WICOMICO COUNTY, MD — Another frigid day has settled over Delmarva, with temperatures hampering efforts to clear ice from roads.
School districts remained closed today with many of the roads in residential neighborhoods still coated in ice.
Wicomico County Deputy Director of Public Works Michael Svaby said Roads Division crews have spent upwards of 35 hours working to clear the roads. However, many residents are still frustrated with the pace of cleanup on secondary streets.
"The county kind of dropped the ball on it because they didn't plow fast enough," said Sam Lowe, who lives north of Salisbury.
Lowe said he only saw the road in front of his property plowed and salted once. He has since taken to the streets himself, using a tractor with a plow to clear roads around his farm located north of Salibsury.
"I've worked on it, rolled it off. A lot of farmers probably done the same thing. Just trying to make it better in their neighborhood," Lowe Lowe said.
Jaxon Williams, who lives in a neighborhood east of Salisbury, is enjoying his third consecutive snow day but said he is surprised by how icy the roads around his home remain.
"I thought they would come down with the snowplows on this road, but they just did the main roads," Williams said.
Deputy Director Svaby said Wicomico County Roads Division has completed approximately 95 percent of their treatment plan. He said that cold ground temperatures have rendered salt ineffective, limiting crews to daytime work.
"The things that have stopped us from getting there 100 percent of the time is where we end up on the end of any given day in terms of sunlight and ground temperature," Svaby said.
Residential roads are now the priority for crews, according to Svaby.
