James Tomberg was trapped inside his house on Friday, January 12, five days after the Blizzard of '96 hit the Triangle. An instructor in Duke's math department, Tomberg was forced to cancel two of his classes scheduled for the day, a direct result of the incompetency of area officials, who tried, in vain, to deal with one of the toughest storms to hit the region in recent memory.
Due to a vicious combination of ice and snow, Tomberg, much like many other Triangle area residents, was unable to drive in his neighborhood. "The conditions were just awful. I could barely walk on all of the ice and the roads were extremely treacherous for days after the storm," he says.
Many Triangle residents, as well as University students, were dismayed by the inept handling of the blizzard. Uncleared roads, closed schools, and dangerous conditions signal that a little snow, a lot of ice, and a lack of equipment and preparation are a recipe for disaster for Duke and the Triangle area.
Residents were concerned by the fact that Triangle-area officials acted so inefficiently in providing for their safety and convenience. "I was really surprised that the major streets around campus were either only partially clear or not scraped at all. It took forever for officials to clean off even main roads like Erwin and Cameron," Tomberg complains.
Yes, the Blizzard of '96 was the worst storm to hit the Triangle in seven years--for several days, North Carolina residents were stranded in their homes because of impassable side streets and iced-over main roads. But while authorities maintain that they did the best they could with their limited resources, a fundamental question remains: Why weren't they better equipped to deal with the situation?
The truth is that the Triangle did not adequately prepare for, or promptly respond to, the blizzard. Despite the fact that Durham includes 694 miles of road, the city only has 23 plows, three scrapers, and 18 sand spreaders. Raleigh allots a meager $168,000 budget for snow removal, $150,000 of which was consumed within the first week of treacherous conditions. The actions of Triangle officials in dealing with the Blizzard of '96 are the equivalent of caring for a severed artery with a band-aid. While it is foolish to expect North Carolina cities to allocate exorbitant sums of money to deal with problems that arise only sporadically, they should maintain a "slush-fund"--no pun intended--to handle such crises. Triangle residents pay enough tax money to expect that they will not be stranded in their homes for a week, or otherwise be forced to confront unsafe conditions.
"This is probably the worst cleanup I've ever seen in my life," says Saul Schiffman, a Triangle resident who could not get to work because of icy roads. "They know how to do nothing here. This is the most dangerous situation I've ever seen. It's deplorable."
Since an overwhelming blizzard in 1987, Raleigh has hired private firms to help clear roads. This initiative is admirable and must be followed by other Triangle cities in order to provide for the safety and convenience of the citizens. When one considers that the majority of roads in Raleigh were cleared three days before the main roads in Durham, it is quite clear that Durham must make greater efforts to deal with wintry conditions than it has so far.
According to Alex Jones, street superintendent of Durham's engineering department, the Bull City chose not to hire private contractors because they felt they could handle the situation without help. "We don't allocate money for snow because we very rarely get weather like this," Jones says.
Even when main thoroughfares were cleared, icy back roads kept many of the Triangle's public schools closed for more than a week after the blizzard. Despite city officials' assertions to the contrary, closed schools, accidents, and extremely dangerous conditions indicate that Durham was, in fact, unable to manage the ice and snow without help and should have followed Raleigh's example.
As a private institution, Duke's record of coping with the Blizzard of '96 is not much brighter. As students moved back into their dorms from winter vacation and semesters spent abroad, the University was sorely negligent in its snow-clearing efforts. Not only were the overall efforts lacking, but the meager attempts were misdirected.
Considering that classes had not yet started when students began returning to campus, the University's plan to provide access to administrative and academic facilities before clearing residential areas was ludicrous. Several students were admitted to Pickens Health Center for injuries caused by falls on the ice, including broken bones, bruises and twisted joints.
The Grounds & Sanitation Department, as well as Public Safety, assert that they handled the storm as well as could have been expected, considering that such conditions are rare. "Our calculated gamble was that it would all melt before the students returned," says Lew Wardell, assistant director of Public Safety. "There were some decisions made on how to deal with the conditions which, in retrospect, we would have rethought."
Is he kidding? A calculated gamble with the safety of at least the 6,000 undergraduates, if not the many thousand employees, faculty and others whose paths were not even close to clear at the start of the semester is nothing short of irresponsible. The University has 15 miles of street and 40 miles of walkways, not including Central Campus. Despite this large area, the University does not own a single snowplow and ran out of sand and salt before they were able to adequately clear the campus. Although the University asserts that about 35 employees worked daily to clear University thoroughfares, administrators should have hired more people to shovel walkways when the snow first began, instead of sitting back and hoping that conditions would improve on their own.
"There is no University group that budgets resources to deal with snow and ice because it's usually completely unnecessary. Everyone just has to cope with it," Wardell says. "It's a foolish waste of resources for equipment to sit there unused for five years at a time," he added.
Indeed, it would be a waste to have 20 fully functional snowplows sitting unused year after year. But running out of sand and salt, and leaving many walkways uncleared for a week and a half is not a legitimate result of frugality. It does not seem wasteful to have one or two plows on hand in case of crisis situations. They are not inexpensive, but they come a lot cheaper than a lawsuit as a result of a student or faculty member breaking his or her neck slipping on the ice.
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