Pocatello taking precautions for safer streets

The past few days we’ve had plenty of rain and snow, making the roads tough to drive on. However, the city of Pocatello was prepared.

The city’s Public Works Department cleared 602 storm drains earlier this week to help prevent any flooding to the area. Snow came last night, however, they were prepared for that too.

City roads are clear for the most part, thanks to their groundwork. Tom Kirkman, Deputy Public Works Director says, “We did a lot of preventative work by opening the drains up. That seemed to help us quite a bit.”

Today, crews were out at 4 a.m., plowing roads and spraying a salt aggregate, all to make sure the roads are safe for the morning commute.

“When we saw this storm come in last night, it was kind of a triple threat type deal. We saw the roads really wet from the rain we got, the snow was pretty most. And then we got really intense winds there for a while… Today we were plowing some of the drifting and we’re applying sand and salt mixture and we’ll mix that two to one or four to one depending on the conditions.”

The salt aggregate gives traction on the roads while also melting the ice. However, the process of getting the right mixture is the other half of the battle. Salt and sand are imported in and is then mixed into a two to one, and to salt, ratio. All to get a perfect solution the crews to put on roads.

Today alone, they imported over 22 tons of salt into Pocatello, all being used to clear the city streets for the next incoming storm.