Road crews keep Adair connected during snowstorms

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While much of Adair County spent much of the past two weeks snowed in, the Columbia and Adair County road crews have been hard at work getting everyone mobile again.
“We put in almost 12 hours on this past (ice storm),” said Tim Smith, Public Works Supervisor for the City of Columbia after the first storm. “That was the first day, at the beginning until we had all the roads clear.”
Spending over 12 hours scraping, salting, and plowing is nothing new for a road crew. When Friday’s snow rolled in, the county pulled similar hours. Barry Hamlett, Foreman with the Adair County Road Department, says that his team spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday clearing the fluffy, white road hazards out of the way for drivers.
“We’ve got like 680-some miles of road,” Hamlett explained of this past weekend’s effort. “And it looked like we did good, I thought. We used quite a bit of salt to get it up.”
Hamlett added that 12-hour shifts were standard during snowstorms.
Both Hamlett and Smith have been with their respective departments for around six years now. For both men, these storms were far from the largest or most dangerous accumulations that they had seen. For instance, Smith has spent nearly two decades working for the street department and saw firsthand the 2015 and 2016 snowstorms. Compared to the work those required, these past two storms were much less difficult.
“This last (ice storm) was pretty easy. Mainly because the temperatures rose later in the day and into the night. Most of the time, especially in the winter months, you know it tends to get really cold at night. But we had this reversed here in this snow,” Smith said.
Hamlett described the unique environment that last week’s ice storm created, saying it posed challenges in some areas while making other aspects easier for the team.
“If you can get the temperatures to come back up, it works good. But sometimes you put salt and you know how it is. And then it rained a lot that night. It helped some, I think, the rain did,” Hamlett said.
Regardless how much accumulation there is, the core process of treating a road, preparing for precipitation, and going about getting the accumulated ice and snow off the blacktop is much the same. This ethos holds especially true in deciding which areas get cleared first.
Smith explained, “We start with the high priority streets first. The hospital area, the nursing home, areas like that. Then, (we do) the most traveled streets.”
And, no matter what the forecasts say, the process of keeping streets clean and safe is much the same. When a forecast gives ice or snow, the street department chooses more problematic areas to focus on with their pretreatment. Smith explains that pretreatment tends to target their high-priority roads as well as roads where the layout lends itself to being harder to clear after a storm—places with steeper hills, for instance.
Where the difference in severity of storm begins to come into play is the actual methodology of excavating a street from the snow. If snow accumulation reaches an inch or more, the crews have to plow. Plowing that much snow takes, Smith estimates, around three times as long or more than putting down salt.
Smith stated, “If you let that ice get impacted, it’s hard—almost impossible—to get it up… When you plow, you have to plow both sides of the street. Then, you make a second pass and you’re putting out the salt at the same time… But plowing is far more time consuming.”
It’s also more dangerous; Columbia has plenty of manholes, something most local drivers are intimately familiar with. Drivers must be cautious to not hit the manholes. Hitting them, or other road hazards, can possibly do damage to the street department’s vehicles. Putting one of these vehicles out of commission further increases the amount of time clearing roads takes and puts more workload on the other trucks.
Out in the county, the environment can also pose a formidable enemy to those working to keep people safe on the roads. Adair County has a very mixed terrain which can lead to snow accumulating easier and create trouble for the large vehicles plowing and navigating them.
“We had some trouble, but not that bad. Friday night we pushed (the snow) off, and then it came back that night and we went back that morning and there was more (snow)… It seems like you’re not getting anything done,” Hamlett said. “Some of the hills and stuff, you know, some of it is pretty difficult. If it’s snowing hard, you can’t see out there. At night, it’s hard to… Sometimes it (can be scary). You can’t tell sometimes when you have to turn around on some of these short roads. It’s hard to turn around, but you just get used to it.”
Even though the process of keeping the streets safe can lead to long hours and can be hard or time-consuming work, Smith feels that it is worth it.
“Most people are very appreciative of what we do, especially during the winter times when we are out treating the roads. Basically, it’s a necessity. It has to be done,” Smith said.
“We don’t get too many complaints,” Hamlett said.
By Kenley Godby
kenley@adairvoice.com

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