Although the Blizzard of '96 has come and gone and Durham skies have cleared since Thursday evening's freezing rain, the campus remained frozen under a bed of ice and snow until temperatures finally rose during the weekend. Treacherous stairway and walkway conditions have made runs to the Lobby Shop ordeals of considerable risk.
"It's just impossible to get around," said Trinity senior Kathy Mills, who lives in Wannamaker II. "There's no reasonably easy way for me to walk from my dorm to the main quad without ice skates and ski poles."
Despite long-standing patches of ice around campus, Joe Pietrantoni, associate vice president for auxiliary services, said that grounds crews "were going day and night all last week" to clear pathways, steps, roads and parking lots. After Thursday night's freezing rain, however, University resources were concentrated Friday on clearing Campus Drive, Pietrantoni added.
"Obviously, Friday set us back," he said. "I asked [grounds and facilities officers] to concentrate on Campus Drive to make sure we could have East-West buses running as early as seven o'clock Friday morning. From there, the concentration moves to the sidewalks, but a very strong concentration was on the roads Friday."
In addition, some sidewalks and pathways are prioritized over others, Pietrantoni said. Medical Center walkways, for example, are of particular concern.
The University does have a snow contingency plan, said Joseph Jackson, assistant director of grounds, sanitation and recycling. Medical Center access is the first priority under the plan. After that, other primary roads are attended to, followed by secondary roads and access to administrative, academic and residential facilities, in that order.
University grounds crews and maintenance workers put in "quite a bit of overtime" during the past week, Jackson added. Sand and ice-melt were used to lessen the icy conditions on East and West campuses, Jackson said, but added that "it was a pretty hard situation to control with the variety and intensity of precipitation and cold temperatures we experienced. We did the best we could." He added that his office was on call with Public Safety in case any immediately hazardous situations arose.
Grounds workers will continue to chip away at icy walkway conditions through this week, Jackson said, although workers will no longer be putting in overtime to do so.
Campus streets are in relatively good condition, although some Central Campus roads are still too icy for buses to travel on them. Since the start of classes, buses have avoided Alexander Avenue, which David Majestic, director of transportation services, called "a one-lane, tight situation," as well as Yearby Avenue, which is still covered with ice.
The alternate bus route through Central takes buses up Anderson Street to Erwin Road, then down Flowers Drive to the West Campus traffic circle. Majestic said there are no definite plans yet to resume full bus service through Central.
"We will examine [road conditions on Central] again [Monday] morning at 7:15," he said. Notices of any bus service changes will be posted around Central Campus.
The responsibility of clearing Central Campus roads lies with the city of Durham. Despite the inconveniences caused by Central Campus road conditions, Majestic said he believes Durham has done a good job of clearing the streets.
"Given their limited resources, I believe they have done as good a job as they could be expected to do," he said, adding that Central Campus streets such as Alexander are secondary roads and therefore not a priority for the city.
Michael Scott, apartment operations manager for Central Campus, said that "the city's attitude is that lightly-traveled areas shouldn't necessarily be plowed because you could make it worse if you don't have a steady flow of traffic to prevent snow from freezing into ice."
Because students had not returned to campus when the blizzard began, traffic on Central was less than usual. Therefore, city workers avoided plowing Alexander until Thursday morning, Scott said.
To clear Central's parking lots, steps and walkways, Central Campus' grounds and maintenance crews, as well as contractors hired to handle heavier equipment, worked from last Sunday until Friday evening, Scott said, when warmer weather took over the thawing process.
"We didn't attempt to clear every piece of sidewalk [on Central]," Scott said, "but we got all the main thoroughfares by Friday afternoon."
In addition, Central residents have helped out considerably by using the shovels and de-icers provided by Scott's office to clear the steps leading up to their individual apartments.
Although no fliers were posted on Central to alert students of this service, Scott said that the Central Campus residential handbook contains information about borrowing shovels.
Through the handbook and word-of-mouth, many students learned of these services. "We send a shovel out with one student and eventually the shovel gets back to us," Scott said. "It seems that people are passing them around a lot."
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