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►Snow
From Page A-l
evaluate the situation,” he said.
All county offices were closed Monday and many were working short handed on Tuesday morning as snow-covered roads hampered travel.
Mr. Marshall said his crew of 19 was aided by six highway workers from Warsaw, east of Fredericksburg on the Northern Neck. They brought two trucks with plows and one motorgrader with a plow with them, he said.
Area construction firms also leased out equipment and operators to help clear county roads. Rappawan of Front Royal provided two track loaders (bulldozers with a large front bucket instead of a blade); Blue Ridge construction offered a track loader, a bulldozer and a backhoe ; Richard Compton Construction provided three trucks with snow blades; Jack Jenkins also offered a truck and Robert Clatterbuck of Flint Hill offered a backhoe.
All of the equipment was needed, as was a snow blower from the VDOT office in Culpeper. Mr. Marshall said that the snow blower operator reported that the drifts on Route 729 south of Ben Venue were three feet above the top of his equipment, which stands 10 feet tall.
Other extremely deep drifts were on Route 618 on both sides of Woodville; on Route 629, Bean Hollow, off the Fodderstack Road; on Route 231 near the old Belle Meade School, and at Massie’s Comer.
“We had bad drifting there,” Mr. marshall said. “We got one of our large dump trucks stuck there trying to move the drifting snow and then a (motor)grader got hung up when it tried to pull the truck free.”
Many of the drifts were so large that the only practical way to move them was to use large bucket loaders that can pick up cubic yards of snow at a bite and move it out of the way. It is an effective way to move snow, but it takes time.
The highway department crews struggled to keep the main roads open Saturday night and Sunday despite drifting snow while diverting equipment to the back roads to answer emergency calls.
One home owner in Jenkins Hollow (Route 600) had run out of furnace fuel and called for help on Sunday. While highway equipment worked to clear a path up the hollow, a National Guard tracked armored personal carrier (APC) was diverted to Rappahannock County while on its way back to Winchester.
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