By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Tucker County saw winter come in with a bang this past week with some residents giving unsubstantiated reports of up to 16 inches in the County. Officially, the highest snowfall amounts were seen in Canaan Valley where 13 to 14 inches of snow fell during the snow event that hit the area mainly Sunday night November 9th through the early morning hours Tuesday November 11th.
Monday, November 10th was the hardest hit for the area, with heavy snowfall impacting roadways and causing heavy call volume for first resonders across the area. The Tucker County Sheriff’s Department worked along side Tucker County Fire Departments, EMS and the West Virginia Highway Patrol throughout the 48 hour snow event.
Accidents led to road closures throughout the day, with the roads opening quite quickly, with one within a half an hour, according to Tucker County Sheriff Jake Kopec. The other was at U.S. 219 on the County line, where the road was closed for around an hour and a half heading towards Montrose. The two road closures were contained to U.S, Route 219, Kopec said, and were the result of tractor trailers being stuck on the road.
At one point reports were being circulated online of a closure from Wild Maggie up the Mountain due to several accidents along U.S. Route 219. Reports of vehicle accidents abounded throughout the day including a vehicle over the embankment on Benbush.
“15 to 20 (calls),” Kopec said. “That’s the entire storm event, from the entire two day storm event. There were cars in the ditch, jackknifed tractor trailers, everything.”
The biggest closure, however, occurred when a vehicle accident closed U.S. Route 219 just outside Thomas near Tucker County High School. The closure occurred close to dismissal for the school and delayed students and staff leaving until 3:45 p.m. The West Virginia State Police, Tucker County Sheriff’s Office and the Parsons and Thomas Fire Departments responded to the incident.
The school issued a statement about the closure that read in part, “Due to roads being blocked above and below the high school, students at the high school will not dismissed on time,” the statement read. The snow event also canceled all after school activities for the High School, Davis-Thomas and Tucker Valley Schools.
Kopec said that there was a chain order in place during the storm for Backbone Mountain. However, no citations were issued. Kopec said he felt that most drivers who violated the chain order were not ill prepared from malice or indifference. Kopec said many drivers are at the mercy of their companies for gear and are sent on the road ill equipped for the conditions on the Mountain during winter weather events.
“Its hard to write people tickets when they’re just out there trying to make a living,” Kopec said. “We do write tickets, but a lot of it is the company, not the driver. They’re not providing their drivers with the proper tools.”
Lack of chains on Backbone Mountain during the snow event lead to closures during the storm from jackknifing, Kopec said, but the road was quickly cleared.
With the heavy snowfall on Monday, just between the hours of 1:15 p.m. to 11:53 p.m. that day, the Tucker County 911 Center generated 16 calls for service for the four fire departments in the County.
The 911 Center’s Call Statistics for Monday, November 10th report five calls for Company 10, four calls for Company 20 and seven calls for Company 40. Each call for the fire departments were reported have multiple incidents per call. So even though, fire responded to 16 calls that day, the number of incidents fire departments responded to was much higher.
Law enforcement also responded to multiple incidents per call with 12 calls to service reported for Monday the 10th.
In total. EMS were called to eight calls that day.
