BOSTON, N.Y. – Treacherous conditions when the snow was falling hardest on Thursday caused school buses to get stuck in southern Erie County.
Both Colden and Boston both got about a foot or more of snow. It’s a valley area with steep hills.
“That is the challenge here, the hills,” said Paul Clarkson, Colden highway superintendent. “Trying to keep the hills clear so they can get up over and the buses is the most important."
Unfortunately, a handful of buses experienced issues at the end of the school day.
"Today we had trouble staying ahead of them, we were getting hammered,” Clarkson said. “I actually got a call from the county because they got a call that there were two buses stuck…It's not our road, but he couldn't get there and asked me if I could out there and give him a hand, and that's what we do with the shared services."
Erie County Public Works commissioner William Geary says there are about 15 to 20 trucks out in that southern Erie district, but several people reported to 2 On Your side that buses were struggling to complete their routes. Channel 2 received two photos of buses stuck on Back Creek Road.
"Two of our plow trucks were stuck trying to get into the Boston valley to get specifically to Zimmerman and Back Creek Road on that plow route,” Geary said.
Residents say they feel Back Creek hasn't gotten plowed regularly since the county took over for Boston, which used to plow its own roads.
“All our plow routes take about four hours to complete, and that's in decent weather. When you have [low] visibility and snowfall rates of two inches an hour, right there just in that weather is going to be eight inches of snow on the ground,” Geary said. “That's where we're at with the resources we had."
Geary says he is trying to move around resources in the 2018 county budget to get more plow drivers on the roads.