Snowstorm creates problems

In the 24 years Dave Magida has worked as Norwich's chief administration officer, the snowstorm Northfield was hit with at the end of February was one of the worst he has seen.

"It was brutal," Magida said. "It was definitely one of the more difficult storms we've had."

The 25 inches of snow that covered campus made it extremely difficult for facility operations to follow its standard snow-removal procedures, causing problems with parking and keeping roads and walkways clear, according to Magida.

"The problem was (the snow) was very heavy and very wet," Magida said. "That made it extremely tough on the crew and the equipment."

"Our equipment handled nice fluffy snow, but when it gets real heavy like that, we only have one bucket loader that handles the snow well," said Hollis Ricker, who has been the supervisor of grounds, transportation and vehicle maintenance at Norwich for more than 40 years.

Even off campus, students had trouble shoveling cars out of driveways to get to class.
"The snow was heavy and it came down so quickly and in a short amount of time," said

Ryan Robertson, a 22-year-old sophomore communications major from Northfield, Vt.
"It was difficult to just get out of my house, let alone get to class in the morning," Robertson said.

"I personally didn't know that the storm was going to be as big as predicted," said Sam Weiner, a 19-year-old sophomore criminal justice major from Haverhill, Mass. "As the storm started, I began to realize what we were in for."

The crew that handles snow removal also had to deal with other problems on campus during the storm.

"On top of (the snow), we had repeated power outages on part of the campus. The staff had to deal with that at the same time," Magida said. "It was a difficult couple of days."

According to Magida, the snow removal crew grew from the typical dozen workers to about 60.

"We pulled people from all over facilities to do snow removal that day because the storm was so big," Magida said.
Workers were on campus clearing snow around the clock according to Magida.

"It's always a struggle to do the snow, and we work hard at keeping the main campus part where the students travel," Ricker said. "Those are our focal points. Then we go to the outlying areas, the stairs and getting people to meals and classes."

"The snow storm was pretty bad and pretty unexpected," said Johnny Giorgis, a 19-year-old electrical and computer engineering major from Waterloo, Belgium. "I slipped several times and it was pretty bad going to class at times."

According to Magida, there is a snow removal process in which certain areas of campus have a higher priority than others.

"The priorities for snow removal are all pretty logical when you think about them," Magida said. "First and foremost we want to take care of all the safety roads and the fire roads. They have to be kept clear. We want to make sure that if an ambulance or fire engine has to get up onto campus, they can."

Next is making sure pedestrian walkways and sidewalks are clear so students can get to meals and classes, and third is taking care of faculty parking lots so faculty can be present to service students, according to Magida.

"Facility operations did a decent job, as they did clear the roads for the most part," Giorgis said. "It could have been more consistent, but I'm sure they were working to the best of their abilities."

"One of the last areas that are handled is the student parking lots," Magida said. "We go through and keep the lane that's open clear, and that's a continuous process."

"It's the snow removal for the entire parking lot that requires us to move the students to some other place so we can go in and clear then lot then put the students back," Magida said.

"Parking is like it always is," Ricker said. "We try our best to keep it so the kids can get in and out and not bury their cars too deeply. But it's so narrow that it's hard to remove the snow out of there."

Complete parking lot snow removal requires all the cars to be moved to a different location. Students were notified by e-mail to move their cars to Disney Field.

According to Magida, moving cars from the parking lots to Disney was a process in itself.

"We've got almost 1,400 cars, there's a couple thousand people trying to get around," Magida said.

"A lot of problems we have are the students come to the university with summer or all-season tires," Ricker said. "It makes it much more difficult to more around on campus."

Some students had trouble getting out of the parking lots and driving around campus.

"We had the facilities crew with equipment there helping the students," Magida said. "I also want to compliment a couple dozen students that helped us help other students. It was wonderful."

"I was amazed that up in the South Hall parking lot, there were a lot of groups of people helping each other," said Brent Gardner, a 21-year-old junior architecture major from Littleton, N.H.

"I went to go shovel out and move my car and six other people I barely knew helped me dig my car out," Gardner said. "Then I joined in and helped them dig a few people out afterward."

This particular storm made the parking situation extremely difficult because there was rain on top of the snow, creating a "mud bog" at Disney Field, according to Magida.

"We got a lot of rain on top of snow," Magida said. "I don't recall that kind of combination happening. That's very unusual."

"Underneath the snow, the ground (wasn't frozen)," Ricker said. "The traffic in and out of it in the soft, soggy weather (created the mud)."

"I wish there could have been some other means of doing it," Magida said.

Some vehicles were either stuck in the snow, or stuck in the mud. Facilities towed 16 vehicles at no charge so snow removal could be completed, according to Magida.

"I think it's important for people to keep in perspective how difficult this storm was,"

Magida said. "In northern New England, we had thousands of schools and businesses that were closed or opened late."

Robertson has worked for facility operations in the past.

"I know how hard it is to come in at 5 a.m. and try and keep up with the snow," Robertson said. "They did a good job trying to keep up with it."

"We didn't cancel anything and we didn't delay anything. The crew did a exemplary job under the exhausting conditions," Magida said. "The university was still running, and I'm very proud of that."