DIXFIELD – Joe White was looking ahead to better days Thursday afternoon while standing in a newly-formed lagoon on Route 2.

White is the Division 7 foreman at the Maine Department of Transportation headquarters in Dixfield.

Since early Thursday morning, White had been working off and on to keep an inundated culvert across the driveway of M/T Pockets Enterprises free of ice chunks.

“It’s gone down quite a bit since this morning,” White said while surveying the swiftly-flowing water that was about eight inches deep in the eastbound lane.

Already soggy from spray kicked up by passing vehicles, White got even wetter when he slipped on ice underwater and fell into the culvert up to his hip.

“Hopefully, when they rebuild this section of the road next year, they will build it higher up with better drainage so I won’t have to keep coming out here,” White said when back on higher ground.

The low-lying section of road cuts through an always swampy area off Newton Brook. It traditionally floods during snow melt in the spring.

Division 7 Superintendent Bob Spencer said the majority of problems faced by his crews from Wednesday’s deluge of freezing and heavy rains, were caused by ice jams in brooks, streams, and rivers, and berms of plowed snow along roads.

“When we get so much snow, the water doesn’t get off the road, so the road becomes a brook,” Spencer said. “And once the water gets to the road, it doesn’t want to leave because that’s the easiest route for it to flow.”

That was very evident all across western Maine Thursday.

“A lot of our problems today were caused by local ice jams. When you get a jam, it doesn’t take long for the water to back up. And when the jam breaks, the water just moves it downstream where it becomes a problem again,” he added.

Division 7 is responsible for 1,250 miles of state highway in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties.

To maintain all of these roads, Spencer has 14 maintenance crews and three bridge crews, which together equal about 130 people.

Already tired from working nearly nonstop fighting three weeks of heavy snowstorms and rainy deluges, crews had more than they could handle during Wednesday’s fast-moving, ever-changing storm.

“It was quite a task and we’re still swamped. I’ve only got so many people to sand and salt the roads, but my boys did one heckuva job,” Spencer said.

Things began to go downhill rapidly Wednesday morning when freezing rain overspread the state.

“This was not an everyday storm. The icing was unbelievable. When you have pavement temperatures in the high 30s and high temperatures in the upper 40s and still get ice, that’s unbelievable,” he said.

Spencer said frost in the pavement was the reason why roads iced over.

Heavy rainfall then reduced the effectiveness of salt, exacerbating problems.

“When the frost comes out of the road, it will cause ice to form on pavement. We could only run sand and some salt, because once the salt gets diluted with water, its freezing point rises and it has little effect,” Spencer said.

Freezing rain changed to heavy rain by 6 p.m. Wednesday, then snow when gusting winds blew in early Thursday morning and temperatures nose-dived.

“We were fighting high water, heavy rain and ice until midnight and then the ice left us and we just had to fight the high water and wind,” he added.

Thursday morning dawned with high water and slippery roads.

“I’ve got to get some of my people home and get some rest, but that would leave me with half a crew and that’s barely enough to cover a snowstorm. And then you add on flooding,” Spencer said, sighing.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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