The Champaign County Sheriff Matthew Melvin was helping four drivers who ran off U.S. 68 because of nearly a foot of snow that had drifted onto the roadway near West Liberty-Salem High School.
“The sheriff actually saw one of the county trucks in the area and stopped him and asked if he could come treat a section on 68,” McCall said. “They had some issues and felt it needed to be treated right away.”
A training seminar was attended by 221 of the district’s 378 employees for at least part of Tuesday, ODOT District 7 spokeswoman Mandi Dillon said, but that program didn’t affect the number of crews available.
Dillon explained that the number of crews varies by the type of treatment that is needed that day, but said five ODOT crews were working the area of U.S. 68 on Tuesday.
Keeping the highways clear is the agency’s No. 1 priority, Dillon said, and that no services were compromised.
The five crews in the area had treated the stretch of road that day, she said, and strong winds caused the snow to pile on the road.
The winds Tuesday were causing problems on all of the north/south roads in the county, McCall said.
Dillon added that if it had continued to snow through Tuesday morning, the agency would have cancelled the training class and had “all hands on deck.”
Drivers who frequent the road said they had to take extra caution on the roads Tuesday.
“Yesterday they were pretty awful,” Josh Jordan, an Ohio Hi-Point Career Center student who said he drives U.S. 68 daily. “I was sliding and almost went off the road once.”
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