City Of Tulsa Crews Make Roadside Repairs After Snow Storm

Emory Bryan, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma -- First it was the cleanup of the snow. Now, City of Tulsa crews are cleaning up the roadside damage left after the storm.

There's everything from knocked over road signs to churned up concrete.

Bill Smith and Mike Copeland have a big job ahead of them. They are one of the crews making repairs to all the road signs which were damaged during the snow storm.

"Stops, yields, stuff that's out in the road, we take care of that first, one ways," Smith said.

They've already replaced all the stop signs they know about and now are moving to the lower priority signs. Some were just flattened; some disappeared when they were either hit by cars or snow plows.

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"There's a significant number of things that were damaged, signs, medians, mailboxes, sod, etc and right now, our emphasis is on removing any kind of hazard in the roadway," Paul Strizek, with the City of Tulsa, said.

On several streets, the plows peeled up sod and left bare dirt. Sometimes the plows knocked out chunks of the curb. In some cases, huge pieces of concrete were knocked loose.

If they're out of the way, the city won't try to make repairs until they've made more progress on potholes.

Strizek says in deep snow it's hard to get to the curb without ever hitting it.

"We couldn't even tell where the curb was, let alone the side of the curb or the top of the curb, it's just feeling your way over there and sometimes the blade just rode up on top," he said.

The sign crews know there's lots of work all over the city and they were behind on the routine repairs before the snow started. Now they're hoping to catch up and asking for the help of the public in spotting the problems.

"Please call them in; we need to know where they're at," Smith said.

And the way to do that is through calling the Mayor's action Line at 596-2100.