Stay home and be patient.

That’s the message county leaders are sending to the community as preparations are underway to respond to a winter storm predicted to bring nearly a foot of snow to Brown County Feb. 15 and 16.

“Make sure you have everything you need for your family and your pets. Don’t forget about your pets,” said Susan Armstrong, Brown County Emergency Management Agency director, as more flakes were beginning to fall Monday afternoon.

“Stay inside tonight. Don’t go out unless you need to because we need to get crews out on the roads. With the rate this snow will be falling, it’s going to be a struggle for everyone to keep up with it. Once this really starts coming down, stay home.”

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The storm is predicted to bring about an inch of snow an hour from 2 to 10 p.m. today. Armstrong said that the National Weather Service predicts Brown County will receive 10 inches of snow on top of the couple of inches that fell late Feb. 14.

Get warmed up

To help residents who may lose power in the storm and need somewhere to warm up, EMA has designated three warming centers in the county: at Cordry-Sweetwater Volunteer Fire Department, Fruitdale Volunteer Fire Department in Bean Blossom and the Brown County YMCA in Nashville.

“The concern at this point with this snow, in addition to the amount that is falling, is that the high winds and the fluffiness of the snow is going to cause some blowing and drifting. The wind chills are going to be below zero,” Armstrong.

“It’s not just the amount, it’s everything together is going to make for a very dangerous storm to come through.”

Anyone who wishes to use one of the warming centers can call the county’s COAD hotline at 812-988-0001. Armstrong said calling and giving a heads up that you’re coming will allow them to get everything ready.

“It would be awesome if they call the 988 number first. But we understand that might not be an option either if the power goes out,” Armstrong said.

The YMCA will not have anyone staged there overnight, so calling ahead would help them get someone there, Armstrong added.

Medical call aid

All of the volunteer fire departments will have people staged there all night to be backup for Columbus Regional Health ambulances, Armstrong said.

“If the roads get bad enough and the ambulances can’t get on their own to certain locations, the fire departments will be out with their brush trucks to help get the ambulances where they need to be, or help get the crews where they need to be if the ambulance can’t make it,” Armstrong said.

CRH is also stationing a third ambulance in the county to help with longer response times due to navigating the snow.

“If they do go out on a run, how long it will take? And if they do have to transport somebody, it’s going to be quite some time they are out of service, so that makes sure we have enough coverage here in the county,” Armstrong said.

Fire stations across the county have been preparing for this storm for a few days, getting extra food, prepping equipment and keeping extra manpower at the stations.

COAD distributed food goods for firefighters to keep at the station and fuel up the extra hands on deck. Fruitdale and Jackson Fire also received food boxes from COAD to give to people in the community who may need extra goods.

All stations said they’re prepared to be warming stations for those who may lose power in the storm.

Fruitdale Fire Chief Kevin Sebastian said that they’ve been mentally preparing for the blizzard ahead. Fire Chief Evan Johnson said that Southern Brown Volunteer Fire Department had an emergency meeting on Sunday about their plans and that they had sharpened their saws, loaded extra gear onto trucks and ran their equipment to make sure they were ready for any situation that may arise.

Arlan Pierce, Hamblen Volunteer Fire Chief, said they’re following their “natural plan.”

“If things get bad, we hunker down and if we have to, we go out,” he said.

Plowing plans

The Town of Nashville is short one plow driver because of vacation, but the other four were out working Monday, said Administration Manager Phyllis Carr.

Brown County Commissioners President Jerry Pittman has been working with the Brown County Highway Department to make sure there are enough drivers to tackle the routes throughout the county.

The highway department is currently down five employees, including an assistant highway superintendent.

In the meantime Pittman said he is working with Young Trucking out of Bloomington to contract drivers to come here to plow roads. The drivers there have not been working because they cannot haul crushed stone and most construction projects are not happening right now. The company offered to send over some drivers to help, he said.

Pittman said two drivers were working here today with the potential to bring in a total of four contractors if needed.

Pittman said they received about 15 responses for the open jobs, but most of the interested applicants were disqualified. “We have a lot of people who want to drive a big truck, but for various reasons would not be a good candidate and most of them did not have a commercial driver’s license,” he said.

The department does have a couple of applicants that are “promising,” but could take anywhere from a month to six months to get a CDL (commercial driver’s license) and the necessary paperwork. Applicants have to be drug tested and fingerprinted among other pre-employment qualifications. “Some people just don’t want to go through that process, which is OK,” Pittman said.

The county highway department has 12 vehicles that can plow roads. Some are smaller trucks and others are large dump trucks.

“Even though we have 12 vehicles we don’t have that many drivers. Mike (Magner, highway superintendent) has been covered up. He’s been out driving the plow truck himself about half the time, which is a strain and a burden on him,” Pittman said.

To complicate matters further, the highway department had three trucks break down at the end of last week. One was being repaired on Feb. 15 while the other two were waiting on parts.

“That is a wrench in the gears,” Pittman said.

The Department of Transportation also regulates how often truck drivers can be on the road, which limits how long county drivers can work. “Normally they can only work 10 hours a day out of 24. Then, every so often, they have to have a complete day off,” Pittman said.

Because the highway department has not been paying people in those five open jobs, Pittman said he is not worried about the expense of paying outside contractors to help the highway department.

“We’re going to be working very hard and trying to be safe at the same time. By having this pool of drivers we put in reserve, that can take some of the pressure off and keep the trucks running without wearing the drivers out,” Pittman said.

The highway department has also been paying overtime to drivers, including on Feb. 15 since it is a federal holiday.

“We’ll work our guys first. No one will get cut out of working hours or overtime. Some of the guys would like to get that overtime, and I don’t blame them, so we won’t take that away from any of our current employees,” Pittman said.

“It will all wash out as far as the expense of it in the end since we’ve been down drivers anyway and that payroll hasn’t been going out. I am not concerned about that end of it. We’re going to try to get through this. People just have to be patient. We can’t hit every road in one day.”

Certain roads in the county are prioritized for clearing over others, including north and south through routes, like Upper Bean Blossom Road, and cross routes, like Hoover and Becks Grove roads.

“Of course, the dead-end roads are the ones we hit last. We generally try to get the paved roads, those critical through routes and then we go to the gravel roads,” Pittman said.

There is also the possibility of using the county’s road graders to clear gravel roads then replace the grader drivers who would be usually driving a snow plow with the contractors. “That will give us two more pieces of equipment running. We need everything we can get right now,” Pittman said.

“We have all of the steep hills up and down the hollers. I really appreciate the guys that drive them, because that’s a tricky job driving a dump truck with a snow plow and try to keep them from taking out mailboxes or losing control, running off the road going up and down these hills.”

Pittman said people need to stay home if they can to let crews clear roads.

“We’ll get to it as soon as we can, but we have to ask for their patience and understand what we’re trying to do is get the main roads first, then on towards the dead-end roads and lesser traveled, make the best use of what we have,” he said.

Prep and pandemic

EMA held a Zoom meeting with all of the public safety agencies in Brown County, the county commissioners and the town ahead of the storm.

“We’re also updating regularly through text messages the rest of the day just on what’s going on, how much snow has fallen in different parts of the county,” Armstrong said Feb. 15.

Preparing for a winter storm presents extra challenges when dealing with a pandemic at the same time. Warming centers will have masks for everyone who needs one and social distancing will be enforced.

Usually, a pot of chili or soup would be offered at the warming centers, like a potluck dinner, but due to pandemic restrictions, food has to be pre-packaged only. Pre-packaged sandwiches from a COAD food drive have been distributed to all of the fire departments for volunteers and people in the warming centers.

Armstrong has worked in emergency management for seven years, four in Brown County, and she said she has not worked during a storm that had this much potential.

“I know when we did the NWS (National Weather Service) call, they were pretty clear this is one of those once-in-a-career kind of storms,” she said.