Preparing For The Worst

City of Tulsa and state crews are already hard at work on area roads. <br/><br/>News on 6 anchor Scott Thompson says many Oklahoma Department of Transportation road crews spent the day sleeping. They

Wednesday, November 29th 2006, 10:25 am

By: News On 6

City of Tulsa and state crews are already hard at work on area roads.

News on 6 anchor Scott Thompson says many Oklahoma Department of Transportation road crews spent the day sleeping. They say that's the best way for them to be ready when the worst hits.

On days like this, road crews count their blessings, by the tons. ODOTâ€™s Cole Perryman: â€œwe have approximately 2,000 tons of salt mix, and we have approximately 2,000 tons of sand ready to go, and plenty more thousands of tons on order if we need it."

ODOT crews are resting up, in case these roads go from rain-slick to snow-packed. As a rule, state and city teams prepare for the worst. Tulsaâ€™s street maintenance manager Dan Crossland: "the main thing is we need to have everything in place and ready to go before it happens we always want to be in front of the storm."

That's why the city spent the day loading up salt spreaders. Crossland says there's no single recipe for success for every storm. Crews have to cook up a different combination, depending on what the elements throw at them. "How much is it going to snow? Is it going to come in ice first? Is it going to come in rain first? Those are all things that have to be taken into consideration about how we're going to respond."

In this year's situation, putting a "pre-treater" on the roads wouldn't do any good. The rains that rolled through before the storm would have washed away any chemicals, sending the extra materials, manpower, and money down the drain.

For this storm, they're using pure salt with extra sand on stand-by. They also have plows on the ready, in case things start to pile up.

ODOT has 20 trucks ready to go in the metro area, and more in surrounding counties. The city has 50 salt spreaders loaded up to tackle Tulsa city streets.