County’s Road and Bridge crew worked hard to clear more than 700 miles of snowy county road

Ozark County’s Road and Bridge crew got a winter weather workout last week, using graders and other machinery to clear the more than 700 miles of county roads through multiple snowfalls and brutal subzero temperatures. 

Snow began falling Saturday, and by Thursday, most Ozark County areas had seen upward of 10 inches of snow on the ground, and roadways were blanketed.

Western District Commissioner Layne Nance, who spent nearly eight years working as a county grader operator before he was elected as commissioner last fall, said he thought the county employees handled the tricky weather as well as they could.

“All in all, considering how cold it got and how much we had, I think it went well,” Nance said. “I had several calls, but for the most part everyone was nice. You know, we told them, ‘We’ll get there. We’re working at it.’ You can’t get ’em all at once. Somebody’s going to be first. Somebody’s going to be last. Somebody’s going to be in the middle. That’s just how it is.”

‘I felt like I was on the go all the time’

When asked if he felt busier as a commissioner leading the team of county employees or as a grader operator during a winter storm, Nance said it depends how a person looks at it.

“You know, I did more manual labor on the grader when I used to run it, but this time [as commissioner] I did a lot of running for fuel and hauling [grader] blades. I had to make a trip to Springfield to get filters because we couldn’t get them quick enough. Then we had a machine that wasn’t running. So I tried to help out with that, and we had an ambulance call and a few wellness [check] calls,” he said.

“I also tried to help the boys out a little. I had one guy out with a doctor’s appointment, so I actually run his [grader] for about four hours one day…. It felt like I was on the go all the time,” he said.

Nance said he had a crew of four graders pushing snow off county roads and a plow that worked to clear some of the “chip and seal” roadways. The crew used grader and plow blades, along with nearly 3 tons of salt, to make the more than 300 miles of roadway on the western side of the county safer for travel.

“The guys worked extra. A lot extra,” Nance said when asked about the road and bridge crew’s schedule. “I tried to pull my guys in at dark at least, but some of them run a little past dark. I’d call each of them every night or make them call me because I’ve been on that end of it before. And it can be kinda lonely out there at ten o’clock at night with no radio service, no phone signal. And there’s a lot of places in this county where you don’t have either. I know I liked to have somebody wondering if I’d made it home or not. So I wanted to do the same. I told them they didn’t have to call, but I at least wanted a text letting me know they were safe at the end of the night. Because things do happen out there on the snow and ice.”

A tricky emergency situation

Nance said one hiccup happened when the western district crew had to pause their snow-clearing efforts Wednesday, Feb. 17, to help with an ambulance call. 

“It was the morning after the second snow, and we’d just got started pushing it in Wasola when I got the call. They said, ‘I need you down here.’ I’m not sure who made the original call, but they sent a MoDOT plow truck back there on one of our county roads, and he got hung up and stuck too.”

Nance said he called over the radio to let them know he’d send a grader that way and asked for a resident name or specific address, but he was told that due to privacy concerns with medical information, the resident couldn’t be identified.

“Well, that road is 6 miles long. It’s got two feeder roads into it. You’re going to save me a whole lot of time if you can tell me where I need to send it. If I go in the north end and they’re on the south end, that can kill another hour. In an emergency situation, an hour is a long time,” he said.

Nance said after some discussion, a dispatcher was able to give him a county road number, and he was able to send a grader to the area. 

“There are situations like that where I know we’ve got to have privacy, but not giving us good information could’ve cost that [person] an hour getting on the ambulance because I didn’t know what end to go to,” he said.

Nance said the plow truck was able to blaze a way for the ambulance, and the grader was able to reach both to further clear the path for the emergency vehicle to exit the roadway with the patient. 

Eastern District used gravel and sawdust

Eastern District Commissioner Gary Collins said his five graders also were up and running through the storm, along with a skid steer that was also used to help out some. 

“As far as getting all my machines up, Layne had some trouble getting some of his started. All my equipment started and worked OK,” he said. “But my plow truck is gone for awhile. It blew a head gasket. It was an old one anyway. It’s a 95 model and has several miles on it.”

Collins said his crew relied on pea gravel and sawdust to help combat slick conditions because there was no salt to purchase prior to the storm.

“Everybody was sold out. But the pea gravel works pretty good. The salt, when it gets cold, it won’t work anyway. And I don’t really like to use salt. If you put it on a clay-based hill or road…you talk about freezing and thawing…water just keeps pulling up. It’ll pull it up to the top, and then you got a real mess,” Collins said.

Collins said he advises residents who live on county roads to avoid putting their own salt on their roadways, especially clay-based roads. 

“It really just makes a mess of everything. We have some people that will just salt the heck out of their hill. But, boy, it messes us up. We’ll be out there knocking the snow and stuff off, and then it just makes it where you can’t do anything,” he said.

Collins said while helping direct the eastern district crew, he also wanted to help out those nearby. He said he hopped on his tractor and drove to several neighbors’ homes to clear driveways to allow them to get out safely. 

All that hard work paid off Sunday, Collins said, when night fell.

“I looked at my phone when I went to bed Sunday night, and it pulls up all the school closings. I checked it out, and I didn’t see Dora on there, and I said, ‘Yeah! We got all the roads cleaned off!’”