Politics & Government

Town Manager Satisfied With Storm Response In Rocky Hill

Roads are passable and now plows will work on catch basins.

 

Town Manager Barbara Gilbert was happy with the response and praised the work o the town employees who cleared the roads in town after the Blizzard of 2013.

"We weathered the storm very well," Gilbert said. "We would have had an even better response if we didn't have so many emergency calls. I would say we had 10 or 12 calls at the height of the storm and the police or fire vehicles were led by a plow to get to the emergency.

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"There was one case where the town plos had to clear a ramp at exit 24 on I-91 because there was no other way to get a patient to Hartford Hospital. At one point, the state stopped plowing Silas Deane Highway so that made it more difficult for our town plows to get to the secondary roads."

Gilbert said the next step is to make the roads wider.

Find out what's happening in Rocky Hillwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"I have taken a few calls from residents who are not happy with the height of the piles of snow in their yards but I'm not sure where we are supposed to put it all, we're talking about a historic amount of snow," Gilbert said. "We will be going around and trying to reduce the height of those mounds, we will be working to make the roads wider and clear out the cul-de-sacs better. We will also work on the intersections to make them more manageable. We got through the rain but we will work on clearing out the catch basins as well."

The town is responsible for 81 miles of roads in town. There are also many miles of state roads that wind through Rocky Hill.

Gilbert said the town workers deserve a lot of credit for having the town up and running as quickly as it was.

"I had a mother and daughter come into Town Hall to thank me for the job the plow drivers did in clearing the streets," Gilbert said. "She was watching other towns on TV and saw how bad the roads were. The state abandoned doing their roads for a while but our guys kept working. Our town was much better than the surrounding towns, there is no doubt about that. Our guys take pride in their job and ownership of these streets and this town.

"This was more snow than any of us have seen in our lifetime. They are talking about this is the most since 1818, so it is unprecedented. To do the job these guys did was pretty amazing. And they will keep at it until the roads are in great shape."


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