Ice stymies snowplow efforts

Jim Cozzi turned a Duluth city plow truck right Monday afternoon near 20th Avenue East south of Superior Street, hoping to throw salt and sand on a street crusted over with ice. But a car double-parked on the even side of the street blocked his way.

"That one we won't go down," said Cozzi, a city maintenance worker.

Double-parked cars were one of the many challenges city plow drivers have faced in the past few days trying to clean up from one of the messiest storms in recent memory, when snow was followed by rain and followed by snow.

By Monday, the ice-snow mix made plows and graders virtually obsolete. Most city snow plow drivers like Cozzi spent time driving the more than 400 miles of city streets and throwing down a mixture of salt and sand.

"The snow has become so hard that it's difficult to move," said Barb Kolodge, the city's street and park maintenance supervisor. "In areas where we had lots of snowmobiles drive around, it made the snow so hard that a 19-ton grader barely made an impression."

The crusty mix also extended the time it typically takes to plow the city. Some areas that could be plowed by one person in an hour instead took two plows three hours -- or six times as long.

It also has seemed to multiply the number of calls and complaints coming into city offices about the plowed streets. Kolodge said there were more than 100 calls by Monday morning at the city's maintenance facility on East Central Entrance.

"It's to be expected," she said. "The length of the storm just threw people off."

In Upper Woodland, John and Diane Powers said they hadn't seen a plow by Saturday afternoon. About three hours after sending an e-mail to the City Council, a truck driver was sent their way.

"I don't know if it's coincidence or not," John Powers said. "They were probably just working their rounds."

But for some, sending an e-mail to the City Council didn't work. Shelley Herman, who lives on the dead-end Myrtle Street in Duluth Heights, sent an

e-mail to the council on Saturday. By Monday, city crews still hadn't plowed out her street. Herman's husband and a neighbor used a snowblower Saturday night to dig out the street themselves.

Cozzi said a city crew probably didn't plow the stretch of Myrtle because homeowners already had cleared snow from it, but he hit the street Monday with his salt truck before returning to the maintenance base for another reload. Applying it steadily, the 5-ton salt-sand mixture lasts about a half-hour, he said.

When crews hit the streets during a storm, Kolodge said, the first streets plowed are the main arteries and bus routes, which typically take about four hours. Crews then can start working on secondary roads.

But the Christmas storm quickly covered up the main arteries and workers had to return to those.

After the snow stopped, crews had to make several passes at roads that were hazardous or where homeowners had called to complain.

Some of the 28 full-time city plow drivers worked 12- to 18-hour shifts, Kolodge said.

Cozzi said he worked Christmas Eve and Christmas, then put in 16 hours Saturday. Depending on the condition, clearing a street of ice could take 10 to 12 passes with graders and salt trucks.

"It was basically work, go home, go to sleep, then go back to work," he said.

And even in a truck with a giant blade or several tons of salt and sand, there were challenges driving around on the roads.

"I've slid down a lot of hills the last few days," he said.

What does he do when that happens?

"Just try to steer it straight," he said. "And try not to run into anything."