NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The snow removal plan for the coming winter for the city of Hutchinson will include side streets for the first time this year.
"We have broken the category to storms of five categories," said interim public works director Cecil Weible. "They range from anything from a light mist on a freezing day where we might get slip spots on bridges or something higher up in the air, all the way to a category, condition five, which would basically be for this area where there's a whiteout, you can't see it."
In the lighter events, an on-call operator will come in and drive the roads to see how fast conditions are getting worse.
"At the moment that they start seeing any issues, they'll start calling in a crew as needed," Weible said. "That crew can range from just two more operators to run some bridges while that other operator maintains contact with the dispatch if anything else comes in, all the way up to our full blown, we'll run a full crew of 15 people, 12-hour shifts around the clock,so we'll have two shifts running 24 hours a day, and we'll run that as long as it takes to get the streets back to normal."
There are eight primary routes, according to Weible.
"All of our routes are designed so one truck should be able to leave the shop, be able to go out, and if it's just salting, they should be able to salt that whole route and be back at the shop before they're in. That's at 250 to 300 pounds per one mile. The routes are designed around that distance. We're being as efficient as we can. We don't have to go half the way out to the shop and come back and get more salt. Our eighth route is what we call our school route. If we know schools are gonna be in session the next day, then we make sure we hit those schools with plows in the afternoon and salt them as well. If we already know schools are canceling, we can use that as a truck to help on some of these other routes. Then as we're moving forward, we're gonna be throwing residentials into this."
Because of the size of the residential streets, they intend to use four one-ton trucks to do the residential neighborhoods.
"On a normal Kansas storm, two inches to four inches, we're planning on being able to go into those residential areas and plowing basically in and out. So we'll plow that street twice, giving everybody about a 16-foot pass to get to a street to drive," Weible said. "Now they may have to jump over a little bit of a windrow to get to that street, but right now, until we can get all the residents to understand, we don't know if we can safely get curb-to-curb on residential streets that are too tight."
The city does have GPS on its plows so that they can send the closest one if needed in case of a fire or other emergency.