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Cities prepare for winter blast repeat

Milder weather forecasted, but officials planning for the worst

By Mina Williams
Enterprise editor

Last year’s storm season, with temperatures 15 degrees below normal and capped by up to 24 inches of snow in some areas, lingered over a three-week period.

With more than 700 miles of roadway in south county cities to deice and clear of snow, city leaders are taking a hard look at last year’s weather event with an eye toward how departments can meet such a challenge this season should a repeat play out.

“Last year we didn’t throw resources at the weather event as quickly as we should have. We thought it would by a typical two-day event. This year we will err on the side of caution,” said Williams Franz, director of public works for the city of Lynnwood.

In Mountlake Terrace, that means more trucks have been added to its fleet, equipped with pre-wetting systems so that sand or deicing material can be mixed with water just prior to being spread. This enables the material to stick to road surfaces immediately.

“There was simply not enough snow removal equipment for this type of event (last year),” said Curt Brees, public works director for the city of Mountlake Terrace.

Mill Creek is small and does not have a lot of equipment, said Les Anderson, public works supervisor. But taking safety precautions, like deicing roads earlier, have proved helpful.

Cities stocking up

Cities are stockpiling sand and deicing agents, many partnering with the Washington State Department of Transportation pooling orders to take advantage of better pricing.

Edmonds has an agreement with WSDOT to use the state’s storage facility to stockpile more than 200 yards of sand, Miller said. Additionally the city has enough deicing agent for 10 citywide applications, stashed away.

Mill Creek staff has a 5,000-gallon supply of deicer.

Clearing more streets

Public works employees in all the cities are also being cross trained so that more man power can be used to clear streets this winter.

According to Brees, last year’s event chewed up 700 labor hours in Mountlake Terrace due to the duration.

While the first response to clear snow and use deicing agents is based on the volume of traffic a route has, priority routes also include roadways with hills, transit routes and routes to schools plus roads used by emergency services. The list has been expanded to encompass residential streets.

This will mean that residents will be two blocks from a street that receives prioritized attention, said Brees.

Mill Creek hopes to improve this season by laying down more deicer throughout the city, primarily along Main Street in the downtown business area, Anderson said. He has been in contact with private contractors to help the city with plowing the streets if the weather calls for it.

Communication is key

Once streets are passable, keeping Community Transit buses moving is a priority across the south county. Based on last year’s experience, the most effective combination of tires and chains will be repeated, said Tom Pearce, a spokesman for the agency.

In addition to operations, Community Transit hopes to boost communication and coordination.

“When it snows, or even is simply extremely icy, our goal is to post service start-up information on our Web site by 5 a.m.,” Pearce said. The agency updated its hardware and software to better ensure stability during periods of extremely high Web traffic.

“The biggest lesson we learned form last year was how to better communicate with the public,” said Lynnwood’s Franz. Lynnwood added phone numbers with a dedicated person answering calls to receive citizen reports and updates to its Web site, and now has an online checklist matching specific requests or reports with the department to contact.

At Snohomish County PUD, an updated phone system will handle up to 10,000 calls per hour when residents need information most, spokesman Neil Neroutsos said.

Mill Creek staff met in October with WSDOT, the county and neighboring city officials to address preparedness and reestablish communications with one another to handle ice and snow conditions.

Last year, the city ran a snow plow nonstop for about four days.

Enterprise editor Katie Murdoch contributed to this article.