A Dispatchers Perspective

It started out as a typical winter storm. Granted visibility was down to one delineator and accumulation was six inches an hour, but all of the plow trucks were out. A travel ban had been issued, not that anyone really pays attention to those. Apart from the occasional idiot in a ditch everything was going fine. Until the tandem tractor trailer rolled over across all three lanes.

It was the tractor trailer driver who called it in, thankfully uninjured. The dispatchers got everyone rolling, heavy tow truck, state police officer for the accident report, and maintenance to provide traffic control, set up a detour, and plow the lanes as soon as they’d be able. Everyone was enroute in under five minutes of the accident occurring.

So why did the newspapers say we had people stuck out there for almost 24 hours?

Within another five minutes, anyone who had signed up to receive text messages or emails about major incidents on the Thruway were notified. It was also posted on the Thruway website. Signs were lit for one hundred miles behind the accident telling people to seek alternate routes. Considering we can only go as fast as the computer systems allow, not a bad notification time.

The tow truck arrived onscene first. It only took them fifty minutes. By the time the tow had gotten there we had already received a half-dozen phone calls from people stuck behind the accident. They were calling to advise us about the accident because no emergency vehicles were there yet. Thankfully, the veteran dispatchers got all the callers information; name, callback number, and even the make, model, and color or license plates of their vehicles. 

By the time the trooper got there, twenty minutes later, we were up to another dozen phone calls. No longer were we getting the calls about “do you know about this accident?”. Now we were getting the calls of “How long is this going to take?” Granted the state troopers were not completely to blame, the closest unit not already on a major accident was over twenty miles away and had to hit a u-turn fifteen miles behind the accident scene.

Two hours and twenty minutes after the accident occurred, maintenance finally had the detour set up. What took so long? Well first the dispatching supervisor had to call six different people. Then those six people had to call each other to figure out what they were going to do. Then after nearly an hour of phone calls a plan was put in place. Then maintenance had to go back to their shop and get the proper trucks. They kept plowing the roads until a plan got put into place and they knew what equipment they would need. They didn’t leave the shop to set up the detour for another fifty minutes. They had to wait for all the necessary drivers to come back to the maintenance yard to leave together. A half hour after they set out to set it up, the detour was in place. Now no more vehicles would be stuck behind the accident.

The problem was, there were already numerous vehicles stuck behind the accident. Stuck in snow that was over a foot deep and only getting deeper. By now we were getting the repeat callers and the panicked callers. People crying that the cannot get their doors open. Demanding to know what to do if they run out of gas. Mothers screaming that they had their babies in the car. Millennials without winter coats because their cars had heat. Nobody wanted to be told to sit there and conserve their gas by turning off their vehicles until they got cold and had to turn on the heat. 

The dispatchers taking the calls got all the complainants information; name, callback number, and license plates instead of make, model, and color of the vehicles. By now every vehicle stuck behind the tandem tractor trailer, which was still on its side, would have to at least be winched out of the snow. Some might even need to be towed off the Thruway.

The towing agency with the contract for towing light vehicle in that area was not the same subcontractor that was working on uprighting the tandem. This means, with the detour in place, they could begin to move vehicles weighing under ten thousand pounds out. Starting from the back of the queue. They could only do this one or two vehicles at a time, usually having to tow the vehicles to the exit twelve miles behind the accident scene. When the tow cleared the vehicle they called in the license plate, so the dispatchers could clear the event, one out of over a hundred, associated with that vehicle. Naturally, when the tow took vehicles next to them people would call demanding “when is it my turn?” or “I was here longer than them why did they told them out first?”. The worst were the people who needed a tow off the exit and the towing company did the simple winch outs around them first. 

It only took the heavy tow just over eleven hours to get the trailers removed from the roadway. They worked non-stop. The cab of the tractor trailer took another two hours but they worked on that while the plow trucks were going through to clear the lanes of snow and reopen the road.

First the state troopers had to take over for maintenance for the detour. That took another 80 minutes because it was shift change. Then maintenance had to drive back to the yard to switch out trucks to begin plowing. Fifty-five minutes after they were replaced on the detour, maintenance called and said the accident scene was clear and the road could be reopened.

Thus in actuality it only took thirteen and a half hours to clear the Thruway after the tandem tractor trailer rolled over in the snowstorm. So why did the newspapers say we had people stuck out there for almost 24 hours? Most likely because it sounded better than saying more than 12 hours.