Arkansas Dept. of Transportation crews provide assistance to DOTD during winter weather operations. (Photo source: ArDOT)
Needless to say, while not unprecedented, snow and ice are not things that Louisiana is accustomed to.
As such, crews have been busy prepping the roads for severe driving conditions.
“We spent Saturday staging our salt in our staging areas and our deicing agents in our staging areas across the state,” says Rodney Mallett, DOTD spokesman. “And then yesterday, we began spreading brine on our key bridges (and) key infrastructure across the state.”
Mallett says while prep work continued today and will continue throughout the night tonight.
“Today, we will be brining those bridges again in preparation for spreading the actual bulk salt, hard rock salt this evening or early tomorrow morning, depending on when the storm starts to come in and the bridges start to ice over,” Mallett says.
Since there are no snowplows anywhere in the State of Louisiana, DOTD is bringing in help from Arkansas.
“They get more snow and ice than we do,” says Mallett, “and they have volunteered to send some personnel, some deicing materials and some snowplows.”
While DOTD is getting the roads ready, Louisiana State Police are getting ready to respond to any emergencies that may arise.
“We’re going to double up our patrols and just go out and make sure there’s no debris in the roadways and just kind of get ourselves staged in advance of the storm to make sure that we’re in the best position possible to respond to any calls for service or any emergencies,” says LSP Trooper Shelby Mayfield.
Mayfield says when the snow starts falling, if you do not have to be out on the roadways, stay off them.
“The same driving conditions that they have to navigate and drive around are the same roadway conditions that we’re going to utilize to try to get to them in the event that they have an emergency,” Mayfield notes. “So the best and safest bet is just to ensure that they’re not on the road if they don’t have to be.”
A 14-mile stretch of I-49 in Rapides Parish is closed due to the incoming storm, and conditions may force additional Interstates closures.
Mallett says he hopes it doesn’t come to that.
“We’re going to try to keep all the routes open as long as we can,” Mallett says, “but we understand that the key east and west routes are what we’re going to be focusing on at some point during this storm.”
Mayfield says if you absolutely have to be on the roadways, use common sense.
“Reduce your speeds, use your low-beam headlines and just make sure you’re not doing little things like driving with cruise control on,” says Mayfield.
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