10 ways staff kept Carolina safe during the storm
From spreading salt to plowing roads, campus teams work around the clock when adverse winter weather hits.
While many of us make plans to hunker down the second we see that snowflake hit our weather apps, hundreds of employees at UNC-Chapel Hill charged with making sure campus is as safe as possible begin to ramp up operations.
Case in point: the most recent winter storm that blanketed Chapel Hill the weekend of Jan. 24. Teams including grounds, building services, housekeeping, energy services, dining services, transportation and parking and emergency management always have plans in place for adverse weather. But the magnitude of possible ice and power outages required additional supplies and an extra lift by staff ready to jump into action.
Here are 10 things to know about how teams at Carolina prepare campus and keep things running when winter weather rolls in:
1. Snowplow prep begins in October. That’s when the grounds team hooks up the plows, makes sure everything is working properly and makes repairs as needed. Every fall the team holds its Snow Roadeo, an event to train team members on all equipment to ensure they’re prepared ahead of the first winter storm.
2. As soon as snow is mentioned in forecasts, teams begin to coordinate. Some plowing and pretreating plans are permanently in place no matter what, with the highest priorities being areas like UNC Hospitals, dining halls and residence hall entrances.
3. As the potential weather system nears, emergency management receives the most up-to-date and accurate information from the National Weather Service. The team uses that information to help inform communications with facilities, UNC Police, transportation and parking and others, as well as local jurisdictions and UNC Hospitals, and plan next steps.
4. About 48 hours out from a storm’s arrival, teams confirm a course of action. According to Steve Gooch, grounds services director, if it’s not a plowable snow, or more of an ice issue, the team hooks up salt and sand spreaders on trucks to pretreat roads and treat primary walkways and entrances. For a severe event, they apply a bagged deicer at every building’s primary entrance and all ramps.
5. The grounds team can store 50 tons of salt and make 600 gallons of brine at a time to pretreat the roads if needed. For this most recent winter storm, facilities secured approximately 650 extra bags of salt.
Photos: Students enjoy snowy day on campus
6. Grounds has eight plow trucks and four salt and sand spreaders that can be put on trucks. They also have three brine tanks to apply brine on the roads.
7. While pretreating is taking place, teams confirm staffing, including backups in case someone can’t make it in, and secure hotel rooms if needed, depending on the event. Last weekend, several employees stayed in nearby hotels to ensure dining halls remained open, roads and sidewalks were treated and energy services was at the ready to help keep the power on.
8. While most of us are asleep, the facilities team is hard at work. The best time to plow campus roads, according to Gooch, is overnight — that’s when roads are the least crowded. During a winter weather event, grounds, housekeeping and building services will often survey campus at 6 a.m. for slick or dangerous spots that need to be treated after the low overnight temperatures.
9. Transportation and parking handles plowing of all parking decks on campus. For parking lots, grounds will plow the main drive areas, but as Gooch notes, “Buses are vitally important. Even if we’re not doing all parking lots, bus loops at the park and rides will always be plowed.”
10. Leading up to and during the weather event, emergency management coordinates a consensus from departments across campus and various emergency support functions and presents that to the chancellor and his policy group to help in their decision-making regarding a change in condition on campus and operations status. Any change in condition and updates throughout the weather event are communicated to campus via Alert Carolina.
Next time you see snow in the forecast, know that many employees at Carolina are already hard at work to keep the community safe.
“I try to tell people — my employees — their kids don’t go to school on a snow day. They have trees that fall across their driveways. They lose their power. We deal with the same things that everybody else does,” Gooch said. “But we do our best to show up. It’s part of the job.”
(Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
