Crews work to break up gravel road ice

OAKFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) - Even with the Tuesday afternoon warm weather, some Kent County roads were still covered with a thick layer of ice.  

Jim Carlson has lived off Podunk Road NE in Kent County for nearly 40 years and told 24 Hour News 8 he expects slick roads in the winter as a part of living in the country.  

"If you don't like living like that, don't live in the country because this is part of it," said Carlson. "As soon as the rains came along and the snows came along, this is what you get," he said, pointing to the thick layer of ice on a gravel road near his home.  

Carlson expects it, but said this year's temperature roller coaster has made things even more challenging.  

"If it gets cold tonight and freezes this stuff up again, we're going to have an ice skating rink," said Carlson.

The Kent County Road Commission was out in force Tuesday working to prevent that.

"What we're dealing with is a lot of hard-packed ice," said road commission Director Jerry Byrne. "The ground is so cold that the rain just freezes to the pavement, so the harder it rains, the more ice it builds."

Tuesday, trucks tried to scrape the ice off the roads and so some of the gravel would be on top. It was their second day on this job. Monday, the roads refroze within hours of their first attempt. .  

"It is very frustrating if you live in one of these rural gravel roads and you come out, and unless you're out an hour after we're here, you don't know we're here and we feel for you, but it's kind of the nature of gravel roads," said Byrne.

The county's more than 300 miles of gravel roadway -- roadways that just can't be salted -- are the most dangerous on a day like Tuesday, 24 Hour News 8 was told.

"They're lower priority because they have less volume, but on a day like today, we are going to send our forces out on these roads," said Byrne.  "They are a priority today for us for sure. Hopefully, it quits raining long enough that it's actually going to do some good, because I don't want to say what we're doing is in vain because it gets the people in and out. It gets emergency services there. But we're going to do it again and again and again until it freezes up we get some snow on it, and the snow will actually do us some good and give us some traction."

Their efforts were made that much more difficult by the fog that stuck around all day in some rural parts of Kent County.

"It's like being in a snowstorm," said Byrne. "Is it safe?  Probably not. But we're not going to leave roads like this for the motorists to drive on. The visibility you're seeing here is just like our trucks would see in a major snow storm, so it's tough. These vehicles are only goings our to five miles per hour. We've got all the lights on. We hope and pray that people slow down and don't run into one of them."