10 p.m. Saturday through 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Mr. Flynn said the airport overtime budget of $35,000 will not last
until the end of the fiscal year in June.
"The guys put in a lot of time and effort," he said.
"They did a fabulous job. The hours were well worth it."
Meanwhile, the Massachusetts highway department contracted with
private companies to operate 13 pieces of equipment - nine plows,
three sanders and a front-end loader - to push snow off the 35
miles of state highway on the Vineyard.
"It was challenging," MassHighway spokesman Jon Carlisle
said. "The winds tend to be high out there. There's the
storm above, then there's the storm from the sides. It needed to
be an ongoing effort. The plows repeatedly hit the same stretches of
road."
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