Throughout the storm, Chelsea’s Department of Public Works deployed 18 pieces of equipment and kept roadways passable as conditions improved Wednesday morning. DPW crews worked extended 50-hour shifts with minimal rest to manage the significant snowfall.
According to DPW Director Joe Foti, the unofficial snow total reached 29 inches. He expressed considerable satisfaction with his team’s performance during the historic blizzard and confirmed no major damages occurred.
On Wednesday morning, Foti assessed the situation: <"fblikebutton_button"> “Right now, the main roads are in great shape. The secondary roads are being salted today. They’re passable, but we’re hoping to salt them and have them down to the asphalt by Thursday…I just want to stress what a great job our guys did. None of them wanted to go home. I understand people will say the workers get paid for it, but this is blood money. This is hard work and they really have a passion for serving and helping out under tremendously difficult circumstances. For what we have and the size of our department, we did a tremendous job. There were guys who had been on the weekend and worked 50 hours straight on maybe four to eight hours sleep tops.” “fblikebutton_button”>
The DPW never retreated during the height of the storm. Foti explained his operational approach: > “We were strategic about how we attacked this storm since there was so much predicted in such a short time. I gave guys breaks in shifts so every single route we had was continuously plowed for the entire duration of the storm. If you pull back an hour, it costs you four hours of makeup time. Some of our big trucks got stuck and we had to use our front-end loader to free them up as it was. We couldn’t afford to have that happen more often.” >
In addition to internal resources, the City contracted four outside crews to work 30-hour shifts. Foti credited municipal leadership for prioritizing equipment investment. He remarked: > “Our equipment was able to hold up through the whole storm. I credit a lot of that with Jay Ash, Ned Keefe and the City Council for making sure they invested in the inventory of vehicles we have to make sure we were prepared.” >
Enforcement actions commence Thursday. Property owners must complete sidewalk clearing and remove space savers by that date. Foti stated: > “Property owners are required to shovel their sidewalks and sidewalks abutting their properties and that needs to be done by Thursday. We’ll be writing violations starting Thursday.” >
No flooding incidents, significant injuries, or major accidents were reported during the storm.