Baltimore County, MD Hello Baltimore County, 4 Jan 2018

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From YouTube: Winter Snow Response

Description

Get the perspective from behind the plow and learn about the County's new Stormfighter web feature that helps you report storm-related issues to the County.

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Welcome to hello! baltimore county., I'm your host, ellen kobler.

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Well,, it's wintertime,, so that means we get our share of chilly temperatures,, snow, and ice..

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We're very happy to welcome to the studio tim goins from the bureau of highways and department of public works, gis program manager, doug adams,.

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To give us the perspective from behind the snowplow, and I guess behind the keyboard..

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Thank you so much for joining us., you're welcome. tim, tell us a little bit about the realities of snowplowing..

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You guys have 6,749 lane miles,.

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Which seems to me it's the same as driving to california and back.

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In terms of plowing, the snow.

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Yes, we have several roadway within baltimore county.

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The strategy for plowing snow, it can take approximately 4 to 6 hours.

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To salt a route and then another 18 to 24 hours, to completely remove the snow from the roadways.

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And that's some kind of like a normal, mundane storm.

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Yeah,, a normal one,, yes. correct., the way we attack our routes are the same..

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We attack the arterial roads first, and then we go to the feeder roads and then to the subdivision. Roads.

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All right. that sounds kind of technical.. What's an arterial road?.

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That means the main roads?, the main drags. yes.

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And then the other feeder roads and then the cul-de-sacs in all the neighborhoods and the developments.

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Okay. and baltimore county doesn't do the interstates and the beltway.

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That's state highways., that's correct., so, obviously,! When you get the really big storms,.

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It's frustrating for everybody.

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and people who are in the neighborhoods and especially the courts and the cul-de-sacs are,. You know, sometimes wondering.

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When's, the plow going to come? tell us about those multi-day storms. well,. When we have significant snowfalls,.

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The residents need to have realistic expectations.

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They need to understand that it's going to take us several days.

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To move our crews from the main roads into the neighborhood roads.

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And then, when the snow gets so deep,, our trucks can't push them.

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We have to call in outside forces like loaders and backhoes.

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And stuff like that to move the snow,, because that's the only way it can be moved at that point.

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Ellen: you're, essentially out there with giant shovels, moving the snow.

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You mentioned the main roads versus the smaller roads.

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I guess it kind of makes sense. if you somehow were to clear the neighborhood streets, and then they get to the main road and it's not passable,, then that doesn't make sense for anybody or public safety.

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All right. so,, this year, doug,, you and your folks have developed.

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A new website for the county called stormfighter.

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Will you tell us about that? certainly.? What we've done is we created an application suite.

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That,, probably most important for this conversation, is: we've got an external application that is available to folks.

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On the county website, called...

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Stormfighter. storm incident reporting.

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We've actually set it up to work for other storms,, not just simply snow.

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It has the ability to tell us about things that are going on.

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During flooding, events and wind, events, kind of like what we had with the derecho years ago, when all the trees came down.

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that information, it gets reported into a single database,.

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So all of the county resources are working off that one database.

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That are responding to a storm event., and then we have the ability to map those incidents and see where they are,, but probably most importantly,, is get that information out to the highway shops and the folks that are doing the work to clear the issues.

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okay. so, for somebody who, for example,.

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Is kind of stuck in their house for the third day, and they're kind of wondering,? Do they know that I haven't been plowed?? I mean, you kind of know, what's been plowed.

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But if somebody has a particular issue that they feel like.

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They need to let the county know, instead of calling the department of public works on the phone, and like last year,, with that huge, three-foot plus storm,.

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People were on the phone a long time.. The phone system couldn't handle it. so, you're, encouraging them to go online,.

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But you've also upgraded the phone system, a little bit?.

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Yeah. the call center now is something that we can access from any location.

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People can-- actually,, the folks that would staff the storm desk can log in from home.. It gives them the ability to log calls that are coming into the call center.

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But we're really encouraging folks to use this new application, because it's accessible on smartphones..

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You can look at it on tablets and use it on tablets.

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Or on your computer at your house., I guess I'd want to liken the ability for us to respond.

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Is kind of like when you call the bge outage line.

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Nobody actually calls you and tells you that your power's back on,, because you know it is on. so, you know,. We encourage people to. Let us know that their road hasn't been plowed after a suitable length of time after the storm.

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So, not when the snow's still coming down and it's accumulating two feet.

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Like when, is it helpful for somebody to report that their street,, it hasn't been plowed, or what other issues should they? Let you know about?, like a few days, later.

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If there's icy, conditions, you know, road safety and public safety is always our number one priority., but we have 164 designated routes throughout baltimore county.

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Each route has 50 to 60 roads per route, and we attack them systematically.

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So,, we know what roads have been hit and what roads have not been hit.

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So,, you haven't forgotten somebody,, it's just that you're still trying to fight the snowdrifts, et cetera.

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And it takes time.

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Talk a little bit about the training for the snowplow drivers.

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Our less-experienced drivers, people with five years or under,.

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Go to something what we call snow, college.

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now, snow college is a classroom setting where they learn and watch videos about how to attack the snow,.

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Whether it's pushing a cul-de-sac, intersections,, four-lane roads,,.

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And so forth, and so on and the proper way to go about doing that. attack it from the middle. push it to the right.

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Ellen: okay. and when somebody shovels their driveway,.

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Of course,, it's very upsetting when the plow then comes through later and pushes the snow back on. any advice for that?.

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Well,, I guess, if you're coming out of your house and you're shoveling, your driveway, you're, going to put some snow out there,.

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Push it to the right, so that way,, when we're going,, it's just going to keep moving down the road. ellen: ah ha! okay.

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Or even just into your yard. and not back into the street, right?, please not back into the street. all right. and also,. I understand that you've increased the salt supplies that are on hand.

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Yes., we have 91,600 ton of salt right, now.

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Ellen:, that's awesome. seventeen different locations throughout baltimore county.. We just added two more salt domes that hold, potentially, 20,000 ton, apiece.

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ellen:, okay. so,. If we get a really bad winter,.

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And we're really using up the salt,, we'll be very well positioned.

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doug, many of the main thoroughfares in the county, as we've said, are state roads, --, not just the interstates, but a lot of the numbered streets.

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Your stormfighter app now includes live camera feeds from state highways?.

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Doug: yes, the stormfighter app that's available from the county, website,.

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You can get to the maryland state highway traffic feeds --.

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The cameras and stuff like that, so that you can see what's going on., but the application itself allows us to,, not necessarily discount,.

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But we know which roads in the internal application--.

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Which roads are state roads,? Which ones are county? Roads.

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so,? We know which information to provide back to the highway shops.

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Ellen: okay. all right., very good.

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Well,, it sounds like a good partnership kind of the low-tech snowplowing and the high-tech communication.

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So,, thank you both very much,, and you and all your folks be safe out. There.

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Thank you. all right. thank you. thank you., and thanks for watching hello!, baltimore, county. and remember,, you can connect with baltimore county government on facebook and twitter.. We'll see you next time. ( ♪♪♪ ).