CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Charleston Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin says snow removal efforts now turn to secondary streets after the focus has been on primary roads over the past couple of days.
Goodwin said there’s a lot of residents who live on the secondary roads and they have been wanting to know when their roads were getting clear. She said just be patient and the city’s Public Works Department will get there.
“They’re doing really good work, they really are, secondary streets, I get a lot of calls on that with people wanting to know why can’t we go down to places like the flats of the east and west sides and parts of Kanawha City, primary roads are where people get into the most accidents and crashes, but just go slow and we’re doing the best we can,” Goodwin said. 
She said roads leading to emergency access routes such as hospitals, as well as roads connected to the interstate and high-trafficked areas have been the initial focus.
Goodwin said this storm system that started Sunday has been more unique to many of the snow storms they’ve received in the area because of all of the ice.
She said crews have had a more difficult time doing their snow removal work this time around as salt doesn’t exactly work on ice, and a lot of trees came down due to the ice and snow weighing down branches.
Goodwin said now with another snow system moving through Friday night and into Saturday, everyone, particularly public works crews almost dread the thought of it.
“You know, patience wears thin when you’re dealing with something like this, one day okay, two days okay, three days, four days, are you joking with me, but you know, we’re going as fast as we can, we’re doing as best as we can,” she said.
She said it has taken every department across the city pulling the strings together to clean this up and keep everyone safe, not just public works, but law enforcement, fire and EMS services as well.
However, Goodwin said there is one group working more behind the scenes that majorly plays a part and that residents don’t always notice.
“It’s not just our police, it’s not just our fire, it’s not just our EMS, it’s not just our salt truck drivers, it’s also our maintenance crew,” she said. I mean we have been all hands on deck with the maintenance crew because if anybody knows anything about heavy equipment, blades break, we’ve got chains on tires.”
But Goodwin added that getting more snow and ice than expected, it has really been quite the effort, particularly for the public works crews.
“There’s a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of energy on operations, so I give Brent Webster and all of our folks all of the credit in the world because it’s a very tough and tedious task.”