By: Melissa Toupin
mtoupin@abc6.com
The first flakes fall in Burrillville. It's the beginning of a winter storm which is expected to make quite the mess on area road ways. Department of Public Works Crews spent the day preparing for the wintry mix.
"We've been mixing sand and salt, checking equipment, checking plows, making sure lights are working, getting trucks started," said DPW Director Jeff McCormick.
Just after 8 PM they hit the roadways sanding and salting. In Burrillville they have 100 miles of soon-to-be slick roads to cover. With many travelers still on their way home from their holiday destinations crews aren't leaving anything to chance.
"Once it starts building up we'll plow, once it gets about 2" of snow on the roads, then afterwards depending on the temperatures, we'll sand again," said McCormick.
The combination of rain, snow and heavy winds has residents talking. Some bracing for the worst...
"Up here we have to take a lot of precautions. The weather up here gets pretty bad," said Rick Lemieux of Chepachet. "Basically buy the salt and everything else we need, the shovels."
Others taking it with a grain of salt...
"We're New Englanders. What ever we get we get. We're used to it," said Tom Poirier of Danielson, CT. "They're blowing it out of proportion."
While it's not the first snow of the winter this storm aims to be the biggest nuisance.
"We've had a couple, 3 storms, that were an inch or so, mostly sanding and salting the roads, but this may be the first one we have to plow this year,"said McCormick.
