Gov. Josh Stein discusses North Carolina’s winter storm response

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — In recent days, road crews across the North Carolina have made progress clearing highways, but some roads remain covered with snow and ice.

On Tuesday, WWAY’s Jeff Rivenbark spoke to North Carolina Governor Josh Stein about the state’s response to the winter storm.

“It really was a rare event because it was a double whammy,” Stein said. “Two weekends we got hit by sleet and freezing rain which had major impacts on the roads and within days we get hit with a storm that covered the entirety of the state and all 100 counties got snow and some of the amounts in southeastern North Carolina are just mind boggling — 16 inches, 18 inches. So, it was a huge effort to respond.”

Stein also took the opportunity to thank NCDOT workers, crews and contractors who have been working non-stop to clear the roads.

“They put down about 10-million gallons of brine before each of the two storms and since the storms they’ve used 100,000 tons of salt and they probably have another 20,000 tons to go,” he said. “So, they have been working their butts off. They worked 90 hour last week and so this week it’s been more of the same.”

While the NCDOT does have infrastructure and contingency plans in place for handling bit winter weather events, when it comes at once and affects the entire state, that poses a big challenge.

“North Carolina has more state road miles to maintain that any other state in the county other than Texas,” and Stein added, “It is just a huge enterprise whenever we get hit by a storm that covers the entirety of the state.”

Most winter storms that impact North Carolina tends to be a little more regionalized.

“We can move resources from one region to help out another region that got hit hard. but not this time because everybody has been working hard on the roads and highways in their own region,” Stein said.

Now, that this storm is over, Stein says state NCDOT leaders are now focused on the preparations necessary for the next potential storm like making sure there are adequate stockpiles of salt.

“We had enough at the start of this –about 150,000 tons which is enough typically for three storms,” Stein said. “We are now below 50,000 tons which means we could respond to one more storm.

Stein says they are quickly working hard to replenish the state’s supply of salt because “if we got hit by another double whammy we don’t want to be in a position where we can’t treat the roads.”

But North Carolina isn’t the only state working to replenish its stockpiles of salt.

“The problem is — other states are similarly constrained by how much salt they have because everybody got hit by the storm two weekends ago,” Stein said. “So we’re calling in all of our contacts to resupply salt as quickly as possible.”