Wrentham, Norfolk, Plainville Continue to Cleanup After Blizzard of 2013

Wrentham, Plainville and Norfolk saw a substantial snowfall during Friday and Saturday. Cleanup is still continuing throughout the towns, but after Monday’s rain, snow clearing is secondary to clearing flood basins, according to town officials.

“(Monday)  we’re concentrating on cleanup,” said Wrentham town administrator William Ketcham. “We’ll be moving into the cleanup of the snow piles at various intersections. The public works is presently cleaning up on public property and we’re opening up the access roads to all of our water tanks.”

Ketcham said that Wrentham kept on top of the snowfall and made sure the roads were clear throughout.

“There was nothing serious as far as snow removal. We just kept at it steadily. We did find at one point during the storm, we effectively only used the largest trucks… The smaller vehicles couldn’t handle it. We came through the storm very well and all our personnel performed fantastically.”

Superintendent of public works in Wrentham Michael Lavin said that a lot of work is now going into site cleanup and widening of the roads during the rest of the week.

“It’s not going to be an overnight fix but we are working on it,” he said. “One thing I would like to stress is the amazing job the people here at the Wrentham Public Works did. They just could not have performed better to keep the roads and the community safe.”

Norfolk DPW director Robert McGhee said that the roads in Norfolk are also mostly cleared up, but he said the town still has more work to do.

“The fighting of the storm continues,” he said.

He said the DPW is now in the process of making sure that the catch and flood basins are clear from snow.

 “We’re going around and we’re cleaning drainage. We kind of swoop in and uncover the catch basins. All the areas known to be floodable.”

McGhee said they will also clearing mailbox areas and continuing to carve away at major intersections to increase line of sight for traffic.

“Some of the intersections are tough,” he said.

Plainville town administrator Joseph Ferandes said the town is also doing more cleanup,

“The work is particularly in the center of town where the snow is piled up on sidewalks,” he said. “Frankly I think they did a phenomenal job.”

Fernandes said that there were no problems in Plainville during the storm.

“I’m sure the problem was working for 36 hours straight,” he said.