Main city streets mostly clear, but lots of work ahead
Feb. 16—Main city streets in Terre Haute were mostly cleared early today and by mid-morning.
"We got a little more snow than I thought, but we have not had this much in a while. The main streets are in great shape and we are getting into secondary subdivision roads," said Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett. "We have already gone into Robinwood and Stratford Hills subdivisions, which are more hilly and two of our tougher ones, so they have been plowed," the mayor said.
In addition, the mayor said City Hall is closed and the city bus system has been shut down to allow city and county snow plows to clear streets.
The mayor said he took his own snow measurements this morning.
"My measurement was 8 1/2 inches of snow and I measured in a couple of spots," he said outside of his city home.
Terre Haute Street Commissioner Ernie Meeks said the city has 10 tandem-axle dump truck plows with salt/sand spreaders and two one-ton trucks with attached plows and spreaders to work on the city streets.
"We have all of our trucks out. We are going to be focusing throughout the remainder of the day today, at least while the sun is up, clearing the main and secondary streets," Meeks said.
Examples of "main" or primary streets include Ohio Boulevard, Wabash Avenue, Blakely Avenue, Poplar Street and 13th Street, while examples of secondary streets are Walnut Street or Eighth Street.
"We will be putting down salt and sand as the sun tries to warm things up a little bit. Any warmth we can get will certainly help," Meeks said, as the salt/sand mixture does not work below 5 degrees, with the best results at 10 degrees or warmer.
"We didn't want to spread material on the snow [on the streets] while it was snowing because then we would just end up blading it back off as we plow," Meeks said.
The city street department will have snow plow drivers out "24 hours until we clear the streets out. It is a lot to handle as we have approximately 800 lane miles of streets," Meeks said.
"We will probably be getting into the streets where people live probably late tonight or early tomorrow morning, depending on how well the salt and sand mixture works and how well the primary and secondary streets start clearing up," he said.
"We got everything pretty much plowed, but now it is a matter of getting the hard-packed snow or ice to break up so the streets become less treacherous and people can get out to move around," Meeks said.
Reporter Howard Greninger can be reached 812-231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com. Follow on Twitter@TribStarHoward.
