By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
CARIBOU, Maine — The glassy ice that coated The County this past weekend was the worst that Ron Michaud has ever seen, and he’s been with the Caribou Public Works Department for 13 years.
“Our problem was the roads’ surface was so cold that the rain froze to it,” the CPW supervisor described. “The ice layered and layered and built up — all we would co was scrape and sand and salt, and that went on for about a 24-hour period for us.” Folks mincing across un-salted sidewalks and driveways were a common sight over the weekend, and motorists had just as much trouble maneuvering their vehicles.
The radio log for the Caribou Police Department showed seven accidents and five vehicles off the road during the ice event, and the calls came in from all corners of the city. The Limestone police department assisted six vehicles that went off the road between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. on Jan. 11.
“We were fortunate, nobody was injured,” said Limestone Police Chief Stacey Mahan.
Michaud saw firsthand during the weather event that “everyone got stuck.”
Even some of the Public Works Department trucks had a hard time staying on the icy roads — and that’s despite a full 80 tons of truck pushing down on the ice-gripping chains.
The streets in-town have been pretty well recovered from the weekend icing event, but Michaud said that there are still some side streets that the department is working to clear.
“We anticipate getting them all cleaned up by the end of the week — getting the ice scraped and the ditches open,” he mentioned, adding that the department has also been challenged with a lot of water problems during the clean-up efforts.
Light rains on Tuesday morning exacerbated some slippery conditions once more — officers with the Caribou Police Department were called to assist with two vehicles off the road.
Restoring the streets to drivable conditions has been very costly for the public works department.
“We’ve exhausted our salt stockpile,” Michaud said, “and we’ve used a tremendous amount of sand.”
As winter supplies are running short with about two more months of serious winter left, the public works department is going to be carefully watching their sand stockpile until the spring, but Michaud is optimistic.
“We’ll manage — we always do.”
