ST. LOUIS —
Most of our area got just an inch or two of snow Monday, but it caused gridlock and treacherous conditions on the roads.
"It was just chaos. It was absolute chaos,” Kathy Irish said.
Her commute home to St. Charles County on 364 — normally a 22-minute drive — took two and half nerve-wracking hours.
"I didn't see any plows,” she said. "I told my boys I prayed the whole way home, like 'Dear God, let me get home, just please let me get home,'” she said.
MoDOT admitted their response fell short even though they’d been planning for the snow since Friday.
"It wasn't our best day, and I wish it would have been better,” district maintenance engineer Bob Becker said in a news conference Tuesday.
In an interview with 5 On Your Side’s Jenna Barnes, Becker said MoDOT “always” puts treatment down right before rush hour to help traffic flow, but the department didn’t this time because it thought the snow had stopped.
“We didn't see that last band coming through,” he said.
He said their strategy boiled down to the numbers.
"At some point you start reducing your treatment because you don't want to waste your money while you're doing that,” he said.
When asked if there’s not enough room in the budget to account for a margin of error in the forecast, Becker responded, “I mean the question is, how many times do you do that?"
After the first accumulating snow this season, Becker says MoDOT is in debrief mode, figuring out what changes they need to make for the next one. He added they respond to all storms differently.
"Their vision and mission is safety, service and stability, and where was that last night?" Irish said.
