By Stephen Smoot
A week after the West Virginia Division of Highways sent forth over 1,000 plows to push back on heaps of snow, and as it turned out, tons of dense sleet, it is time to honor the men and women who get the roads back in shape.
When the Governor and emergency management officials urge motorists to leave the roadways for safety, that is when the plow truck drivers leave their families, their warm homes, and traverse the very roads that are too dangerous for most anyone else.
Threats from unpredictable and rapidly changing weather affect everybody. Prior to the storm’s onset, West Virginia Secretary of Transportation Stephen Todd Rumbaugh shared through a news release that “our crews have been out around the clock plowing and treating roads, and they will continue working through the night.” He reminded all that “when temperatures drop as quickly as expected, road conditions can become dangerous in a matter of minutes.”
That remains true for Division of Highways crews as well as others on the road. When temperatures drop below the ability of treatment to melt snow and ice, they must contend with “extremely dangerous” black ice.
Motorists should become aware that the DoH does not give all roads the same level of priority. They divide state roadways into four categories:
Priority 1 routes include interstate, expressway, National Highway System, and all other United States and West Virginia routes. Some Priority 1 routes also include high-traffic county routes.
Priority 2 routes are all other school bus routes that are not considered Priority 1.
Priority 3 routes are the remaining routes, not including park and forest routes.
Priority 4 routes are park and forest routes.
In this storm, another threat to roadway safety came from the unexpected massive amounts of sleet that fell along with snow during the storm. As a news release from the DoT shared, “pretreating and an aggressive salting and plowing campaign had most Priority 1 routes passable by Sunday, January 25. But plummeting temperatures from Sunday into Monday, January 26, brought a new challenge: ice.”
To handle the buildup of ice from the accumulation of dense and heavy sleet, the DoH had to turn to heavy equipment, including graders. “We have four-wheel-drive graders and six-wheel-drive graders,” said Nathan Thomas, WVDOH Deputy State Highway Engineer in charge of Operations in a release. “You put chains on an all-wheel grader, and it will go anywhere.”
“When you see us out, please give us plenty of room to work,” shared a DoT Facebook post about their work. In the more rugged areas of the West Virginia mountains, graders and other heavy equipment had to remove between two and three feet in some areas and 10 to 15 in others of avalanches of sleet that tumbled down mountainsides and blocked, or even covered, roadways.
As they drive through the whiteouts and the darkness, sometimes they get a few minutes to take a break. While looking for messages from family left at home or checking the news, sometimes drivers get to see unfortunate social media posts blasting their efforts.
Robert Hudson, an assistant county administrator for highways, shared that “you know, our guys do take a sense of pride in their job. This is what they do. This is what they love to do for the community that they serve.”
“They do look at social media,” Hudson noted, adding that “they do see some of the disparaging comments, and in fact it does bother them, but I can say, without a doubt, that every day they do the best that they can for the community.”
