Easton DPW Director: All Hands on Deck

Beginning at 3 p.m. Friday, Easton's roads will be flooded with plows.

"We’ve already done some pre-treating of the roadways – one round of anti-icing is down," Department of Public Works Director David Field said at 1 p.m. Friday. "We’ll probably do another round in the afternoon on our mains and then we’ll have our contractors in. We plan around 3 o’clock to have everyone staged at the DPW and then go out and start plowing."

Field said the town will have 24 town-owned plows on the road and an additional 58 contractors working to keep the roads clear.

The crews will concentrate on Easton's main roads.

"Our main roads are crucial," Field said. "We have 18 snow plow routes and in those routes we have main roads and side streets, so we concentrate on the main roads and make sure those are always open and we go into the side streets as we can."

With high wind gusts, Field expects multiple tree limbs down and power outages.

"We’ll have to rotate certain crews," he said. We have tree crews on stand-by that will be plowing as well. Once we have tree calls for trees down or wires down we’ll have to bring those guys back in and put them out in the tree trucks. We have crews to help barricade the roads as needed, too."

Crews will be working non-stop Friday night and into Saturday, with plowing expected to last until late Saturday night.

On Sunday, Field said the focus will be on sidewalks and "cleaning up" around the roads. It will be a busy weekend, with crews beginning Sunday "bright and early," he said.

Field echoed Governor Deval Patrick's request that residents stay off the roads as the storm persists.

"If we get up to three inches an hour, even with 58 contractor pieces and 24 town pieces, we can’t maintain all the roads to be in a good state," he said.