CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Kanawha County schools will be closed again Wednesday, marking the fifth straight day school has been cancelled because of weather conditions.
The school system’s maintenance and transportation staffs are working to remove nearly 20 inches of snow from school parking lots and school bus turnarounds throughout the county left from Winter Storm Jonas.
“In the larger parking lots we have to run the trucks together as teams,” Executive Director of Maintenance Terry Hollandsworth said. “For Capital and Riverside, Riverside especially, it took four trucks four hours to scrape that parking lot. If I used one truck it would have probably been there for a couple of days.”
Crews started removing snow Sunday and by Tuesday morning had finished most of the larger school parking lots. The efforts were expected to shift to elementary school lots by Tuesday afternoon.
Custodians, school principals and volunteers are helping in the shoveling of sidewalks, Hollandsworth said.
The bus turnarounds are also the school system’s responsibility.
“The state road goes through and they plow the road and it blocks the entrance to the turnaround so we have to scrape that out and then make enough room for the bus to turnaround,” Kanawha County Schools Director of Bus Safety Jimmy Lacy said.
Another problem for bus routes is many two lane secondary roads have been reduced to one lane because of the snow piles. Buses will have problems if they meet another vehicle coming at them, Lacy said.