Village, town, city, county and state crews spent a good
part of Monday prepping for today’s
major storm. Above, a
Middletown truck is loaded with salt and sand.
HUDSON VALLEY/CATSKILLS – By the time this storm is over, we can expect some two feet of snow. Everything is at a standstill with schools, local governments and businesses closed.
Governor Cuomo declared a storm emergency meaning only necessary travel is permitted on the roads.
Ulster County Executive Michael Hein summed up the sentiment of public officials across the region.
“It’s about cleaning the streets,” Hein said. “There is no question that it is going to be an overwhelming task with an enormous amount of snowfall anticipated,” he said, urging everyone to stay at home and off the roads. “Our focus is going to make sure that we move through this safely.”
In Middletown, the city has 4,000 tons of salt stored. DPW Commissioner Jacob Tawil said they want to keep their salt barn filled to the top.
“Whenever we lose even 100 tons, we replace it right away because we have limited storage and we stay on top of it,” he said. “Many times in the past years we had salt shortages and we panicked because nobody would have it.”
The utility companies – Central Hudson, Orange and Rockland, and
NYSEG – are all geared up to handle the storm and any problems that
come with it. They all have additional crews on standby to restore power
outages as quickly as they come.
Frontier Communications has prepared in the event that the storm brings down utility poles and knocks out its communications services.
