These are the unsung heroes who get up at 3 a.m. to get a jump on the snow. They are the people on duty 24/7 to get the roads and driveways clear so people can get in and out, so fire trucks or ambulances could move if needed.
When a storm of the magnitude that occurred this week happens, the plow people go to work and don’t quit until the job is done. When, as happened this week, the snow keeps falling, they don’t stop.
Word was received here this week that some grumpy residents had the temerity to grouse at their local town road crew members. That takes quite a nerve. These people plow and sand from October to April and spend the rest of the year paving, grading and working on the roads to keep them safe and drivable. They are the ones who are rousted from sleep to get cracking on the roads at the crack of doom. Giving them grief is just bad form.
And those drivers who run the giant state plow trucks on I-89 and the state highways need to be commended for attempting the Sisyphean task of trying to keep the roads open while slaloming around the cars and trucks off the road.
Praise is also due this week for firefighters and other emergency management people who monitored the flooding around The Valley on Sunday. These people don’t even get paid to do what they do. Thanks, too, to all those who helped shovel out and clean off the cars of their neighbors, the elderly, the infirm and those who were not tall enough to reach the tops of their snow-covered cars.
And just a word to climate change skeptics – one of the most significant characteristics of a changing global climate is an increase in huge, dramatic weather events, i.e., deluges or multi-day blizzards or extreme wind events, etc. It’s hard to look at last weekend’s Saturday/Sunday/Monday storm with its heavy rain, flooding and snowfall and remain too much of a skeptic.
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