Crews hard at work to reopen roadways

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – While many of us enjoyed all the snow we got on Tuesday, people like Fred Raiford are over it.

“While it was nice and it looks great, I’m ready for it to go!” Exclaimed Raiford.

As the Director of Transportation and Drainage for East Baton Rouge Parish, he’s responsible for helping you get safely back on the roads, which is not an easy feat when those inches of snow turn into ice overnight.

“You can’t assume that everything is slushy where you can drive over it,” explained Raiford. “That’s not always the case because it’s that black ice that they call it and there are areas that I rode this morning that got my attention.”

Some of those areas include Perkins Road Overpass, Siegen Lane Overpass, Essen Lane, and parts of Perkins Road from College Drive to Bluebonnet. Raiford said these areas are a top priority to get cleared to help out first responders. Then they’ll make their way to other major roadways throughout the parish.

“We’re doing a lot of salting right now because there are areas that we did salt that’s pretty thick with ice and so we’re trying to get that off and then we’ll try to address some of those other areas to get the roads open,” said Raiford.

That’s exactly what these crews with LA DOTD are doing. Spokesman for DOTD Rodney Mallett said all hands are on deck to get the interstates and bridges back open, including some from out of state.

“We’ve been working 12-hour shifts, 24 hours, but at the same time the resources and the help that we got from Arkansas is just much needed and greatly appreciated,” explained Mallett.

They have been working to get what’s left of the snow off overpasses like this one so the salt trucks can go back over them. While they finish up, Mallet said you can still get around if you need to.

“You can go east, west, north, and south through Louisiana, it’s just not going to be all interstate and it’s going to be really slow,” explained Mallett.

Even though crews got a lot accomplished so far, they are still asking you to stay off the roads if you can. Officials are also waiting to see if everything refreezes Wednesday night. If it does, we could be waiting another day or two for all the roads and interstates to reopen.

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