TxDOT focusing on pretreating major highways, bridges and overpasses across DFW

FORT WORTH, Texas - TxDOT continues to pretreat major highways and other busy arteries across the DFW Metroplex, focusing first on bridges and overpasses.

Both Dallas and Fort Worth are making it a priority to focus first on keeping roads passable around hospitals and other emergency facilities.

Over the weekend, more than 700 TxDOT personnel prepared for winter weather by pretreating roads, bridges, and overpasses with over 500,000 gallons of brine and approximately 800 cubic yards of granular material.

Winter Preps in Fort Worth

Monday afternoon, trucks were already out across Fort Worth. The city’s medical district is a big priority as they treat the streets and entrances near hospitals where emergency vehicles are likely to travel.

The Fort Worth Transportation and Public Works Department is in prep and pretreatment mode. Huge amounts of sand are getting loaded up and ready. 

"We will have crews on standby for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday," said Teanna Thompson, with the city’s public works department. "Thursday, we will start a 24-hour rotation. So our crews will be on 12-hour shifts."

The sand-salt mixture aims to keep ice at bay when the surface temperature drops below freezing. 

"Brine, we have to do at least 48 hours in advance," said Thompson. "We are doing our critical hills, our hospitals, our emergency entrances and our emergency overflow shelters."

Shelters are another priority ahead of the winter storm, with the goal being to get everyone inside and out of the freezing temperatures.

"This situation doesn’t come around in Texas a lot," said Gary Wilkerson, When We Love executive director. "But when it arrives, it is very dangerous, and it has to be taken seriously."

Wilkerson’s non-profit is providing an emergency overflow shelter in Fort Worth. It’s ready for use when the city’s available permanent shelter space reaches capacity.

"We partner with the city of Fort Worth and the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition to make sure people have a safe, warm place to lay their head at night," Wilkerson said. "It’s a very dangerous situation, and we recommend everybody that’s on the street that doesn’t have a safe place to go, that they come to our building here at 1100 East Lancaster and let us get them into the shelter."

Fort Worth residents can call 311 to find out about available shelter beds and other city services.

For more winter weather resources in Fort Worth, click here.

Preparing Dallas Roads

The Dallas TxDOT District — encompassing Dallas, Collin, Denton, Ellis, Kaufman, Rockwall and Navarro counties — began dropping brine along primary roadways on Monday.

"Weather events like this are somewhat unpredictable," said Tony Hartzel, with the TxDOT Dallas District. "So we have a host of different options and equipment we can use."

Come Wednesday, it says it will implement its "emergency plan," treating roads around the clock, 24/7.

Thursday will bring a strong chance of a wintry mix, mainly consisting of snow.

"We’re gonna have more than 400 people working this event until it’s over," said Hartzel. "And they’ll be working in 12-hour shifts."

The Dallas District says it has 20 snowplow blades it’ll place on dump trucks to help clear roads and the same amount of what it calls "maintainers" to scrape tops of roadways.

"We’ll have enough equipment," Hartzel said. "And if we need more, we can always get more."

Secondary roads, such as less-traveled state highways and FM roads, won’t see a lot of attention from TxDOT. 

"If it’s snowing and raining and or freezing rain, everybody needs to slow down, take your time and assume that there is ice on the roadway," advised Hartzel.

The city of Dallas, which handles surface streets off of the highways, says it is still finalizing its emergency operation plans.  It plans to hold a news conference