It's "A-Snow-K": Team Effort Kept Village Streets Clear

An update on how the village fared after snow pummeled the area last week was provided at Monday night's Village Board meeting. Everything turned out "A-Snow-K," so to speak.

“Storm removal is a difficult animal and it changes with every event; depending on the type, amount and frequency, your operation changes, said David Heyden, director of public works.

Heyden said safety issues were what guided initial snow removal efforts beginning on Tuesday, Feb. 2 when the storm hit.

“What we did Tuesday night into Wednesday morning was to keep the main line roads open to traffic, said Heyden.

“If a fire were to break out or someone were to have a heart attack; we coordinated our efforts with police and fire so that if emergency equipment had to get somewhere and it wasn’t plowed yet, we would travel in front to get them where they needed to go and get them back,” said Heyden.

“Public works sent out some plows for us at the height of the storm, we had to follow the plows to reach calls for service,” said Patrick Finlon, police chief.

Finlon also said the public works employees driving snow plows picked up a handful of police personnel to get them to work on Wednesday.

During the meeting, Heyden conveyed a special thank you to retired public works employees Roger Block and Bob Duprey, who worked Tuesday night into Wednesday to keep main line roads open to traffic.

Block, Duprey and volunteer firefighters took over snow removal efforts so village employees got a break before going back out on the roads the next day.

Heyden said public works also took over plowing Route 22, which because it is a state road, is normally the state’s responsibility. 

“The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) snow plows did not clear Route 22 on Wednesday,” said Heyden. 

The reason for that, Heyden said, is that the dedicated IDOT plow for Route 22 was stationed at Good Shepherd Hospital. He added that the driver’s only responsibility was to keep Route 14 to Route 59 plowed so access was clear into the hospital complex.

“The village picked up where IDOT didn’t,” said Heyden.  

Heyden said by Wednesday night, all roadways were accessible to emergency vehicles, or they at least had a path to get as close to homes as possible after public works employees worked a 20 hour shift.

“On Thursday morning, the village went into a different mode, to open the streets up to make them completely passable,” Heyden said.

“We started with the cul de sacs because they were the last stop on Wednesday, so Thursday morning we did the opposite because the main lines and subdivisions had already been addressed,” said Heyden.

Heyden said he received numerous compliments on Wednesday, but complaints began to pour in on Thursday when street cleaning began.

“The next phase was to take the original residential streets that we opened up and clear them again which put snow back in resident driveways,” said Heyden.

The reason many people were not updated on the plan Thursday was that a CTY message through the Blackboard Connect system failed to reach a third of residents.

“The Wednesday message only made it to 66 percent of the village, so the remaining third of residents were on the phone with us Thursday concerned over the snow removal efforts, but we got through it,” said Heyden.  

According to the village website, it has not yet been determined why the message failed to reach one-third of residents.

On Thursday, public works also shifted its focus to clear school paths and bus routes to prepare for schools to reopen Friday.

“A lot of fire hydrants in town were buried, and a lot of people don’t think about hydrants until there is a fire,” said Heyden.

Heyden said the public works department worked in concert with the fire department to clear hydrants throughout town, and residents played a large part as well.

“I would like to express my gratitude to residents who cleaned around their fire hydrants, it has been a big help,” said Heyden.

“I saw a lot of neighbors helping neighbors,” said Heyden.

“One thing we learned from this snow event; after putting snow back into people’s driveways on numerous occasions; there are a lot of elderly people who don’t have the ability to clear that snow out repeatedly,” said Heyden.

Heyden said he is seeking groups such as the Boy Scouts, church or other volunteer groups to partner with the village in assisting elderly residents who need help in similar situations.

“If we receive calls from residents in need, a volunteer contact would be able to address that,” said Heyden.

Heyden said during snow events of similar magnitude, the village doesn't have the manpower to help elderly residents with clearing their driveways.

“Now, we are continually cutting back some of the streets and widening them out.  If we don’t clear things back, we will have no place to put the new snow,” said Heyden.  “It will probably be a couple of weeks before things are back to the way we would like them to be,” Heyden said.