Some places woke up to almost two feet of snow Saturday morning. And the never ending job of clearing streets has led at least one community to hire a contractor to take the snow out of their village.
"It seemed like an ongoing job," said Wellsville Mayor Joe Surace. "We'd get something done, and then you turn around, and it's just as bad again."
And that job hasn't ended. His village is still digging out from the almost two feet of snow that fell this past weekend, and they are preparing for more. Wellsville has hired a contractor to try to remove some of the piles of snow that have taken over streets and sidewalks.
"I asked them, their first duties were to remove the mounds of snow, which was really becoming hazardous," said Surace, "not only for the drivers, but if we had a fire or a police emergency."
Monday night, heavy equipment was brought in, scraping the snow out in to the street and trucking it away.
"We take it down to what we call our pondage area," said Surace. "From there it melts, and it heads right into the river."
The mayor said the last time snow was trucked out of Wellsville was the blizzard of 1993. But this storm was more comparable to one that struck more than 50 years ago.
"Back in the 1950s we had 27 inches," said Surace. "As a matter of fact, that was in the paper this morning. This go around we had 22. Now in the '50s it seemed like it was more devastating because maybe of the equipment."
The overtime for the street department and hiring contractors is costing a lot of money. But Wellsville is hoping that the county declaring a state of emergency will bring in federal dollars to help cover some of the cost.
