This question stems from the fact that we are currently experiencing a Level 3 Snow Emergency in my hometown, which means that if you aren’t “emergency personnel,” you shouldn’t be out on the road. That’s fine by me because I had no intention of going out today. Mr. Brown has called into work, which we are assuming is not going to be open today anyway. Since the snow is coming down steadily, I don’t expect our residential street will get plowed anytime soon. We are, for all intents and purposes, snowed in. The news station is reporting that the plows are busily clearing the downtown area and focusing mainly on main thoroughfares, having to replow them periodically since they’ve deemed salt moot at this point due to the ongoing snowfall.
I started to wonder just how the plow operators (not the private contracts with plows mounted to their pickups) get to work assuming they live on a residential street. Do the drivers on the previous shift plow their streets just so they can get to work? Do they go in hours before their shift starts before the snow has made the streets unnavigable? Does someone in a plow pick them up at home and then drop off the driver going off shift at his house?
In my town they get called to work before the snow starts and start plowing as soon as it starts. It’s easier and safer to plow one street four or five times then to wait until the snow stops.
During bad snows dispatch would be sure to send a plow if needed. Sometimes the plow drivers have the truck at home too. During a a real emergency, you can legally take your snowmobile or other vehicles to places too. Nobody except a cantankerous ass is going to complain that services like the plow drivers, ambulance, or fire truck gets a priority plow out, during emergency snow conditions. The town would tell them tough shit your an idiot.
Hell, my hometown area had a major problem with this a few weeks back: President’s Day weekend, and yet they knew a major storm was coming through.
So, was the solution to keep a few DPW employees on duty with the promise of comp time? Hell no! “Go ahead boys, we’ll call you if we need ya!”. Idiots went home, and ended up being snowed in so they couldn’t get to work when the ‘snow call’ came in.
Emergency management. Pfeh. :rolleyes:
Tripler
Hell, even in the state of North Dakota (pop 6), they keep three guys on staff to plow roads.
I think it was SAAB* that ran a TV ad showing a driver in a car driving though very heavy, deep snow. The driver pulls up next to a large piece of equipment, gets out and walks to the equipment. The voice over says: Ever wonder how the snow plow driver gets to work?
*Might have been Subaru, but SAAB is what is sticking in my brain. A quick search of youtube didn’t turn up an ad like this for either make.
Harmonious Discord, shame some people have to be such turds that they would actually complain about plow drivers’ streets get plowed sooner than just any residential street. Killjoys, they are. A job like that should, at least, have that insignificant, little perk. I’ve heard stories of the idiot crap they put up with (who doesn’t, really?) and I’ve seen first-hand a plow driver, verbally abused by some schmuck, bury his car out of revenge and frustration.
Gogo plow drivers! I salute you. Now, your bosses in county admin I’d like to have a few words with.
Here’s something interesting I saw on the news that hadn’t actually occurred to me. They actually truck the snow out of downtown and dump it somewhere in the burbs. That makes sense because where would the pile the snowdrifts without blocking either streets or sidewalks. I hadn’t really even though of it.
I like it when the news goes into informative mode about such things as “how things work” when they don’t have actual news to report beyond: “Holy cow, it’s snowing a lot today!” It sure beats celebutainment and inane social commentaries of livestock escaping from butcher facilities and running amok through apartment complexes.
And it was pretty much true, too. Those buggers were so light, they tended not to sink in as deep, and with all the weight in the back they got great traction. We used to clear our driveway by driving the VW back and forth for a while. Back in the day when we had snow. Of course, you didn’t want to get into an accident with one, because it was about as crash-resistant as a paper bag.
Our city department did a stupid thing. The head had three people retire so he decided to not replace them. At the beginning of November he tells the city there will be problems removing snow. They started advertising in December, but they can’t quickly replace the employees. Some lanes are still not even wide enough to allow a vehicle to stay on their side. The intersections at highways still have snow high enough to block the view of any traffic. Those are the type of things that normally would be taken care of.
The ambulance service I work for will send someone to pick you up if you can’t make it to work. We have a couple 4WD ambulances and a several 4x4 quick-response vehicles* that look like this. They’ll get you to work one way or another.
St. Urho
Paramedic
A quick-response vehicle (QRV) has a full complement of advanced life support equipment, including oxygen, medications, and a heart monitor/defibrillator. It’s staffed with a single paramedic and can’t transport anyone to the hospital.
The former fire chief of my town lives on my street. Back before he retired, our street would always be plowed first and kept clean no matter how deep the snow. However, it was only plowed that way as far as his house. Those of us at the end of the street would get plowed maybe once a day, just like every other residential street.
That’s hardly enough snow to warrant plowing, much less be a problem to drive through!
Our city has large areas of wasteland that are designated snow dumping grounds. The city clears snow from the sides of the road when the banks build up to the point that they encroach into the roadway or impede further plowing. They usually use big snowblowers with a relay of dump trucks running alongside to receive it and take it to the snow dumps, and both the city and private operators use front end loaders to clear away the snow from parking lots and other areas where the stuff can’t be piled out of the way. The snow dumps have to be carefully sited, as the melting snow has high levels of salt and other contaminants, and can’t be sited where the runoff will contaminate water sources or rivers. There’s an old snow dump nearby which has 20-ft high hills composed of dirt and other crap that melted out of the snow, as well as occasional layers of “fossil” snow that has been insulated by accumulated dirt from later layers.
Last Year, Denver did this, after our blizzard. (City shut down for a couple days, heavy snow storms weekly for two months after). The built a glacier in a flood plain near my apartment. It was quite an amazing sight.
During a unusually heavy snowfall here my neighbor is a city employee and had to walk to the plow garage. He plowed out the rest of the crew. Now we have calender parking(PITAss) but the police chief followed the plow writing ticket. The plow driver that walked to work came home to find a parking ticket :smack:
That morning (of course) we had an ambulance call and the hyways were in very bad shape. A passing pickup w/western plow led us all the way to Pt. and then all the way to ER(20miles). +he shoveled a path to the rig. Thats the kind of people we have around here , But then we have that Cop too.
In Toronto this year they had to shut down each direction of a major highway for 8 hours each on a weekend to load all of the snow into dump trucks and truck it out of the city.
That’s icky. But then I hear the river is already disgusting with probably worse pollution than defiled snow.
Thanks for all the replies. We enjoyed our March blizzard; rare, for these parts. It should be letting up tomorrow, but we took the opportunity on this relatively warm day (low 20s, I believe) to head down to the park and go sledding. It was a pleasant walk down the flattened ruts in the middle of the deserted streets, but the snow in the park was deep enough to fall into my boots with every step. That was a little chilly. The kids were having such a blast it made me a little wistful that I wasn’t a kid, too, but was really uplifting from the winter doldrums I usually suffer from.
, But then we have that Cop 
too.