Fair / 16° F
18 cleared 9 inches of snow over weekend
Published 10:47am Monday, February 26, 2007In addition to being inconvenient, the weekend snowstorm, which dropped 9 inches of snow on Fergus Falls, cost the city $15,000 — Operations Manager Steve Hames said.
The snow — not the price tag — is the only hardship to the public at this point, because such incidents are provided for in the snow removal budget.
“We had 18 people — nine each day — working over the weekend. We put in 102 overtime hours on Saturday and 123 Sunday and we’re not done yet,” he said. “We had a crew go out at midnight this morning and they’ll be going out again tonight. The plows were out by 4 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.”
“We’ve provided a comfortable level of safety, but we want to improve on it,” Public Works Director Clif Allen said. “We cleaned as much as we could over the weekend and will do a final clean up Monday after businesses have cleaned off their sidewalks.”
That two vehicles were struck by city snowplows over the weekend should serve as a reminder to residents that extra care is required.
“People parking in the streets is our biggest obstacle,” Hames said. “It’s a hazard because the plow has to make an extra-wide turn around them.” No one was injured and the cars did not appear to have sustained serious damage, he said.
“One (plow) hit a parked car. The other, a car was going too fast and trying to go around the plow and hit the blade. People need to remember to keep their distance from the plows and not try to pass them. (Plow drivers) have so much to keep their eye on, it would really help if the public would remember that.”
“Cars must be moved off the street,” Public Works Director Clif Allen said. “It’s city ordinance that they must be moved off the street within 24 hours. Many people move their cars after we’ve plowed and expect us to come back and clean it again and it doesn’t always work that way.”
Also, people are not allowed to blow snow into the streets. “We’ve received a lot of complaints about that,” Allen said.
