Henrico officials say winter storm damaged 40% of county snow plows: ‘We haven’t had ice like this in 30-plus years”

Henrico County officially ended its state of local emergency on Tuesday, but county leaders said they were still dealing with lasting impacts of the winter storm, including several neighborhoods with residents unable to leave their homes and significant damage to the county’s snow plows.

Winter Storm Fern, which prompted county leaders to call a state of emergency on Jan. 23, brought unprecedented levels of ice to Henrico roads, with five to six inches of compacted ice forming in many neighborhoods, said Director of Public Works Terrell Hughes.

While snow plows were able to clear about 44% of county roads by Monday, Jan. 26, subfreezing temperatures later that night made road conditions extremely difficult, said Hughes, and county plows were unable to tackle the ice build-up on many streets.

“On Monday night, I started getting calls from our crews saying, ‘Our trucks can’t get through this. We’re hitting it and it’s not moving. And we’re actually starting to damage some of our equipment.’ And we quickly had to change our response,’” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re talking ice and really low temperatures. Those are two challenges that even some of our counterparts to the north struggled with.”

The county has now been able to clear most neighborhood subdivisions and secondary roads, Hughes said, but has still received calls from several residents in neighborhoods that are still blocked by mounds of ice, although Hughes said that warmer temperatures later this week are expected to improve conditions. About 40% of the county’s snow plows and trucks also were damaged due to the icy conditions, with one truck even flipping over onto its side while trying to clear snow.

“My residents have said, ‘How can I pay all my taxes, but you can’t plow my roads?’ We’ll plow your roads if you want, for $30 million. And I’m not quite sure that I’d vote for me if I spent $30 million to have 100 more trucks that sat around for another 28 years.”
– Dan Schmitt, Brookland District supervisor

Hughes: improving county’s snow plow fleet would cost $30 million

At certain points during the storm, upwards of 500 county employees were working “around-the-clock,” said County Manager John Vithoulkas, and DPW had staff working 24 hours in two 12-hour shifts beginning Jan. 23 through Feb. 8. But despite the “Herculean effort,” county equipment often was unable to push through the built-up ice on the roads, he said.

“This was a very different type of event. We haven’t had ice like this in 30-plus years,” Vithoulkas said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “There are always, always opportunities to improve responses to rare events. . . we quite frankly tried our best and we worked our butts off. But in the end, some of our residents were not happy with the outcome.”

Vithoulkas said that while “no such equipment exists” that would remove such compact ice, the county used 25 of their 125 snow plows – the heaviest equipment available – to tackle the icy roads. 

In order to clear the county’s secondary roads and subdivisions faster, Henrico would likely need to double its snow plow fleet, an estimated $30-million cost, said Hughes. But Brookland District supervisor Dan Schmitt said that with Winter Storm Fern being such a rare event, that investment would be wasteful of residents’ tax dollars.

“You can’t buy $30 million of equipment and be responsible with taxpayer dollars,” he said. “My residents have said, ‘How can I pay all my taxes, but you can’t plow my roads?’ We’ll plow your roads if you want, for $30 million. And I’m not quite sure that I’d vote for me if I spent $30 million to have 100 more trucks that sat around for another 28 years.”

Henrico County is still looking for other ways to improve its response to emergency weather conditions, said Vithoulkas, although the county’s after-action reports will likely not be released publicly.

“It’s not produced to the public, saying, ‘here’s what we looked at, here’s what we produced.’ We just fix it,” he said. “I’ll pull the agency heads together and we will figure out what we need to improve.”

Henrico County only began clearing subdivisions about 15 to 20 years ago, said Hughes. When snowfall began on Saturday, Jan. 24, Henrico prioritized clearing primary roads, emergency services routes, utility restoration routes, and areas that reported multiple 911 calls. Major roads such as Laburnum Avenue and Parham Road were plowed continuously. By Tuesday, Jan. 27, county plows began working on smaller streets in neighborhood subdivisions.

The county will likely continue to prioritize primary roads in snow plow efforts, said Hughes, especially routes nearby essential services such as hospitals and food markets.

“Before everything really froze over, we were able to get a lot of the main roads clear, and I think that still needs to be our priority,” he said. “That’s where most of the traffic is. That's where the hospitals are, that’s how people get to grocery stores. So I don’t think that’s going to change.”

What may change is the county’s 24-hour approach to plowing the roads, Hughes said. While workers at the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) shut down plowing operations during the nighttime, Henrico crews continued to plow even in the subfreezing temperatures, which led some county plows to become damaged.

“We continued to work the event for 24 hours, and maybe that was something that we could re-evaluate,” Hughes said. “In that process, we did damage quite a bit of equipment.”

Many residents frustrated with county’s response to storm

During the past few weeks, Hughes estimated that the county’s efforts in tackling the winter storm totaled multiple millions of dollars. At one point, DPW began receiving over 600 calls a day, and Henrico Fire received 295 calls over the course of a week related to people falling on the ice. 

But many county residents were frustrated by the county’s response to the storm and the several neighborhood subdivisions that remained uncleared. 

“Just the optics of it, seeing the parks and the schools being plowed when residents were in their neighborhoods, I’ve heard some people say, ‘Well, what was the point of focusing on clearing schools when we can’t get our kids out of our cul de sacs?’” said Three Chopt District supervisor Misty Roundtree. “But I know how hard you all work and I know you’re responding to this with 110%.”

Henrico County was able to provide Henrico Schools with contracted staff and equipment to help plow school areas and parking lots, but that did not take away from the fleet targeting the subdivisions, said Vithoulkas. HCPS Superintendent Amy Cashwell will “always err on the side of safety” when it comes to weather-related school closures, he said.

Hughes also said that there were points where the county stopped plowing roads temporarily to make sure that new ice would not stick directly onto the road, which would have made conditions worse for plows.

“There was a lot of discussion on when to plow,” he said. “We wanted to keep roads clear but at the same time, we didn’t want to completely clear the roads, because if we did get a layer of ice, which we ended up getting at the end, we wanted to make sure that there was something underneath for us to push.”

Richard Flanagan, who lives on Kahlua Drive in Chamberlayne, spoke before the board of supervisors to ask the county to improve on their response to the storm.

“This is an extraordinary situation, I understand that,” he said. “But there was also a situation where [the county] didn’t have the equipment to get into the neighborhoods. The businesses were open, but the customers couldn’t get to the businesses. The people that had to go to work had to struggle to get out of the community.”

Rodney Bailey, who lives on Lyndover Road near East Highland Park, said his neighborhood was one of several subdivisions that was not cleared by this past Tuesday, and he worried for the safety of his more vulnerable neighbors.

“My next door neighbor is blind,” he said. “The lady across the street has had both her hips replaced. She’s very unstable on her feet to start with.”

Henrico will continue to improve upon their emergency weather response, Vithoulkas promised residents.

“I acknowledge the concerns voiced by some of our residents and factor those concerns into how we respond in the future,” he said. “For those still frustrated, you have my sincere promise…that as we debrief with our agencies and our schools, we will continue to learn and improve.”

Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s government and education reporter. Support her work and articles like this one by making a contribution to the Citizen.