An ambulance driver is outside her vehicle, shoveling snow from underneath. She’s stuck on the yet unplowed Bellemeade Avenue on Evansville’s east side.
A patient is waiting inside, picked up because she was reporting severe pain. But on Sunday, Jan. 25, Evansville was newly covered with that thick blanket of snow, many roads still not passable for most drivers.
Bystander Delaney Byrum of Evansville happens to have her shovel, and pulled over to help.
“I'm about to go shovel somebody's yard who is about to go through radiation, and in case he needs to get out and go to the hospital,” she said.
The tires still spun helplessly near the intersection of Weinbach Avenue.
About 40 were stuck on Sunday, and 130 called into Evansville-Vanderburgh Joint Central Dispatch over the entire event. Multiple calls came in for several vehicles stuck near Walmart on the East Side as late as Tuesday the 27th.
Someone got stuck in Haynie’s Corner, the Saturday of the storm. Other calls included more ambulance drivers, city buses, vehicles blocking roads and even individuals with possible warrants for their arrest.
About 11 inches had fallen on the area. Director of Transportation and Services Todd Robertson said they used 2,000 tons of salt in this one event.
“We've probably expensed in this one event alone, as much as we do for a normal winter season,” he said during a taping of WNIN’s Newsmakers. “We had people working anywhere from 12,16, 18 hours around the clock,” he said. “It was not something that we were able to take off.”
He said they have 12 primary routes for main roads and fire stations, and 11 secondary routes that include facilities like schools, each taking about three hours.
The goal is usually 24 hours to “bare pavement,” Robertson said, but excessive snow can delay this.
Transportation was still a challenge for first responders — again there were other ambulances stuck in the snow, and not all secondary roads were plowed right away.
The ambulance driver stuck on Bellemeade finally drew enough bystander help to possibly get moving again.
Her patient’s parents, including John Willem, were also there. He said an SUV had to extract their daughter from the home. The same ambulance was stuck twice in the snow trying to get to the hospital.
Luckily, a mother-son team of Shannon and Mark Hardison, 13, and their full-size truck were able to get the ambulance unstuck.
A shift supervisor came in his four-wheel drive to guide her to the best route to the hospital.
Things are still pretty messy out there — especially in the neighborhoods — but the Evansville Vanderburg School Corporation finally rejoined in-person classes on Tuesday Feb. 3 with a two-hour delay.
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