With this snowstorm, VDOT tells us they’re at a high mobilization level two

VDOT tells us they were monitoring the snow all day Tuesday, and that it did not move into the region as soon as they anticipated. 

When we spoke with Prince William County Residency Administrator Steven Shannon about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, he told us he had multiple trucks on standby, ready to load salt and go.

He also walked us through the road pre-treatment process in this exclusive interview: 

There’s five levels of mobilization. One through five, with five being the highest, and that’s usually when we go into a state of emergency when governor calls state of emergency.

And then in Prince William, I could have as many as 800 trucks out. I think 892 total and that includes heavy equipment such as loaders backhoes.

Right now we’re in a mobilization level to what we call a mid to high level two.

In Prince William alone, I have, I think about 240 to 260 trucks. Again most are on the larger, high-volume secondaries and the primary roads. We already have them prestaged.

Here in the yard, we and see a lot of trucks here that a lot of them are subdivision fleets that we don’t we don’t even load them unless we’re going to need them. So they’re all on standby.

We pretreat the roads with brine which is 23 percent salt 77 percent water. And we apply the brine…anti-icing as we call it…. it kind of keeps the snow from bonding to the pavement, and it makes it easier for us to plow or push it.

And in art are typical treatments are on again on the high volume secondary and the Primary routes is salt. In the subdivisions,  we use sand. We may use a sand salt mix depending on the type of storm coming in. But we try not to put the salt into the subdivisions unless we just absolutely have to.

If you don’t have to be outdrive and don’t stay home. Let us do our job come up on our trucks and meet and set about 90 percent of our trucks that you see out on the roads or contract. They’re our contractors, but they’re representing VDT. They work for us. So if you come up on them keep the distance…100 feet. Most of trucks have signs. Allow them room to do their job.

I mean, after all, it’s all about safety and for us to treat the roads and be able to keep them in the best shape we possibly can.”