While most of Issaquah slept Tuesday night, Mark Barfield, a 19-year veteran of the city’s maintenance department said goodnight to his eight children, slipped into boots and headed out into the coming snow storm.
His dump truck rattled and shook while the attached plow pushed a thin layer of snow over a curb like a gentle wave breaking onto the sand. In fact, much of the brown snow mixture was sand. He alone had dumped several tons of stuff on the Issaquah/Fall City Road that night.
It didn’t matter how much he plowed or how much de-icer he laid behind, a constant flurry covered his work with a clean white layer of snow.
“Even when you have the best operation in the world, when nature calls, you can only do so much,” he says, before pulling into local gravel quarry to load up on sand. “You’ll always be playing catch up.”
It was the second 12-hour shift he had worked on only about 4 hours of sleep, but with 30 other people working the same schedule, he could only be grateful that there was enough work to keep him distracted from his fatigue, he said. “Some of these guys have been going since Saturday.”
After a storm of wearisome forecasts, only a few inches of snow stacked on the Sammamish Plateau and in Issaquah’s valley floor. Most people heeded the warning and stayed home, but for those with little choice in the matter, Public Works Operations staffed men and women, like Barfield, 24 hours a day to keep the roads as safe as possible.
Through the course of Wednesday, the department expected to lay down over 250 tons of sand with seven trucks. When the snow melts, they’ll then use the city’s street sweeper to collect as much of it as they can.
Before cleanup, however, there comes the flood warnings. If the snow melts too quickly Thursday and Friday, they’ll focus instead on delivering sand and bags to residents in the flood zone, Barfield said. “It can get pretty hectic.”
While no one enjoys longer and late-night shifts, storms do change the pace around Public Works, which year-round focuses on filling potholes, fixing sidewalks and tree trimming.
The more the city grows, the more complicated the operation becomes. Barfield recalls a time when he was the only one operating a truck for the night. New to the team, he struggled and struggled to put chains on the truck. When they were finally tightly fastened, he realized he had put them on backward.
Barfield is now the most experienced driver on the plow team. He carefully works his route from the inside out, pushing windrows (piles of snow) further to the edge of the road.
It was a calm event, in years past he’s seen 40 cars stuck on the steep Issaquah/Fall City Road. Wednesday morning there was only one semi-truck, pulled over to install chains. Barfield straightened his plow, nodded to the driver and kept on moving.
Mark Barfield fills his dump truck with de-icer at the city’s Public Works Operations work shops.
Mark Barfield plows Front Street with a dump truck modified for the weather. While most of Issaquah stayed home Wednesday, maintenance workers were clearing the streets 24 hours a day.
Mark Barfield steps into his truck, before heading out back to the Issaquah streets to plow snow.
