KANSAS CITY, MO — The Kansas City area is preparing for multiple rounds of snow this week, a month after a blizzard that strained city and state resources.
The City of Kansas City is asking people to plan for the weather. The city pre-treated roads ahead of the snow and encouraged people to stay home. The January storm taught lessons.
“We’re learning about how to deal with that big type of storm. We’ve got more trucks on the way this spring to help with that to add more resources in a lot of different neighborhoods,” said Brian Platt, the city manager. We’re thinking how best to deploy some of those resources in some of the further reaching neighborhoods and making sure we’re getting on top of every single street.”
MoDOT started pretreating its roadways on Sunday, according to area engineer Jill Bruss. Bruss is one of the office workers who volunteer to drive plows since MoDOT is short-staffed this year. She said they have improved the staffing situation since January.
“We've gotten those ride-alongs out of the way. We've gotten some experience with some of those newer drivers. It does take about three years, three to five years, for a driver to really be a seasoned driver, to know what they're doing,” said Bruss.
MODOT said some areas in urban Kansas City are difficult to keep clear because of raised roadways. One area is the Grandview Triangle which is difficult due to the overpasses and the curvature of the lanes.
Grandview’s street superintendent Ben Brichacek said his team learned a lot from the blizzard. This time he feels even more prepared and points to his new technology that he said prevented them from missing more residential streets. Grandview started pretreating on Friday of last week and finished up on Monday.
“Our biggest focus has to be keeping the primary rounds clear first, and then just trying to send out whoever gets done first to the secondary streets and get those up and down, just keeping everybody on the road and moving. Pre-treatment should help a lot with this first event as well,” said Brichacek.
Brichacek reminds people to move their cars off the street if possible to allow for plows to get through. Bruss said that a truck can be 14 feet wide with its plow down and interstate lanes are typically 11 to 12 feet, so to give plows plenty of room until they’re no longer out.
KSHB 41 reporter Claire Bradshaw covers eastern Jackson County, including Blue Springs and Independence. Share your story idea with Claire.
