Crack crews on call to plug proliferation of potholes
Dear Otus,
I’d normally send this question to the Drivetime Mahatma, but I bet you know the answer, too.
After the recent days of below freezing weather, I noticed the first pothole of the season in front of my house. Has there been a forecast for what sort of pothole season we’re going to have this winter?
— Catherine Renshaw,
Little Rock
Dear Catherine,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you. And you are correct in that the Drivetime Mahatma (see today’s Arkansas section front) is a font of knowledge and wisdom, but he is so tremendously popular and has a backlog of questions. I’ll take this one for him.
According to Guy Lowlies, Little Rock’s assistant deputy director for pothole restoration and rehabilitation, it’s going to be a relatively mild pothole season, but what potholes we do get will be doozies.
It should certainly not be the aberration that was 20132014. Local weather historian Todd Yakoubian termed that one the “Winter of Sleet,” and noted Little Rock had 60 days of at or below freezing temperatures and 16 days with snowfall. That was a winter with potholes from hell.
Lowlies said that the nasty winter back then was why Little Rock created a City Emergency Pothole Response Team.
“I’ve never seen the holes as bad as they were in early 2014,” Lowlies said. “The sleet caused them to reproduce like stoats. We just couldn’t fill ’em up fast enough.”
Potholes, known in the transportation industry as “subjacent corollary anomalies,” occur when water seeps into asphalt air pockets, freezes and expands. The resulting hole can be as small as an inch deep and a foot across or as large as a Lincoln Navigator.
“We had one unusually large hole that snapped the axle of a UPS truck like a twig,” Lowlies said. “We had to use the jaws of life to extract the driver.”
There was an unconfirmed report that a motorcyclist on Cantrell Road completely disappeared during the early hours of Jan. 12 after striking a pothole that drivers had humorously termed “the widow maker.”
Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola laughed that one off as “an urban myth.” Nonetheless, parents are warned to keep their children away from potholes as they have been known to expand rapidly when warmed by the afternoon sun.
“These days, we’ve got 15 city crews standing by to fill the holes as fast as possible,” Lowlies said. “These crews are highly trained, well-oiled machines, and I urge citizens to give them every courtesy as they go about their business.”
The 15-man hole filler teams handle the potholes in a sort of asphaltian triage.
“We try to get to those axle-busters within 24 hours,” Lowlies said. “The ones that only take out a tire rim or pop a hubcap may take up to three days. The pesky basketballsize holes that knock the cellphone out of your hand sometimes require up to a week to be filled. The small ones will have to wait for spring.”
Lowlies noted most passing drivers don’t realize that each man in a filler crew has a critical assignment that has been determined from years of asphalt repair studies. While it may appear that there are only a couple of guys filling in the hole and a bunch of others standing around, reality is another matter.
“You’ve got your Master Plan Representative,” Lowlies said. “He’s the overall supervisor. He’s assisted by the supervisor supervisor — it’s a union thing. Then each project must have a civil engineer and draftsman to oversee the safety inspector and deputy safety inspector.
“There are two cone monitors to lay out and retrieve the orange safety cones; and a dump truck driver and his assistant, who doubles as a mechanic. “You have up-lane and down-lane stop/slow sign operators (some of these are women), who work with the auxiliary relief sign man and the traffic flow coordinator, who monitors the two-way radios.
“Finally, we have the guy who actually shovels in the new asphalt into the pothole.” Lowlies noted, “On a good day these guys can fill eight, maybe nine potholes.”
Lowlies urges that during the coming crisis, citizens should not take matters into their own hands. “If there’s a pothole out in front of your house, do not — I repeat, do not — attempt to fill it yourself,” he said. “Leave it to the professionals.”
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you to report nonhazardous potholes on the city’s 311 app at littlerock.gov. Other holes containing vehicles, small children and pets, or the aged and infirm will be given top priority.