Road crews struggle to keep up with snow

The phrase "spinning their wheels" may hit a little too close to home in this weather, but that's essentially what road crews have been doing since the snow started falling early this morning.

"Occasionally, we've started to catch up and make some progress, and then it started snowing again," said Tim Gramling, Cape Girardeau public works director.

By this afternoon, crews were on their third consecutive 12-hour shift, Gramling said.

"We'll basically stay on it until we finish catching up and get the roads in decent condition," he said.

The story was the same on the interstates, where Missouri Department of Transportation crews were scrambling just to keep the roadways from getting worse.

"They're still covered, slick, treacherous, but we're not losing any ground on them," district engineer Mark Shelton said.

When the storm switched from sleet to snow in the wee hours of this morning, city crews began concentrating on "priority one" routes -- major thoroughfares such as Broadway, Independence Street and West End Boulevard, Gramling said.

"We'll stay on those around the clock," he said.

Once the major thoroughfares are cleared, the crews will tackle secondary streets, Gramling said.

Shelton's crews were taking a similar approach, working around the clock and focusing on interstates and major highways.

"Everything in Southeast Missouri is covered. It's tough," he said. "This storm started with the ice and stuff around five or six o'clock; maybe even a little earlier than that yesterday afternoon. We've not had a breather."

Sixteen drivers -- eight in large trucks and eight in smaller pickup trucks -- and about six support personnel work each shift, Gramling said.

Each large truck is paired with a small truck, and the vehicles work in tandem as much as possible, with the smaller truck following the larger one to cover wide streets, he said.

Shelton said his district -- which covers 25 counties in Southeast Missouri -- has about 200 trucks of its own, with another 30 coming in from other districts to help.

"Once it stops snowing, we should be able to make some progress," Shelton said this afternoon.

In the meantime, he advised drivers to stay home if possible.

The storm affected virtually all of Missouri south of Interstate 44, Shelton said.

"It's all across the district. The way this storm tracked, this was a southern Missouri storm" that "hits our district head-on," he said.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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