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SANDY — Sandy city has been forced to park half of its snowplows outside after a large part of its garage was destroyed in a 2017 fire.
"It was a big fire. There were no sprinklers so there was nothing to stop it," Sandy Mayor Monica Zoltanski said. "It burned our administrative offices, garage space, so that's why we are on a course to rebuild our public works facility."
The city lost 11 snowplows in the fire, which it has since replaced. The city now has 24 plows and about 30 drivers. But the damaged part of the garage has yet to be rebuilt, forcing half of its fleet to park in the lot, uncovered.
"It's like a game of Tetris when we park the plows. We have to make do, putting others where we can, obviously trying to get them all out of the weather, but it's not always possible," Zoltanski said.
The city's field operations manager, Blaine Botkin, said not having a garage to house the city's plows impacts the ability to get out onto the roads quickly.
"You've got snow on the trucks, you've got to warm up the trucks, you've got to scrape the snow off of everything. Our response time is delayed," Botkin said.
Botkin said this winter has been especially hard on the city's plow drivers. It has also been tough on the city's snow removal budget.
"We've exceeded (the salt budget) by probably about 75%," he said.
Bountiful has had a similar experience after it was hit hard by last week's storm. The city's engineer, Lloyd Cheney, said the city used up all of its salt budget and city leaders had to dip into contingency funds.
"This season has been one of the busier ones that we've had. Our guys have been out 60 times this year," Cheney said. "But they are doing great. I believe we have the best snow removal team in the state."
In Cottonwood Heights, where they average 20 to 25 snow events a season, snowplow drivers have already responded to 40.
"We haven't reached the top of the budget yet. As long as we don't get any other big storms like we did last week, we'll be fine," said Danny Martinez, public works deputy director for Cottonwood Heights.
The city's 13 drivers and 17 plows have already covered 30,483 miles so far this season.
Tuesday's storm was expected to bring another 2 or 3 inches of snow to each of the cities, and more storms are lining up to hit the Beehive State later this week. Get the forecast on the KSL Weather Page.
