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Community Corner

Towns are Prepared for Coming Snow

Weather service is calling for an early morning start

A Friday afternoon siesta is the last bit of preparation for the impending snowstorm in Morris Township, Foreman John Flanagan said.

By 2 p.m., the township Department of Public Works had all the salt spreaders full of salt and liquid calcium, plows on the trucks and full tanks of gas in all of them. With National Weather Service radio calling for the storm to start between 2 and 5 a.m., Flanagan said “I’m gonna take a nap.”

Morris Plains Department of Public Works was also ready in mid-afternoon, Superintendent of Public Works Joseph Signorelli said.

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“We go out as soon as the police call to say it’s a little slippery,” he said.

Both municipalities salt early. “It puts a salt-chemical barrier between the road and the ice,” Flanagan said. “Once the snow gets to three inches, we stop salting and start plowing,” a statement Signorelli echoed.

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The difference is the size of the job and the number of employees.

Morris Township has 130 miles of municipal roads, 30 plows and three front-end loaders.

Morris Plains has about 40 miles of road, seven pickup trucks with plows and four dump trucks. The 16-man DPW crew also has to maintain some municipal sidewalk, Signorelli said, but many of the main roads in the borough are the responsibility of the state and county.

The National Weather Service was calling for four to five inches of snow west of Route 78.

Flanagan said in the 25 years he has worked for the township he only remembers one year with no snow until the end of January, but he is grateful for the break between the Halloween storm and this one. “After an earthquake, hurricane and the October snow, we wondered what else was gonna hit,” he said. “We needed time to pick up the damage from the storm. We finished last week.”

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