Hundreds of outside contractors, city crews and Kansas State maintenance staff mobilized after Winter Storm Blair last month to clear over 56 million cubic feet of snow from Manhattan roadways and K-State’s campus. That amount of snow stretches out 8484.84 miles, equivalent to crossing Kansas on I-70 just over twenty times.
Manhattan received a historic 15 inches of snowfall, which is just shy of the near-18-inch record recorded on Feb. 27, 1900.
Christopher Salmon, assistant vice president for K-State’s division of facilities, said the university created an action plan at the end of last winter which included working with outside contractors. The plan was ready the week before the storm.
“It had to be a substantial snowfall to get the ball rolling,” Salmon said. “Then, obviously, this event took place coming right out of the holidays. As soon as we had a good feeling that things were going to be like they were, we had some discussions on that previous Thursday to begin planning.”
The university mobilized 100 workers — 40% of its maintenance workforce— and two contracting firms to remove 300 truckloads of snow from its main campus in five days.
“I’m really glad that we went this direction to be able to have outside support,” Salmon said. “Our teams could really focus on campus, roads, main campus and really allow the others to focus on the exterior peripheral portion of campus. It is definitely essential work to keep our buildings — with campus infrastructure at our age — in good condition. It’s really a testament to our workforce, and so the credit really needs to go to them.”
Assistant city manager Wyatt Thompson said the city’s snow removal crews were on “24-hour operations for five days” and worked for two weeks to clear its roadways. From Jan. 14 to Jan. 17, the city launched a “Snow Blitz” initiative to widen public streets to two lanes and make critical public infrastructure accessible.
“Into that second week after the storm, we were focused on some problem areas, and we implemented the Snow Blitz, which was kind of a new thing for us based on the amount of snow that we got,” Thompson said. “We had city crews plus contractors that we worked with to go into every part of the city and haul snow or remove snow from the lanes and from sidewalk ramps and intersections, just to try to get the community moving again.”
Senior in accounting Will Borgaila and his siblings drove to Manhattan from his hometown in Iowa just after the storm and said he “had to buy some supplies out of state” before returning to Manhattan.
“The snow was just gradually getting more and more, and we would see cars on the side of the road,” Borgaila said. “… I actually had to buy a shovel for my house and some salt because there was none in Manhattan for my roommates to buy.”
Thompson said the near-record snowfall posed a “challenge for the crews.”
“We haven’t seen that much snow in a single storm in 125 years, and it was a challenge for the crews just dealing with the amount of snow,” Thompson said. “[Snow] drifts in part of the community were four or five feet deep. We had our crews going out in groups of plow trucks and by the time the snow reached the fourth plow truck, the snow was over the top of the plow.”
