ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
SHOVEL BY SHOVEL, inch by inch, valley residents continued to dig themselves out Tuesday. But the most reliable transportation was still on foot.
If you drove along Brambleton Avenue toward Roanoke from Virginia 419 on Tuesday, you may have noticed a stark contrast in local road conditions.
At least 1 1/2 lanes of reassuring asphalt were visible on the state-maintained road - right up to the city-county border.
But there, the road - although passable - disappeared underneath a blanket of ice and snow tinted with cinders, sand and salt. The same was true on U.S. 460 heading in from Lynchburg, and on Franklin Road coming off 419.
Meanwhile, Interstates 81 and 581 were clear. Roanoke Regional Airport managed to get one runway open, but flights are expected to be limited because other airports in the Northeast still are closed.
But despite thousands of man-hours, round-the-clock efforts by snow removal crews and dozens of plows on city streets, Roanoke remained largely covered with snow.
City officials defended the snow removal efforts at a briefing Tuesday afternoon that was televised on Cox Cable Channel 3, the government access channel. More briefings will be televised today at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Officials said the contrast between main roads in Roanoke County - where the Virginia Department of Transportation clears streets - and snow-covered city arteries had more to do with snow removal strategy than effort. The city has 30 plows running 24 hours daily with drivers putting in 12-hour shifts.
City Manager Bob Herbert announced that 85 percent of Roanoke's 500-plus miles of streets had at least one pass by a snow plow by Tuesday afternoon, while fewer county secondary roads had been plowed once.
By today, they hope to get to all the city's streets, with the exception of roads in higher elevations. And a state of emergency is expected to be lifted.
"I won't try to get into a comparative battle between us and surrounding jurisdictions," said city Public Works Director Bill Clark. "Last night, when they were working on some of their main thoroughfares, we were trying to bust into some of our neighborhoods."
"I'm not saying that we've gotten to the pavement. That will take some time," Herbert said. "We're hearing that we're doing a better job getting into residential areas."
But the statements were little solace to people like Southeast Roanoke resident Ginger Stewart, who's been snowbound for three days.
"I live on Memphis Street. We have been calling [city public works] since Monday," she said. "They have cleared several streets around us - more than once. But we are still buried under 2 feet of snow. They have not scraped this road. The residents have scraped it. We've cleared it ourselves because we've all been snowbound. The city says they're going to put our street on the list."
Plow operators on Tuesday said their chief impediment was cars.
"It's the moving ones and the parked ones," said VDOT plow operator Jay Graham. "They won't get out of the way. And [drivers] think we're in the way."
The bottom line is, there still are millions of tons of snow to get out of the way, and it's going to take time.
The following is a sampling of road conditions Tuesday around the Roanoke region.
Gordon Street in Southeast Roanoke was plowed Monday morning, and shoveling by residents got it down to the pavement in some sections.
At some of the city's larger apartment complexes, such as The Ridge off Brandon Avenue Southwest, workers barely got around to shoveling sidewalks by Tuesday. In parking lots there, cars were still snowed in.
One of the bigger problems on Roanoke streets was that only one lane was plowed, making stopping or parking difficult.
Tillett Road Southwest was passable only to four-wheel-drive vehicles. Nearby, Guilford Road, Grandin Road and Memorial Avenue were snow-covered but passable to most cars.
In Northwest Roanoke, no pavement was showing in neighborhoods off Melrose Avenue, nor on main roads such as 11th Street or Salem Avenue. Snow drifts in the middle of intersections were creating hazards.
In Blacksburg, Main Street, Prices Fork Road and other major arteries were cleared by Tuesday morning but still very icy. Side streets, although they had been plowed once, still had deep snow.
The streets in Apple Tree Village off Read Mountain Road in Botetourt County had been scraped and were snow-covered but negotiable by four-wheel-drive vehicles. From there, U.S. 220 was clear, as was U.S. 460 to the Roanoke city line, where the main road was snow-covered and narrower than usual but passable.
In Salem, some neighborhood roads, such as Sunset Road and Beech Road, were dry pavement by Monday morning. Some streets off Lee Highway were dry; others were still laden with snow and ice.
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. 1. A Roanoke County resident clearsby CNBsnow from his driveway to his unplowed street in Southwest County
off Brambleton Avenue on Tuesday. 2. KEITH GRAHAM/Staff. Brambleton
Avenue illustrates the differences in snow removal: It was still
snow-covered within the city Tuesday ... 3. ... while beyond the
city limits, where it is state-maintained, it was cleared. color.