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Cities, county work overtime to clear roads Cars and trucks form a traffic jam while attempting a south-bound trip over the Siskiyou Summit on Interstate 5. Daily Tidings / Denise Baratta Wednesday Jan 4, 2017 at 6:31 PM Jan 4, 2017 at 6:31 PM By Damian Mann For the Tidings Local agencies are working overtime to clear more than 1,000 miles of roads in rural Jackson County and local cities. “This morning I had 970 miles of road that all needed plowing,” John Vial, director of Jackson County Roads, said on Wednesday. “I’ve got 14 plows. You do the math.” The clean-up effort will cost some agencies tens of thousands of dollars, but most local governments have set aside the dollars needed to deal with a storm of this magnitude. The big worry for road departments is temperatures in the teens Wednesday and Thursday nights that will turn slushy snow to ice. Many back roads and minor streets will not be plowed until Friday, or until the snow melts. Vial said his department concentrates on clearing major streets first in the valley floor to open up routes for areas with the most traffic. Crews will then head up into the mountains to clear major roads there. Other cities in the valley also have prioritized the streets they will clear first, giving preference to those that serve area hospitals. After all the major routes are opened in the county, Vial said crews would turn their attention to more isolated rural roads. He said it’s possible snow on some of the more rural routes would melt before crews have a chance to clear them. “We’re serving the most citizens who need the most help,” he said. “I’m sorry that some people are struggling.” Vial expects his crews will continue plowing through Thursday and will keep working until all roads are open. “This storm is going to take a while to clean up,” he said. Greg Culver, who lives on Derby Road near Butte Falls, said the county came through and plowed his rural dirt road but didn’t put gravel down to prevent spinning out on the decomposed granite surface. “I lost control going up the road and flipped backwards 180 degrees and ended up in a ditch,” the 43-year-old said. He estimated the area around his house received 18 inches of snow. Although Culver blames the county for not maintaining the road properly, a county grader helped pull his trailer out of the ditch, though it was damaged. “This being a county road, they should maintain it better because the Medford Water Commission and Eagle Point Irrigation both use it,” he said. Cory Crebbin, director of Medford Public Works, said most of the city's major roads will be plowed by Wednesday but warned about extremely cold conditions through Thursday night. "Everything is going to turn to ice," he said. Crebbin said crews have been working around the clock since Monday to keep roads plowed and sanded as the storm dumped the most snow in a 24-hour period in 98 years. “It does make it the storm of the century,” Crebbin said. With snowfall as deep as 20 inches in some parts of Medford, Crebbin said many residential streets will probably clear from snowmelt before graders can get to them. Medford has almost 300 miles of streets. Crebbin said he couldn’t give an exact cost of the snow removal, but expected it could be in the tens of thousands of dollars. However, he said his budget can handle the costs for overtime. Mike Morrison, Ashland Public Works superintendent, said he expected 100 percent of his 100 miles of roads would be plowed by the end of Wednesday. “We’ve had our crews out since Monday morning,” he said. He said the priority has been to keep the main routes to the hospital cleared during the snowstorms. Morrison said he didn’t have an estimate of how much the storms have cost but said his budget should have enough to cover it. He said crews have been shifting their schedules around to better handle the snow clean-up effort. The Oregon Department of Transportation has been busy following the heavy snowstorm that shut down Interstate 5 from Ashland south to Redding from about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. Gary Leaming, spokesman for ODOT, said the freeway was blocked on the California side. “They struggled with the blizzard conditions and limited services on the California side, particularly in the north Siskiyou County area,” he said. Leaming said he wouldn’t have an estimate for how much the storm cost his agency until he could get good numbers from his managers next week. “I wouldn’t even speculate,” he said. “It’s going to be expensive, but that’s what we do.” Leaming did say any closure of I-5 has a major impact on the freight economy. Long lines of semi-trailers waited along the freeway during the closure. Leaming said ODOT puts cinders and chemicals on the roads to prevent ice from forming, but he said secondary roads, parking lots and sidewalks will all be hazardous. Even though many of the roads are treated, motorists should be extra cautious for the next 24 hours on any road surface. “It’s the black ice on the roads that we’re worried about,” Leaming said. Reach reporter Damian Mann at 541-776-4476 or by email at [email protected].