Paul Bass Photo
Eight tri-axle dump trucks lined up to help return Woodward Avenue to normalcy five days after Winter Storm Nemo buried it. In cities more accustomed to big blizzards, monster snow-removal vehicles might have arrived earlier — with plow “wings” on the side.
Rob Smuts talked about that as he watched the final widening of Woodward Avenue’s plowing Thursday. And he offered some explanations.
The dump trucks and payloader arrived as part of a sweep of major through-roads around town that previously had been cleared of just a single lane so emergency vehicles could get through in the wake of last weekend’s historic 34-inch blizzard. Now the roads were plowed wide enough for cars to drive safely in both directions, as New Haven seemed finally to return to a semblance of normal.
Smuts, New Haven’s chief administrative officer, has spent pretty much every waking hour since before Nemo hit directing the city’s response. As ambulances and fire trucks and police cars got stuck at the height of the blizzard, then as the city struggled to dig out from the biggest New Haven snowfall since 1888, Smuts has been the calm in the center of the storm. He has calmly responded to endless crises and curve balls as well as to complaints of citizens demanding faster removal.
And he has learned about upstate New York communities like Watertown or Syracuse, where winters with 100-plus-inches of snow are common.
Those places are more accustomed to getting feet of snow dumped on them. So they have more advanced equipment to handle huge mounds of the sort that paralyzed New Haven during the peak of Nemo’s wrath.
Wings & Vs
As the caravan of trucks passed on Woodward, Smuts observed how the clean-up might have been different here with the same kind of equipment that towns have further north.
Click on the play arrow at the top of the story to watch Smuts explain the differences. (Ian Applegate contributed the animated video outro.)
With climate change threatening to make these once-in-a-century storms more common (we’ve had five huge storm emergencies in the past two years), New Haven will confront the question of how much money to invest in some of that equipment. At up to $200,000 apiece, and with 22 plowing districts in New Haven, the pricetag could grow into the tens of millions of dollars depending on how much more prepared New Haven wants to be.
When it comes to widening the road passageways after the initial post-storm pass-throughs — as was occurring Thursday on Woodward — New Haven relied on payloaders to scoop up the huge mounds and then on the tri-axle trucks to transport them to final resting places like East Shore Park and Marginal Drive.
The more blizzard-accustomed northern cities will employ a lead truck with a “wing plow” on the side that first pushes the top three feet or so of a steep snowbank to the side, Smuts said. That creates a shorter “snow shelf.” Some of those trucks have a second wing as well. Another truck follows to handle the shorter snowbank.
New Haven’s Class 8 trucks, its biggest plows, can’t really handle snowbanks taller than three feet.
The big trucks up north also often have V‑shaped plows. That makes a big difference, Smuts said. “That’s to create a path down the middle” of the street amid big snows, he said. “Our plows are more flat. You can put them at a little angle. But when you have too much snow in front of them, even when they’re on an angle, they can’t keep going. And so we have a lot of plow trucks get stuck in the storm.”
Unsecret Shopper
Also, those northern cities generally have a lot more payloaders to clear mounds of snow. New Haven has four. By Sunday, it had 26 on hand, temporarily, to tackle Nemo.
And their payloaders often have snowblower attachments (pictured). They blow the snow to the side instead of just pushing it.
Not Just Equipment
Smuts cited another big difference between New Haven’s response to a three-foot snowfall and the responses up north: How people act.
People more accustomed to those blizzards “understand when they cannot just drive through” all that snow without getting stuck. Lots of drivers ventured onto New Haven’s unplowed or barely plowed post-Nemo streets to “sight-see,” Smuts noted. All over town they got stuck and prevented emergency crews from getting to people who needed help — and prevented the plows New Haven does have from getting going on clearing the streets. (Click here to read about that.) “People getting used to the snow and knowing what to do,” Smuts said, will make an incalculable difference on its own the next time a Nemo-like blizzard unleashes its wrath on New Haven.
Smuts: They’ve got some BIG trucks up north.
Past Episodes of “Rob Smuts Explains”:
• Rob Smuts Explains Your Sidewalk.
• Rob Smuts Explains The Thermostat
• Rob Smuts Explains Potholes, Part II
• Rob Smuts Explains Haste On Trash Plan
• Rob Smuts Explains The Pothole Menace
• Rob Smuts Explains Cop Overtime
• Rob Smuts Explains Your Garbage
• Rob Smuts Explains The Search
• Rob Smuts Explains The Fire Department