From the many abusive emails that have made my way into my inbox on this subject ranging from personal abuse to one suggesting that I should line my family up by a roundabout in Shoebury to allow cars to slide into them to teach me a lesson to, believe it or not, one resident actually accused the council of wasting money by attempting to grit the roads at 18:15 yesterday evening.
The Council gritted the road network on Sunday evening putting some 16 tonnes of grit down over 360 km of road so there was already substantial coverage on the town’s road network.
Throughout yesterday we monitored the weather forecast and had staff driving the road network to assess the condition and from late yesterday afternoon through to 10.30 am this morning a further 72 tonnes of grit were spread over 850 km of road. In addition to this we mobilised our quad bikes this morning to support the journey to work/school run.
Despite the treatment, we experienced a severe wind chill which rapidly dropped surface temperatures in the early evening to around minus 7 degrees and froze the surface water on the treated roads.
Whilst we felt the impact in Southend we were not alone in being hit by the abnormal effects of the wind chill. Reports from across the South East indicate similar impact – the Highways Agency hadbeen reporting the same effects throughout last night on the Motorways and in Kent and Sussex that despite continuous gritting, the wind chill had caused a rapid blast freeze on the road surfaces followed by difficulty in getting trucks through to retreat the surfaces.
The weight of commuter traffic, travelling slowly, also meant we had difficulty in getting the gritters through the network to address the impact. To give residents assurance, the road network has started to be gritted from 19:00 this evening with a further grit run at 03:00.
1 comment:
Although I am usually one of the first to complain to the council, On this occasion Tony is right, I have spent almost my entire life on the road and I have never seen anything freeze as rapidly as it did that night, I watched it happening before my eyes, it was an extreme anomaly, I don't think anyone could have reacted quick enough, even if the grit was fresh, I still think it would have happened, a very freaky occurrence,
Lets hope this isn't a sign of things to come.
Mark Jennings ( A Southend Licensed Taxi Driver )
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