This winter the city of Eugene has been hit by a series of winter storms. As most locals know this weather is unusual for the area and very few expected the aftermath that the winter blast left.
An ice storm blew through Eugene on Feb. 8, which was preceded by days of snow. As a result, the University of Oregon campus suffered damage.
According to Garrick Mishaga, a campus exterior supervisor, no major trees fell, though the accumulation of icy weather snapped branches throughout campus.
When the UO campus is faced with severe weather campus operations turns to inclement weather plans they have in place for snow, ice and heavy rain.
“We plan as far ahead as possible,” Mishaga said. “We will plan, schedule and execute.”
For this particular storm, campus operations went in “very confident,” according to Mishaga. The higher accumulation and lack of a rising temperature threw them off a bit, said Mishaga and they were forced to change modes once the ice build up reached a critical point.
The Eugene Police Department went into the weather confident as well.
“I felt like we were really prepared, because we had the one in December,” said John Hankemeier from the EPD Public Information Office. “We’re always ready.”
Joe Harwood, spokesman for the Eugene Water and Electric Board echoed this sentiment saying, “We felt pretty prepared.”
“I think it is harder to prepare for an ice storm, we don’t get those very often,” said Harwood. “At the height of the event we only lost about eight percent of out customers…It would have been a lot worse if we didn’t have an intensive tree trimming program.”
For the extreme weather that hit at the end of last week, campus operations brought in a contractor to plow major streets and parking lots because the university doesn’t own one. For snow, campus operations also uses utility vehicles with small plows and sand units for walkways. When there is typical Eugene snowfall (about one inch or less) they utilize blowers, broom equipment and manpower with hand brooms and shovels to clean streets and walkways.
Two years ago, UO went through a similar storm on March 21, 2012.
“We learned quite a bit from the last storm,” Mishaga said. That March, UO saw 12 major trees fall and campus operations had to take out another six due to severe damage. This storm, according to Mishaga, didn’t have as severe repercussions for the trees on campus. “We will probably have to remove some,” Mishaga said. “We felt much better going into this one.”
Several areas experienced power outages throughout Eugene. For those still without power, EWEB has released a work list for estimated restoration times for powerless areas.
The Emerald created a map of the areas of Eugene that had prolonged outages.