Storm takeaways: Carson City snow removal team battles elements, downed trees during 'train of storms'
With a relentless series of storms pummeling the Sierra, Carson City and surrounding counties through the first half of January, there's the takeaways and lessons learned when preparing for the next round of atmospheric river storms.
With its fleet of snow removal equipment working around the clock through each storm system that passed and crews removing fallen trees and limbs in the process of removing snow, Carson City Public Works is taking time in between this break in storms to consider what was done correctly and what can be done differently given that it's still early in the winter season.
With the New Year's storm bringing the most amount of snowfall in the series of storms, Carson City Public Works and NV Energy officials both say they were overwhelmed by the quick-turn of events where a potential flood issue turned into a snow-heavy punishing storm, bringing down limbs and full trees in every direction over a 24 to 36 hour hour stretch.
"There was a point with the storm that we got overwhelmed and wasn't able to make the kind of gains we needed to make," said Rick Cooley, operations manager for Carson City Public Works. "It was a very short window, the duration of events. Everyone was on board but we needed more help."
As the volume of downed trees grew by the hour, clogging roads and bringing power lines down with them, Cooley said what NV Energy officials also said that in hindsight, they would have enlisted outside help early on, even ahead of the storms, so that in the event of a sudden change, they would be prepared for it.
"At what point where we were unable to handle it all, that's when we could have called out for troops, enlisting private contractors for help," said Cooley.
He noted the city carries a rainy day fund that in the event of emergencies and funds are available to hire outside help. If what happened New Year's happens again, he said the department will turn to the fund to get more help.
NV Energy was also caught in the bind, responding to hundreds of downed power lines throughout the Sierra, western Nevada and in Carson City those first two days of the year. At one point, 71,000 customers were without power in Northern Nevada. The company, in response, brought in and staged additional lineman resources from throughout Nevada, Oregon and Utah to not only address the outages that were underway, but also preparing for forecasted storms ahead.
“These extra crews, when added to our existing NV Energy teams, more than triple the strength of our outage response, and help ensure we have every resource available to minimize the number and duration of outages that could result from the upcoming winter storm,” said Doug Cannon, NV Energy President and Chief Executive Officer, in a news release from earlier this month.
On the upside, what Carson City Public Works had planned for, potential flooding — and there was an abundant amount of rainfall ahead of the snow — is that all the major infrastructure flood measures the department put in place since the 2017 storms, worked and worked well, Cooley said.
One of the only impact areas was along Merrimac Way where tree roots impacted a storm drainage pipe causing a rise in water levels, he said.
The department also jumped ahead in getting the word out before the first big storm, that it needed the public's help in clearing their drainages in front of homes and businesses.
As far as snow removal as the storms came, the city snow removal team was on top of it as best they could, getting to the priority 1 and priority 2 streets for removal and sanding high traffic problem areas.
Among complaints public works received thus far has been for bermed driveways and snow moved onto sidewalks.
Cooley said berm and sidewalk issues have become a common thread among public complaints. As far as the berm complaints, plowers "can't customize" their removal based around individual resident wants. With residential and business combined there are around 24,000 driveways, he said.
"It's the single biggest complaint we get," he said. "In major weather events such as these, for residents the first line of defense is to clear them out before the next round of storms."
— Carson Now wants to know what lessons and takeaways you've gleaned through these relentless early winter storms. For many, charging cells phones became a challenge. For others, it was being well stocked with food and supplies. Tell us your story and lessons learned below in the comment section.