CLEARING A PATH
Town plow drivers have difficult job during major storms
NARRAGANSETT — A blizzard of snow fell rapidly as Michael DiCicco opened the white International 7400 sanding truck with an 11-foot plow blade and carrying over seven tons of salt for town roads.
He banged the windshield wipers to ensure that ice fell off and the smooth pass across the glass gave him — at least until the next shake of the blades — a clear view of the roads, side driveways where cars exit and banks of plowed snow where children could suddenly walk from behind them.
“Your head is on a swivel non-stop,” said DiCicco, town director of public works and snowplow driver for 28 years. “Your brain is always working that’s for sure. You’re paying attention to three different things at once,” he added.
The job of a snowplow driver isn’t just climbing behind the wheel of a massive dump-truck-looking vehicle and just mindlessly traveling with the plow pushing snow from side to side. Quite to the contrary. It’s a job that demands focus on details from snow piles to vehicles dodging and weaving around them.
It is also a stressful job, said DiCicco, because even a second of a lack of attention could invite instant disaster.
During last week’s snowstorm, DiCicco prowled around local streets — Fifth Avenue, South Pier Road, Kingstown Road, Ocean Road, Robinson Street — in Narragansett to move accumulating inches of snow aside. Behind his big plow was a smaller truck doing “clean up” to catch snow the larger plow missed or trailed behind.
“You know, people see our amber or yellow lights and they just try to out maneuver us or keep on coming around us. They don’t care. People don’t understand that our lights are every bit as important as the blue lights on a police cruiser or the red lights on a fire truck,” he said.
Yes, getting snow removed from the roads is important. However, often motorists don’t understand they need to yield to a plow truck as it attempts to make the roads safe for emergency vehicles as well as residents going out after a storm ends, he explained.
Narragansett has 103 miles of roadway, about 24 trucks covering approximately nine routes, often with two trucks per route ensuring that the roads get as cleared as possible and snow plowed into areas least problematic to driveways and homeowners.
“You are always trying to push the snow to make the roads safe and the last thing you want to create is an obstruction,” said DiCicco.
As he talked, he turned the truck on to Kingstown Road. He punched a yellow button on the panel with many other buttons and a hydraulic system lowered the plow on the road. Soon a scraping sound reverberated through his truck.
As the plow collected snow and pushed it aside, he scanned the area ahead for a place to put the snow caught in the front of the plow. He saw an open space and pushed it against the curb away from driveways and street corners.
“I try to maximize my sweeps and rotate the plow in different directions,” he said, explaining how he tries to distribute the snow picked up from the roadway ahead of the truck.
“We try not to leave it on an edge of the road and we like to avoid big piles on corners of the street and we don’t want to leave large piles in a line of sight,” the director of snowplows and many other public works projects said.
He looked at the snow beginning to fall heavier. It coated the road deeper.
“We try to get out and plow early and often. It’s a lot easier to push a few inches than 18 inches if that’s what ends up accumulating,” DiCicco said, adding that blowing and dense snow often means a truck needs to travel slower.
If motorists attempt to go around a truck or fail to obey traffic signals, a sliding truck could plow into a car or pickup truck.
“What people don’t realize a truck like this could become a weapon of sorts. The road underneath is getting covered with ice. I can feel it when I go to slow down to a stop and we keep sliding,” he said.
“A small compact car is not going to win against a truck like this,” he said, adding, “It will be this truck because it’s so big and so heavy.”
As he turned on to Fifth Avenue and looked in the side mirrors for any unexpected cars, people, trees or other things, the truck crept along. He passed cars illegally on the street despite a parking ban.
“These create all kinds of problems when people just don’t pay attention. It gets in the way of us clearing the streets for other people because we have to go around them, and could create problems for emergency vehicles,” he said.
As his head turned from side to side, constantly looking from front to left and then to right, the windshield began to streak with snow missed by the wiper blade thick with ice. He rolled down the window and grabbed the blade, banging it against the windshield again.
“You’re constantly stopping because of the build-up of ice or you doing something quick like that,” he said about reaching outside to bang the blade. With a laugh, he added that cold temps could invite frostbite and “you have do it fast enough and get your hand right back in.”
Keeping a focus during a storm brings a certain approach, he said.
“Slow and steady is the way you drive these things,” he said as the heavy grind of the truck’s engine could be heard along with the bottom of the plow.
He noted that his years of experience gave him that insight. “You pick up on the little things, like turning the plow a certain way or angling the truck in a certain manner on the road to be safe,” he added.
DiCicco, also vice president of the R.I. Public Works Association, said that he also comes from a family of people involved with trucks, construction and highway maintenance. It was a career he always wanted to pursue.
In learning from family members, he said, he became mindful about how to drive these large trucks, especially in stormy weather. However, this hasn’t come without a near miss or two for himself, he said.
One serious incident occurred when he was pushing a hard ice pack of snow and the truck just started sliding.
“It headed directly into a pole of high-voltage electric lines that fell on the truck. I was in it for about an hour before I could get out. The truck stayed there all day until it could be safely moved,” he recalled.
But that hasn’t dimmed his view or interest in the job.
“I’ve always enjoyed the road construction end of things, and especially the road safety and plowing. I was born in the town, raised here and live here now. I am all for community safety during times like this and I want people to know I’ve got their back,” he said.