APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – This week’s winter storm brought on a lot of challenges, particularly for public works crews and law enforcement who had to put in long hours to make sure the roads were safe for travel.
Public works departments, state patrol officers and even mayors had to work overtime to ensure roads were safe following Tuesday and Wednesday’s snowfall.
“Our crews have been working now for multiple days, for multiple shifts back to back,” said Appleton Mayor Jake Woodford. “So, it’s been a ton of work keeping up with the snow.”
The city of Appleton issued a snow emergency. That was the first one that Mayor Jake Woodford issued since he was elected nearly three years ago.
“It was a class three snow emergency. No parking was allowed on city streets any time.”
While some nearby communities had similar orders, Oshkosh decided against it.
“Last couple days have been very busy for our street division crews. So, we’ve had four people out most of the overnight hours,” said Oshkosh public works director James Rabe. “They’re out getting some rest so they can be back again 3 o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Rabe and his team was responsible for cleaning up all of the city’s roads — that’s 267 miles.
“Many local streets. But also a lot of four lane roads as well so four lane road really doubles the amount work you have to do because there’s double the amount of lanes.”
With dangerous road conditions in much of the area, state patrol officers had their hands full as well.
“The Northeast region from the state patrol standpoint — we had approximately 29 motorist assists, 41 vehicle runoffs, 21 property damage crashes, we had one crash involving a personal injury,” said Sergeant Henry Glick.
He says state patrol did not report any fatalities.
Glick hopes everyone continues following his safety advice even as the heavy snowfall tapers off.
“Give yourself extra time to get where you’re going because most likely there’s going to be reduced speeds. Be cautious on bridges, overpasses.”
Rabe says, in terms of cleanup, this was the worst winter storm of the season.
“Everybody who is on the payroll was here.”
Glick says Delilah wasn’t necessarily the worst for the number of calls and crashes, but the longevity and total area impacted created an extra challenge.
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