NEWS

Storm crews feel the love

By JOHN HOWELL
Posted 2/2/22

By JOHN HOWELL Kelly Stenmark knows what to expect when the phones start ringing during a snowstorm - a blizzard of complaints from "the plow pushed everything back in the driveway I just shoveled" to "you must have plowed my street with the plow up."

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NEWS

Storm crews feel the love

Posted

Kelly Stenmark knows what to expect when the phones start ringing during a snowstorm – a blizzard of complaints from “the plow pushed everything back in the driveway I just shoveled” to “you must have plowed my street with the plow up.” But it seemed early to be getting complaints Saturday morning. The snow was blowing horizontally, a white curtain obscuring the sanitation trucks parked just outside the highway garage. It was 10:30 a.m. and the blizzard that slammed the northeast was just getting started. What could a resident want of the highway division when all of its vehicles were out fighting the storm?

Stenmark, who at one time was the city’s only female sanitation truck driver and now operates highway dispatch, answered.

“Where? Was that Massasoit and Bigelow? And you think it is in the road?” The caller repeated his concern. He had spotted a wire hanging over the road. He had called National Grid and decided he should also alert the city.

“I don’t want you guys to catch it,” he told Stenmark.

Stenmark thanked the caller and immediately identified plow route 17. She passed along the information to driver Brian DeLuca.

The call was another example of how Warwick residents were on the lookout for those faced with keeping roads open for emergency vehicles at the height of the storm and then working through the night once the snow and winds subsided. It was a 48-hour shift for most crews.

In an expression of appreciation and concern for those faced with the heavy lifting, boxes of cookies, snack bars, donuts, party pizza, fruit and drinks from sodas to juices and bottled water were dropped off Friday afternoon and evening at the garage on Sandy Lane in response to a Facebook post by Mayor Frank Picozzi.

“I can tell you from experience that it is brutal and exhausting work,” Picozzi wrote. “They bring something to drink and eat with them but they can’t possibly bring enough to last them the entire time that they’ll be out.” He added that he thought few places would be open.

The mayor was right.

Coffee shops were closed, as were most establishments with the exception of a few gas stations. The mayor wondered why they were open given the governor’s ban on driving.

But there were plenty of snacks at the maintenance and highway garages. Jamie VanGyzen, director of automotive couldn’t remember anything like it. In the past, family and friends have stopped by with cookies and even a Crockpot of sausage and peppers as worker Steve Burns’ girlfriend did this time. But the supplies this time came from complete strangers.

A table in the maintenance garage break room was piled high with bags of chips, cookies and boxes of pastries. VanGyzen swung open the refrigerator door. It was packed with soda, Gatorade and juices.

Picozzi was amazed. He said the outpouring confirmed his belief in the generosity and goodness of Warwick residents.

Yet he saw another side to the storm, one that he could also relate to.

As he drove Sandy Lane at 20 mph, navigating by the utility poles on either side, Picozzi said he expected the complaints of plows tearing up lawns edging the road. He said that could be easily avoided if homeowners would use reflective markers.

“You can’t even see the road now,” he said. “Imagine what it’s like driving a snow plow and the wind blowing the snow back…this is white knuckle (driving).”

As if to emphasize the point, the car bumped and lurched to the side. We had glanced off a road divider near St. Kevin Church.

“Think if this was a plow. That would have been a jolt,” he said.

storm, snow

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