Damage done Damage done: The costs and crashes during Frederick’s long winter

April 14--It took Roy Taylor a while to realize his mailboxes were missing.

It was a few days after 14 inches of snow had fallen in February, he said, and the area near his business, Dairy Queen of Riverside, had just been plowed.

A city snowplow must have taken the mailboxes out, he said.

Taylor dug around in a snowbank and pulled out one of the mailboxes. He found the other one a few days later, in another snow pile about 10 yards away. Mail was scattered across the bank.

The plowing, salting, slipping and sliding during Frederick's long winter left business owners, residents and governments with some extra expenses, and with a lot of cleaning up to do.

Frederick received more than a dusting of snow on 15 days from December through March, for a total of 55 inches.

Frederick County and the city of Frederick received 28 reports from employees and 13 claims from residents related to property damage or injuries because of snow or ice this winter, according to data provided by the governments through Maryland Public Information Act requests. This includes Taylor's claim and others related to property damage from crashes by snowplow drivers, city trees that fell on others' property, and worker's compensation claims or other injury reports.

Employees were brought in at all hours of the day and night to clear emergency routes, streets and sidewalks. During their long overtime shifts, they backed into a garage, a Head Start bus and a police cruiser, hit parked and moving vehicles, and slid into poles and curbs, the reports show.

Accidents will happen, Mayor Randy McClement said, especially when storms are as relentless as they were this winter.

The back-to-back nature of the storms made for unusual work shifts. An employee could work a normal day job, then be called in at night to plow, McClement said.

The storms "were just topsy-turvy for their internal systems," he said.

The longer employees were out there, the more tired they'd get, and the more the chance of a crash increased, McClement said.

Training and teamwork

With the higher-than-average number of storms this winter, Dan Patton, the city's safety and loss control manager, said he expected claims to increase significantly.

But they didn't, he said.

Drivers are trained in the summer during what the city and county refer to as a "snowplow rodeo."

It's good training, but not quite the same as doing the work during a real weather event, McClement said.

The storms wore on the employees, said Jim Twigg, a plow shift coordinator for the city.

This isn't their day job. The city pulls any employee with a commercial driver's license or who passes a plow-driving test to help out during the storms, Twigg said.

The city has 45 employees with commercial licenses and about 80 others who have passed a test to drive regular trucks, he said.

While the attitudes of employees are always pretty good, by March, the work was getting old, Twigg said.

"They were ready for winter to end."

To get through it all, the employees banded together, Twigg said.

"You hear them on the radio, 'I'm done in area 12, does anybody need a hand?'" Twigg said. "All the sudden, you hear these guys helping each other ... it's a team effort."

Paying for stormsFrederick County spent $2.5 million more than its original budget of about $960,000, a total of $3.4 million, for overtime for emergencies, de-icing materials and contracted snow removal equipment, said Bill Routzahn, Frederick County Highway Operations superintendent. That doesn't include about $159,000 paid to county employees who plowed during the storms.

The city of Frederick will spend at least $145,000 more than its budget of about $565,000, for a total cost of about $710,000 to $933,000, depending on how many of the city's outstanding purchase orders are actually needed, said Katie Barkdoll, the city's budget director.

Mayor Randy McClement already moved $141,000 into the budget for de-icing chemicals once he realized the city was running low, Barkdoll said.

In addition to the snow budget, she said, the cost for paying employees who switched jobs to plow and de-ice streets totaled about $243,000.

The mayor and board won't have to worry about finding revenue to make up for the shortfall, as the city will shuffle money around, Barkdoll said.

"In a case where we have a bad winter, it is not unusual" to move funds, she said.

The city will not repay Taylor for his damaged mailboxes, he said, because of a rule he doesn't think is very fair.

"It's kind of like when the tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, it didn't happen," he said. "That is the policy. If you didn't see it happen, it didn't happen."

Frederick officials do not make the policies for insurance claims, Patton said; the city hires a broker and insurance company who make those decisions.

But Taylor's explanation, for the most part, is true, Patton said.

"If they didn't see it, most likely, it is going to be denied."

Staff writer Kelsi Loos contributed to this report.

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