Louisiana road crews battling historic winter storm

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Louisiana motorists have been dangerously impacted by the historic winter storm. Rodney Mallett of the state's Department of Transportation gives the latest updates on clearing and treating highways.

Transcript

00:00Parts of Louisiana are under their first ever blizzard warning or they were that was allowed

00:05to expire but still historic Bernie in itself and as snow ice and sleet set to arrive across

00:12Louisiana drivers are encountering dangerous conditions. Joining us right now is Rodney

00:17Malla communications director for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

00:23Rodney it's been I know a long day what is the latest and how is this storm impacting your team?

00:30Throughout the state well it continues to get worse as we go on you start we started

00:36pre-treating over the weekend and staging our salt and our brine and we know that we

00:43have certain elevated structures that we have to keep salting or keep brining in an effort to

00:50maintain there and keep them open and some of those have not been able to stay open such as

00:57Chafalaya Basin Bridge it's 18 miles two lanes in each direction and it's over water so it freezes

01:05early and it stays frozen for quite some time. We have the same with the I-10 elevated portion

01:11from Laplace through New Orleans we also have I-10, I-12 elevated portion in Baton Rouge and

01:19all of those areas have been closed we still can get you east and west north and south

01:26if you have to make it all the way through Louisiana but it's not going to be all interstate

01:32some of it is going to be U.S. highways such as U.S. 190 it runs across the state but we maintain

01:39it from Opelousas all the way to the state line because the longest bridge on that route is a

01:47four-mile bridge near Crotte Springs much easier to keep open than 18 miles over the Chafalaya

01:53Basin. So we continue to work to try to keep the roads open but nobody should be driving unless

01:59they have to because the conditions are treacherous. Yeah great advice there and you know since snow

02:06is so rare in Louisiana is your team equipped to deal with this much snow across so much of

02:18these areas you were just listing all of the interstates all of the U.S. highways that you

02:22are in charge of how is that going on are there any challenges there? Oh yes there's always

02:28challenges but we're very fortunate we have partners to the north in Arkansas they're more

02:33apt to get snow and ice than we are and they have been gracious enough to send expert crews down

02:41with knowledge on how to handle snow on the roadways they have sent numerous plows I think

02:50it's up to 15 or more snow plows they have brine spraying machines like state-of-the-art so we have

02:57our regular salting we have our salt sprayers our brine sprayers but with the addition of the

03:03Arkansas manpower and their equipment that is made to handle these kind of conditions it has

03:10really assisted us in this unprecedented situation the response from our partners and

03:19from our staff our staff has been working 24 hours since Saturday 12 hour rotations and

03:27you know they're working hard to do the best they can to keep the roads open but like we've all

03:32stated the only people who need to be out right now are emergency personnel. Rodney Mallett

03:38Communications Director for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development

03:42thanks so much for joining us I know you have your hands full over the next couple of days stay safe.

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