HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – The weekend snowstorm that made its way across the Hi-Line dropped over a foot of snow across much of the area, but Havre Public Works Director Dave Peterson says his Department has only heard of a fewproblems.
“A lot of wind blowing, I think there’s some pretty good drift around, but I haven’t heard of any damage that I know of, at least on our end of it. We’ve had some areas where we’ve had some alleys that have blown in that blow in every year, we’ve had to move some garbage cans out to the street, but that’s typical of what we have to do. We don’t like to have to do it this early, but with that snow blowing and everything, it just packs those alleys in pretty quick and access to those alleys gets pretty difficult once that happens.”
There were a few electricity issues reported around town, but no significant power outages. At City Hall, a power issue caused the heating system to go out, but it is back on now.
Peterson says one reason that the storm didn’t cause major damage is that leaves were already off most trees.
“That’s huge as far as not a lot of damage to trees and stuff like that…That made a big difference for any type of damage to the trees and things like that, and makes it a little easier for us. And it’s still pretty warm underneath, that’s gonna cause some issues with maybe the streets getting a little icier, but I don’t believe this cold weather is going to stick around. It’s supposed to warm back up into the 30’s, hopefully and hopefully a lot of this will clean off and melt away and go to the river.”
The Public Works Department is currently shorthanded, so they may not be able to clear the downtown area until Thursday or Friday.
“The downtown area, they don’t have yards and areas to put the snow, so it ends up getting pushed out into the streets. So what happens in the core downtown business area (between 2nd-5th Avenues, 1st-4th Streets), those are the areas that we will go down and do some snow removal in the streets to get rid of some of the snow down there that gets to be too heavy where you can’t have access to parking downtown or access to stores.”
“Other than that, we’re just going to try to monitor the streets and keep them sanded and get the ones plowed that are snow routes and that’s in our snow plan, so that people have access to all different areas of town through the snow route.”
Public Works is asking residents to be patient with them as they continue working to serve the community.
“(People) are going to have to be prepared and open up their driveways and things like that in the areas the trucks are going through and clearing the streets. If we can get in those areas, we will certainly try to go back and help out, but with the limited manpower that we’ve got and the amount of snow, it’s going to take us a while to get back to those. So they are going to have to get out and get that snow removed. And if you’ve got some elderly neighbors that can’t get out and do that stuff, hopefully the neighbors around the area will get those driveways opened up for those people.”
