In my time at MIT I've seen the
amount of snow in inches that
we've got so far this year, but
never so close together and I
don't think I've ever seen this
much accumulated on campus at
one time. This is more.
The snowbanks are much higher
than I've ever seen.
As you know in late January we
had a storm that dropped
26 inches on the campus and that
was the first time that I can
really remember that we didn't
have the campus really ready for
people to be here. I would say
99 percent of the time the
campus itself is always passable
and "parkable" to make up
a word; we work very hard to
get that done, but we were
having trouble keeping up with
the amount of snow that was
coming down and the speed at
which it was falling.
We've had 19 snow events.
The first one taking place on
January 3 which dropped
1.4 inches on the campus. Since
then we have had 18 events with
a total of 96.2 inches of snow.
We have used 8217 hours of labor.
We have a total of 24 pieces of
snow-removal equipment that we
use on each storm. That includes
nine skid loaders, 2 Kubota
utility vehicles, two bombardiers,
four loader backhoes and seven
plow trucks. We have 22 people
who are permanent employees of
Grounds Services. That is
certainly not enough people to
shovel and/or plow the snow.
Since ten of our people are
actually running plowing equipment
that leaves us with twelve
people to shovel and that would
certainly not be enough to handle
this entire campus. So we have
what we call "supplemental staff"
who are Facilities employees with
Custodial Services, Repair and
Maintenance from the Housing
Department. We've been hauling
snow off campus almost nightly
for the last two-and-a-half to
three weeks. We had what we call
a "snow farm" over on Albany
Street and we filled that up.
In fact we had a excavator over
in there that piled the snow as
high as possible and I believe
the mound is probably about
60 feet right now. We have
another area to pile the snow.
It's kind of a small area so the
contractor that hauls off campus
uses dump trailers and its very
hard for them to get to that
area so they are hauling snow
off campus.
We have a lot of tired people.
But their morale is great.
I think if they heard today that
we were going to get ten inches
of snow tomorrow they'd all be
ready to go out there and take
on the challenge. I really love
snow removal. I love the job and
I think the reason I love it is
because you can actually see
what you've accomplished and you
feel so much like you've provided
a great service to the campus.
And I couldn't do that without
the fantastic staff that we have
here on Grounds and those that
volunteer from Repair and
Maintenance, the Housing
Department and Custodial Services.
They've all just been fantastic,
they've worked a lot of hours and
I just can't say enough about them.