Staff Photo by John Rawlston
Chattanooga Department of Public Works employees restock sand in the storage facility just off 11th Street where they received 500 tons on Wednesday. The city stores salt, sand and a mixture of the two at the facility, in addition to brine solution to battle icy road conditions.Salt and sand dumped on snowy roads over the weekend depleted reserves for area road crews, but enough still is available to handle more snow.
And even more is on the way.
"We've still got enough to handle one snow event. Maybe two," said Lee Norris, deputy administrator for the city's Department of Public Works.
National Weather Service forecasts for the next week predict some rain but no snow and highs in the low to mid-50s and lows from the mid-30s to the mid-40s.
Snow started falling Christmas morning, piling on 3 to 5 inches of the white stuff in the Tennessee Valley and up to 6 inches on the mountains. City and state officials said road crews were out that morning, laying down salt and sand mixtures to keep roads open.
In Chattanooga, road crews used brine on Christmas Eve to help keep roads clear, Norris said. Chattanooga used more than 1,000 gallons of brine on Christmas Eve and more than 1,000 tons of salt and sand over the next three days, he said.
But the Christmas snow and another snow almost two weeks ago have eaten up almost half of the city's salt and sand supplies.
Norris said the current stockpile for Chattanooga is around 2,000 tons. Sixty tons of sand came in Monday, he said, and more than 500 tons of sand came in early Wednesday morning. And there's more ordered, he said.
"This is the lowest on-hand quantity for this time of year in recent memory," Norris said.
Jennifer Flynn, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, said "to get this much snow this early is a bit unusual." She said the department expected a shipment of salt and sand in a few days.
"We have probably less than half [of the usual stockpile]," she said.
Wayne Hamill, Public Works administrator for Red Bank, said the amount of salt and sand his department used was "minimal." For the most part, Red Bank city workers shoveled salt and sand the "old-fashioned way" on the worst parts of the roads, he said, and many roads were not badly covered in snow anyway.
SALT DUMPTons of salt and sand were dumped on area roads over the weekend as snow enveloped the region. Some of the totals include:• Chattanooga: 1,069 tons• Hamilton County: 770 tons• Bledsoe County: 150 tons• Bradley County: 520 tons• Grundy County: 478 tons• Marion County: 402 tons• McMinn County: 1,040 tons• Meigs County: 234 tons• Polk County: 920 tons• Sequatchie County: 229 tons
He said only one emergency crew worked during the day.
"We can deal with snow, to a reason, far better than ice," he said.
Tom Grisham, East Ridge supervisor, said he had his crews working a 12-hour shift and then the city's sanitation department worked a 12-hour shift during the snow.
He said the city has about 80 tons of sand left. "We used about half our supply," he said.
One of the hardest-hit areas, Lookout Mountain, had almost 6 inches of snow on its summit. Chris Gass, a laborer for the city's Public Works Department, said he and his co-workers were out at 7 a.m. Christmas to salt roads. They laid about 30 tons of salt and received a shipment of 25 to 30 tons on Wednesday.
But the town still had to be conservative, Gass said.
"If we had been salting around the clock, we would have run out," he said.
Contact Cliff Hightower at chightower@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6480. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/CliffHightower.