BROKEN ARROW, Okla. — When the snow is out, the plows are out.
“We run about 13 trucks,” said Rocky Hinkle, Director of the Broken Arrow Streets and Stormwater Department.
Hinkle said the City of Broken Arrow is ready for the snow.
“We are anticipating weather moving in tomorrow in the afternoon sometime, so since Friday morning we have been preparing our trucks, putting plows on them, putting the spreaders in the back of them, checking them out, and making sure there are no mechanical issues,” said Hinkle.
He said the trucks are ready to hit hundreds of miles of roads for treatment.
“We have 1,200 lane miles but of those it’s about 600 arterial miles that we treat,” said Hinkle.
If you find yourself behind one of these pickups when it’s laying down salt, Hinkle says don’t move because the traffic helps activate and better disperse the salt.
Hinkle also said they may be treating the roads ahead of the snow.
“Depending on the timing of the storm and what type of precipitation, typically from what it sounds like this storm, we’ll be out there ahead of time pretreating the roads,” he explained. “Once the snow starts accumulating, we stop treating the roads with salt and then we switch over to a plowing operation and then we plow the roads from curb-to-curb.”
In the City of Tulsa, 63 truck-mounted salt spreaders and 53 truck-mounted plows will cover more than 1,700 lane miles.
As for bridges and overpasses, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) has 25 trucks ready to treat and plow, with crews coming in around 7:00 a.m. ODOT Spokesperson TJ Gerlach said they will cover 500 bridges and overpasses.
“We come in and the drivers start hitting their routes as soon as they deploy and then they’ll just continue going over those routes back and forth and checking any trouble spots that they see and plowing snow out of the way and laying down any salt and sand that needs to be laid down,” said Gerlach.
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