BANGOR, Maine — Bangor Public Works snowplow driver Dan Layton began his shift at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday but wouldn’t be headed home to Kenduskeag at the usual 3 p.m. With a powerful nor’easter bearing down Tuesday afternoon and night, it was all hands on deck.
With as much as 14 inches of snow — followed by a trace of ice — and wind gusts of up to 50 mph expected for Greater Bangor, Layton and the other snowplow drivers, along with the city’s loader and backhoe operators, sand and salt truck drivers, dispatchers and others who play a role in keeping city streets passable, it likely would be Wednesday morning before they got a break in the action.
Contending with weather conditions such as those during Tuesday’s storm, it was slow going at 20 to 25 mph, with occasional whiteouts and road hazards along the way, among them pedestrians walking in the middle of streets, people pulling their cars into the street in front of plow trucks and tree limbs in the roadway.
“If you go too fast, the snow will blow up over the front blade and you can’t see anything,” said Layton, who signed on with public works shortly before New Year’s. At the height of Tuesday night’s wild weather, visibility was lousy to begin with, at a couple of hundred feet at most.
Making the going even tougher were tight corners to maneuver and several inches of snow covering ice that made it difficult to gain traction on some of the city’s steeper hills.
Layton’s regular route takes him through parts of Union Street and Maine Avenue and the side streets running off them. He also plows near General Electric, Bangor International Airport and the Maine Army Guard Base and the streets that serve the city’s nearby business park.
In anticipation of the storm, Layton got a little extra sleep and packed a small cooler and several bottles of water.
The visibility was at its worst just after dusk, when everything outside the windows of the snowplow’s cab appeared in shades of white and gray.
“This time of day is challenging because of the glare and the light. When it gets dark, it’s actually easier because then all you’re dealing with is street lights and headlights,” Layton told a reporter riding shotgun for part of his shift.
“And there are tracks and whatnot” that help guide him as he plows, Layton said.
Layton is a relative newcomer when it comes to the city’s plow crew.
Although he’s has only been driving a city plow truck for about three months, he’s an experienced hand when it comes to driving big trucks.
“I had my own plow trucks years ago, and I drove big trucks for a long time,” Layton said. His most recent job involving big trucks was for an industrial cleaning service in Bangor.
“Then they closed the office down, so I got a job here,” he said. “I’m still new with the big [plow] truck, but I’ve got a pretty easy run. Plus all I’ve got to do is plow, I don’t have to sand or salt,” he said.
“We have some trucks that just carry salt and some that carry sand. They have specific jobs. Salt is for just melting and sand is for traction,” he said. The crew applied salt brine to the city’s main routes in anticipation of the snow. That worked while the snow was light, but when it began coming down heavily, the salt got scraped off along with the snow, he said.
Layton had suggestions for those who want to make the going easier for those whose job it is to keep the roads passable.
“Stay off the road unless you absolutely have to. If you don’t have to get a bag of ice [at the grocery store] or gawk around and see how bad the roads are, don’t because the roads are bad,” he said.
“Another thing is people think headlights are optional equipment. I mean, the state law says that if your wipers are on, you have to have your headlights on,” Layton said. “It’s amazing the number of people who don’t use their headlights. They think they can see just fine but it helps the people coming at them who can’t see them.”
Despite the long public works shift that began early Tuesday morning and was expected to run into Wednesday morning, plows were out much longer during the storm that paralyzed the state in mid-February. Plow operators were out for 34 hours during that event.
But as Layton sees it, there isn’t much point obsessing about the weather:
“It’s the weather. It’s going to be the weather whether we want it or not.”