Snowmageddon, the aftermath

Last week's historic blizzard allowed many students to stay indoors, sip hot chocolate, catch up on homework and watch episodes of their favorite television shows. However, not everyone was granted two days of relaxation.     

With 14 inches of snow and a water main break to contend with, Physical Plant workers continued their jobs as usual and are still struggling to remove excess snow.

Of the 12 personnel who make up the Grounds Department, only Grounds Supervisor Luke Mudd and Daniel Robbins made it out of their driveways to begin the snow removal on campus 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. Mudd said other workers came in later in the day to help.

Mudd said that during a normal snow, such as a "3 to 4-incher," the grounds crew begins clearing the snow midway through the storm. It was evident early  Wednesday it would be a waste of man-power and supplies to begin before the storm passed. Mudd said it took him and Robbins an hour and a half to access the equipment in the shop.

"Because the snow was so deep and heavy, the brushes we use for light snows, they didn't even try to use at all, because it wouldn't have done any good," said Physical Plant Director Karl Schneider. Schneider said they started using a back hoe with a front-end loader, a tractor with a snow blade and a Bobcat from RSC Equipment Rental. Schneider said the snow did not accumulate much on the heated sidewalks positioned over the steam tunnels.

Those who came in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday worked approximately 12 or 13 hours per day, Schneider said. Some housekeepers and Residence Life staff members helped shovel a few building entrances by hand.

"[On Wednesday], the priority was to get people to have a path from the res halls to the Rec Center," Schneider said. "Once that was taken care of the next priority was to be able to have people to get access to at least some parking lots and buildings today (Thursday) when we were ready to open at 10:30 a.m."

Schneider said he expected most sidewalks and parking lots, with the exception of snow piled between individual cars, to be cleared and accessible by last Friday. He said it might take a week or two to reach bare pavement and clear the full width on the sidewalks.

Mudd said that now that most of the campus is cleared and open to traffic, they need to start hauling some of the snow off campus.

"You have to pile [the snow] up around dumpsters and stuff like that," Mudd said. "Well, we have to now go back and start clearing out around the dumpsters, hauling the snow off from around there as well as the recycling bins and things of that nature."

Schneider said he told the grounds crew generally to not respond to requests for digging stuck cars out, because the other work needed to be done.

"I kind of scratch my head … when I see some of these cars trying to get in and out," Mudd said.

Physical Plant faced yet another obstacle when a student reported a large amount of water running down Patterson Street at approximately midnight Thursday, Building Trades Supervisor Greg Brown said.

Tim Baker, assistant director of the Physical Plant, said the soil on campus has a very high clay content. A combination of water-saturated ground freezing and expanding, clay expanding and heavy snow piles weighed down on the 6-inch water main pipe. Finally, an approximate 4-foot section of the brittle cast-iron pipe, which was laid in the 1960s, cracked due to the excessive pressure. Baker said the break had nothing to do with the pipe freezing.

"As it freezes and expands it's just like the Jolly Green Giant stomping on it and the down-pressure on the main just crushed it," Baker said.

Several grounds personnel were at the scene early Friday morning to investigate what was causing the massive leaking, Baker said. They began shoveling the snow from where the water was coming from and found that it was spilling up through the sidewalk 60 feet south of where they later discovered the leak. The crew then used a back-hoe to tear up the pavement and dig around where the leak was located.

To isolate the leak, the water had to be turned off to Violette Hall, Dobson Hall, Missouri Hall and Pickler Memorial Library for fewer than three hours, Brown said. The old, rusted cast iron pipe was replaced by a PVC pipe by 3 p.m.

However, the crew hit a phone cable that services Blanton-Nason-Brewer Hall in the process of pulling up the concrete, Baker said. The cable, which did not effect phone service, was repaired by Winkler Communication Services. The path is now covered with gravel and new concrete won't be poured until warmer weather.

Baker said he estimates the whole incident will cost approximately $5,000. He said normally a plumbing incident like last week's occurs two to three times per year. A similar break occurred around the Student Recreation Center in January. The cast-iron plumbing around Patterson Street was replaced with PVC last summer. Physical Plant is planning a project this summer to add isolation valves to the water main, which would allow fewer building to lose water when a water main breaks.

"In this business you expect that in the winter time you're going to have water main breaks somewhere," Baker said. "Every municipality deals with them."