County Engineer Greg Wilkens, the Ohio Department of Transportation and most public works directors say they have had some employees unavailable because of the virus, but residents should not be concerned that snow plowing efforts will be disrupted this week.
Wilkens said the county fully staffed all 16 routes last week and are doing again it this week. He said he and other staffers have their commercial drivers licenses and can fill in if necessary.
“We’ve been able to get the job done,” Wilkens said. “It’s not without shuffling crew members and things, but we’ve got not only our regular drivers but we have worked to have a number of our office staff, some of our engineers, some of our inspectors also carry CDLs. We’ve always managed to have a complete crew out. It’s been a problem but nothing that’s stopped us from doing the job.”
He said they are not putting anyone behind a plow wheel who hasn’t been there before, “we’ll put co-drivers with them and let them run a dry route and get the experience, so when they go out they’re ready. Even when the go out a first time they’ve got somebody with them.”
Hamilton Public Works Director Jim Williams said they have only had a couple people in the fleet department test positive for COVID-19, but that was in July and there haven’t been any since. He said three of his managers in gas and water had COVID-19 but no one is out now.
“I have been adamant about making sure they maintain social distance, wearing masks, keep hand sanitizers with you if you can’t get soap and water,” Williams said. “We’ve been blessed and just lucky.”
West Chester Twp. has a couple of plow drivers out sick this week, according to Barb Wilson, director of public information and engagement, but road supervisors will also be driving plows so all 18 routes will be covered during the winter storm.
“We have firefighters who sometimes drive, we have the ability to do that and we have a group of on-call operators,” Wilson said. “I think we’ve kind of dodged a bullet so far, that during the times that we’ve had more of the roads crews on quarantine we haven’t had the big snow.”
Kathleen Fuller, spokeswoman for ODOT’s District 8 that covers Butler County, said it is responsible for plowing about 3,730 lane miles on state and federal highways in a seven-county region with 144 trucks. She said it has more drivers than trucks and can tap into other resources if they are short staffed.
“Since last March we’ve had employees at different times who had to be quarantined, obviously we’re not exempt or immune from this by any means,” Fuller said. “We’re very fortunate that so far we have not seen a significant drop in our staffing levels that we cannot perform snow and ice operations or other critical functions.”
Fairfield Public Works Director Ben Mann said four employees have tested positive and a couple were quarantined but not recently. He said they have parks and utility employees who help out regularly covering some of the night routes.
“We generally will cover it with people who drive our normal routes and that’s for the best because they know what to do, they’re practiced, they know the routes, they know the trucks,” Mann said. “If a few of those people were lost to illness, then we would have to bring in other parks and utilities people to backfill.”
Trenton Public Works Director Rob Leichman said six out of his 12-person staff have gotten COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, but he was “just lucky” because for example when one of his two mechanics got it, the other was fine.
“We’ve almost been able to stagger the guys and since we’re a small outfit, we all wear multiple hats anyway,” Leichman said. “So we’ve got back-ups in all positions. We’ve been fortunate.”
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