OK, we got another traffic alert, by the way.
Now, this is the ramp from I-84 westbound
to I5 that's near the Moda Center.
It's closed due to slick conditions.
P, bot, plow and salt trucks are
really trying to keep up everywhere.
It's gonna be a busy night
no matter where you are. And
you can see here PBOT spokesman Dylan
Rivera joining us on zoom tonight.
Dylan, what a night.
So many trouble spots.
We saw Burnside earlier.
We've been talking about some other ones.
What are the big trouble
spots you're seeing?
Everywhere right now you know
West Hills East Portland east of
205 got the the most accumulation
from what we saw this afternoon.
But this is a dynamic situation that's
going to keep changing all night and
we're you know having we didn't this
is not the storm we prepared for.
This is not the storm we prepared
the public for and So what you see
all those folks stuck on those
roads that is not a good situation
that is very uncomfortable.
Situation for all of them.
And this is what we try to prevent
through our preparedness of
ourselves as an organization and our
community so everyone can prepare.
But this is not the storm we
were advised to get ready for.
Dylan, just reading between the lines here,
how are you mobilizing resources?
Are you finding that you're having to
pull people in earlier than you thought?
How is that going in terms of
maybe the number of plows and the
salting and the deicing efforts
now that this is much worse?
I mean and and and Matt Sofianos
words our chief meteorologist here,
he says the storm is over achieving.
So what are you doing now?
Overachieving, that's uh, one word.
Yeah. So, uh, we are hoping to double
the number of plows on the street by
midnight and that means, unfortunately,
you're getting our staff through some of
the traffic that you're seeing there.
So there's many layers of
challenges that we face in,
in getting more plows and more salt on
the roads to to cope with this, you know.
This is just far earlier and far more snow,
more widespread than anyone predicted.
And we heard you
talked earlier in the year about
staffing problems and not having
enough snow plow drivers to for
this winter for these conditions.
Is that a problem tonight,
not having enough staff?
That that was not Peabody.
That was not PBOT.
We have always had enough staff
for winter weather response.
Other organizations have
have said different things.
Pbot has had enough staff.
We've been training for this
sort of thing since October.
We were told to get ready for a dusting of
snow at 500 feet or above before dawn today.
We handled that well.
We were told this morning, oh,
get ready to do that again Thursday morning.
No one said two to three inches citywide.
At the Valley floor,
downtown Portland.
3 hours before rush hour,
no one came anywhere close to that.
So this is a dramatically
different event than we had
been advised to prepare for.
And I think the public had
not been advised to prepare
for this type of event.
I think
this storm's been pretty hard to
predict and I know Matt will be
talking about that a little bit later.
Dylan, you know, salt is always,
you know, big topic when we have snow,
how many salt trucks will be out there?
Where will you have crews spreading the salt?
We'll have our salt crews, uh,
on every route and we will be
deploying them as as soon as possible.
We've been been as proactive as
we could be given the forecast
that we were told to plan for and
we'll have all our salt routes,
you know, treated and we'll have
a full complement of folks before
dawn tomorrow working those routes.
And 82nd Ave.
was a new route for us that'll
be treated as well.
So you know we're going to throw
everything we've got at this but.
This came at a different time
and far different magnitude
than anyone was expecting.
And so that's unfortunately the why
you see so much so many people stuck
out there right now and and everything
we're going to be working through
followed up tomorrow by a freeze.
So that's not going to help us at all.
But when when we get our our plows
and our salt trucks out there.
More completely on our routes than you'll
see that material start to diminish.
We'll get that,
you know,
inch that thin layer of of material
down on those plow routes and then
you'll see our plows and you'll
see traffic then breaking that
up and that'll make the streets
passable as soon as possible,
hopefully,
and keep public transit going so folks
don't have to get behind the wheel.
Folks can rely on public transit.
And so police and firefighters can
get where they need to go and that's.
That's our mission in winter weather.
Alright, Dylan Rivera with bot there.
We appreciate your time.