H3-S1-Fri1/23/26-TCJS-Charlie James interviews Justin Powell , Secretary of Transportation for SCDOT 00:00 All right, coming up tomorrow night, it is going to start getting very, very nasty here in South Carolina. We are advising everyone to stay home unless you absolutely have to travel. Joining us right now is Justin Powell, the Secretary of Transportation for the South Carolina Department of Transportation. Mr. Powell, welcome to the program. Have you had a busy week? Thank you, Charlie. No, it's been absolutely busy all across South Carolina as we get ready for this. Well, it could be a 00:28 very significant and historic ice storm coming to the upstate. long ago did you guys start preparing for this? Now we started efforts earlier this week. You know, we had had an event come through this past weekend where we thought we were going to have some freezing rain and we already were already at it. So our crews really started moving into action. The past two days they have been pre-treating the interstate. So you've been seeing a spray brine down on the interstate's primary routes and then 00:57 routes where people are getting to critical facilities like a hospital. So we've been working hard at it over the past several days and then we will start going into 24 hour operations in many parts of the state tonight and starting tomorrow as well, where folks will be out there working to fight the high, big amount of ice that we're anticipating might be falling in the upstate as Weatherport said, at least a half inch in ice, which is really, really. 01:26 That is significant. usually we have these things that happen, they just affect the upstate, they just affect the Midlands, or they just affect the low country. How do you, I mean, this is, practically everybody in the state's gonna be affected by this thing in one way or another. That's gotta be a massive undertaking. Yeah, no, it's an all hands on deck for the 3,000 men and women who have frontline responsibilities at DOT in terms of maintaining our highways. 01:51 So we've been working from the coast all the way up to the mountains of Oconee County getting ready for this storm. So it's been all hands. We've been, not only everybody on our own team working at it, obviously we've been bringing in some uh contract resources. So we have contractors also working on the interstates, putting down brine. We are bringing in uh crews to cut and toss uh any tree limbs that might fall. 02:19 on that, but it's just a recognition of the team we have at DOT that they're going to be willing to uh stay away from their families, working some really cold and hard temperatures that I think all of us are going to be dealing with soon and then putting out there to try to get the roads reopened as quickly as possible. How many trucks do we have in South Carolina that are able to spread brine, sand, calcium chloride, all of that stuff? 02:44 So it's about 1200 pieces of equipment that we have mobilized and we're bringing in extra resources in terms of uh those contractors to help us get there. so, you what I see is we'll be working to try to get the ice off the roads. It'll be a challenge just because it's going to get very, very cold in the upstate in the coming days. then, but we'll bring in our crews from the coast and for any trees that are down, we'll start bring them in with chainsaws to cut and clear the roads as fast as we can. 03:14 Is there any conditions to where you guys would go, all right, it's too dangerous for even us to get out here? I I think we're going to do, we're going to go out as long as we can, but obviously there are going to be opportunities when we get into the actual event. Well, you know, my first priority is the safety of our employees, the safety of the motoring public. So, you know, we may have to look at that and that applies to the traveling public as well in terms of making sure that if it's 03:40 It's cold and icy out, know, four wheel driv ...
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