RICHMOND, Va. β City of Richmond and Henrico County crews are working around the clock to clear icy neighborhood roads as temperatures finally climb above freezing, but officials can't predict when conditions will be safe enough for schools to reopen.
Richmond is using heavy equipment like front loaders on particularly steep and dangerous streets, including areas near Forest Hill and the University of Richmond, to break up packed ice that traditional snowplows couldn't handle.
"Where the ice is packed, we will put down sand and salt again. And in those cases, we may get the heavy equipment in, like you see down here, that heavy equipment to help break up the ice," said Torrence Robinson, Richmond's deputy director of operations and maintenance.
With temperatures above freezing, crews are making more progress pushing the slushy material that's covering roads. The combination of sun, warmer temperatures and sand-salt mixture is helping turn ice into slush.
"We'll have trucks in the neighborhood that will be pushing, and we can push this with our rubber plows, which we could not do early on in the week, because it was just a sheet of ice," Robinson said.
"So we're seeing the effects of the sand salt mix that we've been applying over the past week," he said.
Across the county line in Henrico, crews are also working to melt the ice. The Department of Public Works dropped a salt-sand mix on subdivision streets over the weekend and continues applying the mixture, but they're not pushing material off the roads.
"A lot of the strategy is getting salt, sand, 50-50 mix into pretty much every subdivision street in the county and letting mother nature do its work with the sun and the temperatures," said Terrell Hughes, Henrico's DPW director.
Hughes said Henrico residents shouldn't expect to see plows in most areas.
"At this point, people should not expect to see plows. It's going to be about just melting," Hughes said. "And then, I mean, as needed, you know, if we're getting 911 calls, or we're hitting hills or cold spots, you know, we may make some variations, but in terms of just widespread pushing, that's not necessarily the plan."
Both officials declined to predict when roads will be safe enough for schools to resume classes.
"Well, I can't predict that now, I do know that we'll be working around the clock to just make it as safe as possible throughout and as quickly as possible," Robinson said.
"It's anyone's guess as to when school would be able to resume, certainly outside of my purview, but we're doing everything we can to get the roads in as best shape as possible, for both schools to return, as well as for people to get back to their normal lives," Hughes said.
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