Road crews prepared to treat icy roadways on Friday

Some mid-Missouri road crews have already began salting the roads ahead of Friday’s anticipated ice storm.

“A half inch of ice doesn’t sound like very much to us, but it is devastating to the roads,” said Terry Cassil, Boone County Emergency Management director.

The Missouri Department of Transportation started road treatment Thursday on major roads and highways.

“There really is no plowing the ice off,” said Randy Aulbur, MoDOT engineer. “It’s really just, you treat it and you continue to treat it until the icing period ends.”

MoDOT spokesperson Sally Oxenhandler said more trucks will report to the Boone County Maintenance Facility at 10:30 p.m. Thursday to begin preparing to treat the roads overnight into Friday.

Columbia Public Works was also out ahead of the storm Thursday. An eight-person crew came in at 4 a.m. to monitor and begin treating bridge decks.

Barry Dalton, public works spokesperson, said a full crew of 25 trucks is scheduled to report at 7 a.m.

“We don’t want to use too many of our resources,” Dalton said. “There may be precipitation that could wash the salt off the road, temperatures may get too low and that salt is ineffective.”

He said crews will focus their routes on the city’s priority routes and added residential routes likely won’t be treated until after the weekend.

“They’re well ahead of this thing,” Cassil said. “You get out and you pretreat that road, and then it rains, and it washes off everything you pretreated and you lost that product.”

Columbia Public Works and MoDOT is advising people to stay home and avoid driving if at all possible during the active weather event. Officials are also warning people about possible downed power lines from the ice.

“If you see downed power lines, the best is to assume that they are live and to stay away from them because that’s a very serious condition to walk up on a downed power line,” Albur said.