From the archives: LI's snow fighters gird for battle

Joe Brown, the regional transportation engineer for the state Department of Transportation on Long Island, was out with the flu yesterday.

But it didn't matter. As the master strategist in charge of keeping Long Island's state highways clear, Brown was on call, so he dictated the last touches on the storm battle plan from his sickbed in Huntington.

By last night the DOT had everything ready to go:

15,000 tons of salt.

194 plow trucks.

And 400 workers sent home at the usual time - 4 p.m. - for a good night's sleep before the first flakes and sleet, which are expected to hit Suffolk County at around 10 a.m.

Brown said some forecasts had called for a foot or more of snow, "and we're prepared for that," he said.

The National Weather Service wasn't predicting that much for Long Island, but said 6 to 10 inches of snow was likely.

The storm will begin as a mixture of sleet and snow that turns to light snow by the afternoon, said Mike Silva of the National Weather Service in Upton.

Visibility may decrease through the night as winds increase to 20 to 30 mph. Snow will get significantly heavier by midnight, Silva said, before tapering off tomorrow morning.

Officials from Nassau and Suffolk public works departments say their trucks are cleaned up and ready to go. About 90 percent of Nassau County's 120 or so plow vehicles are in excellent shape for the storm, said Peter Gerbasi, the commissioner of public works. Suffolk County officials said they have 70 employees ready in county trucks, and about 200 contract plowers available to clear Suffolk's 1,500 miles of county roads.

Preparations began early across Long Island, thanks to a Friday forecast predicting weekend flurries that kicked off a chain reaction in state, county and town highway departments.

On Friday, workers in Brown's war room at the DOT's Hauppauge office alerted six sub-offices in Nassau and Suffolk on Friday to get their plows and crews ready. They swapped contact information with the Nassau County emergency operations center and state and county police. The snow didn't come, but DOT spreader crews were at the ready yesterday morning to salt state roadways just in case.

"We've been telling our forces today to expect to keep working through Wednesday," Brown said yesterday. "They've been preparing their equipment all day."

The ice already on roads means that DOT crews will be off and running about three hours before the storm, prepping highways with a brine mixture of salt pellets and water so that sleet and snow begins to melt as soon as it hits the ground. Although they will apply sand to hilly areas like Northern Boulevard if requested by the police, "we typically don't use sand on the highways," said Cary Leuschner, resident engineer for the DOT's Melville center.

Once the flakes are falling in earnest, DOT plows will charge down highways at 15 to 25 mph in a staggered line six trucks across, said Leuschner. The truck in front takes the far left lane, scooping snow to the right, where it is then shoveled out of the way by the next truck, and then the next truck. The agency will continue to track the storm through its traffic management center, which has cameras showing conditions on local roadways.

Other agencies will wait for the snow to fall. "We don't do anything until the snow starts to fly so the road gets wet," said Peter Gerbasi, Nassau County's commissioner of public works.

Dave Brown, deputy highway superintendent in the town of East Hampton, said a call from local police that it is snowing will be his cue. Then he starts punching in numbers from the town's "snow book" of plowers, both town employees and independent contractors. If the latter hope for a payday, they better be by the phone. "I don't call back, because I can't wait," Brown said.

"When we have snowstorms, why people turn their answering machines off is beyond me."

Some local officials said getting ready for the storm just switched pre-existing winter preparedness plans into higher gear.

In Suffolk County, supervisors made sure that all their equipment was up in the garages and that all personnel knew they could be on call, said Lorraine Hickey, director of highway maintenance and fleet service for the county.

In Hempstead, spokesman Mike Deery said much of the snow preparation work is done with the click of a mouse and of a remote control. Three town employees are designated as weather monitors, surfing weather Web sites, watching television forecasters and speaking on the phone with meteorologists at the National Weather Service. "What we always felt was the key to effectively combating a snowstorm is to stay ahead of it," Deery said.

Still, no amount of preparation could dodge the unexpected. Brookhaven Highway Superintendent John Rouse said his workers are still making repairs to plows that were damaged in recent storms and others that broke down because of a lack of proper maintenance over the warmer months last year.

What's more, Rouse said a key salt supplier has had problems with one of its barges, slowing down deliveries.

Hickey said Suffolk's salt supplies were also low, again because suppliers were having difficulty getting through to the barges that bring it up from South America to local ports. But with 5,500 tons in reserve, she said the county should have plenty to last until a weekend delivery.

Reports of a possible second storm have Smithtown's Highway Superintendent Ed Lynch worried about his salt and sand supplies.

Indications last night showed a cold Canadian air front heading this way, according to the National Weather Service. It could arrive in time for the weekend with scattered snow showers on Friday.

Lynch, who said he has also been having slowdowns from his suppliers, is "concerned about their ability to get material to us," he said. "I could use up three-quarters of my supply Tuesday into Wednesday and not have it replenished in time for Friday."

This winter, which so far has been harsher than he anticipated, has eaten up more of his $500,000 snow removal budget than expected, Lynch said.

For those on the front lines of snow removal, the best preparation is one money can't buy: a good night's sleep. Brown said the DOT workers will get four-hour sleep breaks.

Hickey said she is concerned that a second storm could exhaust Suffolk county workers tired from handling today's mess. "The issue for this week is pacing our employees," she said.

In Huntington, the 200 town plow operators have all been instructed to "go home and get as much sleep as they possibly can before they have to come to work," said Huntington Highway Superintendent William Naughton. "Because once they come in, they're here for a long time."