{"id":7440,"date":"2016-01-27T00:20:30","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T05:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=7440"},"modified":"2016-01-27T00:20:30","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T05:20:30","slug":"brick-crews-plowed-snow-for-81-hours-had-to-bring-in-extra-contractors-in-blizzard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/01\/brick-crews-plowed-snow-for-81-hours-had-to-bring-in-extra-contractors-in-blizzard\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick Crews Plowed Snow for 81 Hours, Had to Bring in Extra Contractors in Blizzard"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A snow-covered local street. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

It took 81 hours of continual\u00a0snow plowing to clear all of Brick\u2019s municipal roads, Mayor John Ducey said Tuesday, amidst praise for the township\u2019s public works crews but some complaints by residents about the overall response.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery snowstorm is different,\u201d said Ducey, explaining that the township\u2019s first pre-storm meeting took place last Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Before the storm arrived, Public Works Director Glenn Campbell, anticipating a large storm, contacted extra contractors in Pennsylvania to assist with the plowing effort. In all, 110 pieces of snow removal equipment were at work by Saturday morning, but crews quickly found themselves hampered by the amount of snow that fell. By Saturday night, fewer than 80 pieces of equipment remained in service.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur mechanics were working 24 hours a day,\u201d said Ducey.<\/p>\n

Snow removal was further complicated by the high winds, especially in bayfront neighborhoods, where drifts re-covered streets with snow after it had already been plowed.<\/p>\n

Cathy\u00a0Erickson, a resident of the Greenbriar development, said she and her neighbors were not satisfied with the response. She told the mayor at a township council meeting Tuesday night that plowing crews made a single pass down streets in her neighborhood, leading to a six foot snow berm\u00a0between her driveway and the street.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter we were told there would be curb-to-curb plowing, [residents]\u00a0were told, \u2018oh no, there\u2019s no curb-to-curb plowing,\u201d said\u00a0Erickson, adding that the matter was complicated in Greenbriar, where the homeowners association hires contractors to remove snow from driveway entrances.<\/p>\n

In this case, the contractors could not access the driveways, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had to have their contractor come back and plow the roads because they had six feet of snow between their curbs and the road,\u201d\u00a0Erickson said.<\/p>\n

After so many pieces of equipment broke down, Ducey said, the decision was made to make one pass down each street in town so the snow could be removed at a faster pace.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand some of you were angry,\u201d said Councilwoman Heather deJong. \u201cWe unfortunately can\u2019t please everybody. We can only do as much as we can, and then we have to continue on with regular business.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeJong praised the public works department for clearing snow in time to resume trash and recycling collections Monday morning, after\u00a0salting roads Sunday night.<\/p>\n

All of the township\u2019s streets were cleared by 2 p.m. Monday, Ducey said, adding that the township received 242 calls to its storm hotline on Saturday and another 444 Sunday. Complaints about the response that came to the mayor\u2019s office went one of two ways, Ducey said:\u00a0roads not being plowed, and roads that were plowed, but resulted in feet of snow piled up against driveways.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe obviously can\u2019t clear people\u2019s driveways \u2013 if we did it would be very expensive,\u201d Ducey said.<\/p>\n

The full cost of the storm response is still being calculated. Brick officials recently announced that $900,000 was allocated into its snow emergency trust fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took 81 hours of continual\u00a0snow plowing to clear all of Brick\u2019s municipal roads, Mayor John Ducey said Tuesday, amidst praise for the township\u2019s public works crews but some complaints by residents about the overall response. \u201cEvery snowstorm is different,\u201d said Ducey, explaining that the township\u2019s first pre-storm meeting took place last Wednesday. Before the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[890,24,435,891,331,1885],"class_list":["post-7440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-blizzard","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-noreaster","tag-public-works","tag-snow-plowing","tag-snow-removal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/IMG_4928.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-1W0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}