Emergency responders still dealing with icy roads

Crews spent days cleaning up area roads after a massive winter storm dumped several inches of snow on the county earlier this week.
County Administrator Steve Willis said as of Thursday, road conditions on major highways had finally cleared up, though ice and snow remain on many secondary roads throughout the county.
He said Public Works has been assisting S.C. Department of Transportation crews in clearing off main roads, and began clearing major secondary roads Tuesday afternoon. Those secondary roads included Shiloh Unity Road, as well as segments of S.C. 903, U.S. 522 south and S.C. 200 south.  
“All of our equipment has been committed to working with DOT right now, because it doesn’t make sense clearing out minor roads yet if major ones, like U.S. 521, aren’t clear,” Willis said.
Willis said SCDOT used a fleet of dump trucks with blades on the front to clear snow, while Public Works has three motor grader machines which crews use to scrape off the top layers of snow and ice along roadways. And with temperature hovering around the freezing mark most of this week, he said it could be awhile before side roads and neighborhoods are finally cleared of ice and snow.
“If you live on a road with only four houses or in a private subdivision, let’s hope the sun comes out soon, because it will take crews a long time to get to them,” he said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Willis said Public Works had not reported any injuries to crews, though he said a SCDOT snow plow had flipped over Monday, between Steele Hill Road and Andrew Jackson State Park.
“Nobody was hurt, thank goodness,” he said.
Willis said all of the county’s fire departments, law enforcement and Emergency Medical Services have been able to respond to emergencies. He said the Sheriff’s Office has several four-wheel-drive vehicles it is using to navigate the icy roads, though the county has supplemented their fleet with three more vehicles from the Building and Zoning department and two from the Tax Assessors office.
“It’s no use having four-wheel-drive vehicles up here just sitting around and having no use for them,” he said. “We’re deploying assets where they can do the most good.”
Sheriff Barry Faile said the biggest problem his deputies have faced over the last few days are side roads which haven’t been cleared.
“Those side roads are still bad,” Faile said. “We're just using caution right now. It may take us a little longer due to the ice, but we're responding to all calls.”
Willis said other emergency responders were having similar problems.
“When they pull off the main road, they’re suddenly faced with things like a quarter-mile hilly road which is impossible to get an ambulance down,” he said. “Emergency management has to take their four-wheel-drive down the road, pick the patient up and bring them to the ambulance.”
Lanny Bernard, Lancaster County Emergency Management Services director, said this was one of the most dramatic storms he's seen in the county, in terms of ice produced.
“Some areas are just like skating rinks,” he said.
Bernard said the majority of calls EMS responded to on Monday and Tuesday were from people who needed medical attention, but couldn't get themselves from their homes to a hospital. EMS brought in three extra ambulances to handle calls during those days.
He said there were very few car accidents during the first two days of the week, and only minor injuries occurred in those accidents because most involved cars skidding off the road.
“I think most people just stayed inside those days,” he said. “It seems if people didn't have to get out, they didn't.”
By Wednesday, he said EMS was inundated with calls from people falling on the ice.
“People thought it was all better, but then they started falling all over,” he said.
Despite the poor weather and road conditions, Bernard said there was only one traffic incident involving an ambulance. He said the ambulance, which was responding to a tractor trailer which had slid off Shiloh Unity Road on Tuesday, also hit an icy patch as it traveled down the road at about 1 p.m.
“They hit that patch of ice and skidded, but they didn't go off the road and they maintained control,” Bernard said.
The truck driver was treated at the scene and there were no injuries among the ambulance crew, he said.
“We've been lucky that we didn't have any serious injuries with any of our crew members this week, only minor injuries as some people have fallen,” he said.
Willis said fire departments are also being more cautious in responding to incidents. He said firefighters are making sure they are needed, usually by sending a smaller vehicle to the scene first, before venturing out in the larger fire trucks.
Bryan Vaughn, director of safety and transportation with the county school district, spent most of Thursday morning traveling neighborhoods and side roads, as well as bus loops and parking lots at schools, monitoring the melting progress.
“We still have a fair amount of ice on side roads and in neighborhoods with shady areas,” Vaughn said. “And with ice and snow melting, and running into roadways, we have a fear factor with black ice.”
He said the school district will wait until 6 p.m. Thursday to make a determination about when to resume classes.  
Public Works has also been working to open all of the county’s convenience sites, but Willis said only some of the larger sites will be open by Thursday. He said crews have been chipping away at ice at those sites over the last few days.
“The last time convenience sites were open were last Saturday, which is close to a week,” Willis said. “Folks have got trash to throw away.”
 

REECE MURPHY/reporter

Many of Lancaster County's shady side streets, such as Cedar Lane near Legacy Park, still looked like this on Friday morning.

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