Kanawha County public school officials blamed Wednesday's school cancellation, the fifth consecutive nixed school day, on snow-covered parking lots and roadways, and said they didn't know when the problem will cease.
"It took four trucks four hours to clear the parking lot at Riverside High School," said Terry Hollandsworth, the school system's maintenance director, who said Tuesday afternoon that he hoped to have all high school and middle school lots plowed by the end of the day.
That would leave the largest category - elementary schools, of which Kanawha lists about 40 on its website - left to clean up. Hollandsworth said those lots are smaller and could be done by one truck, but he added that the school system's maintenance department has just six trucks with snowplows and the system's transportation department has only six more. And those trucks can only push snow on the lots, creating mounds that still cover up large sections.
Hollandsworth said that, normally, the equipment is enough to deal with the snow, but not this time, when 18.5 inches fell over the weekend in Charleston. He said around noon Tuesday that perhaps more than half the lots were still covered.
"It's just so much of it," he said.
The county is working with two contractors that have front-end loaders - vehicles with scoops that can actually lift snow - but he said other contractors are tied up with other work.
C.W. Sigman, Kanawha County's deputy emergency management director, said he put in a request from Hollandsworth to the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management for 10 front-end loaders and 30 dump trucks from the National Guard to help with work at 40 schools.
About an hour and a half later, though, he said he got notification that the request had been denied, with no explanation why.
Lawrence Messina, spokesman for the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, said West Virginia's emergency management division provides a streamlined database for county emergency management officials to request help from government agencies and volunteer organizations. He said the National Guard's limited equipment is being used elsewhere, largely in the Eastern Panhandle, where some places got more than twice as much snow as Charleston.
Messina said the state Division of Highways, which has the equipment the Kanawha school system needs, is focused on its "core task" of clearing roadways and ensuring they are safe. He said no other school system in the state has requested help clearing parking lots.
"The best course of action is for the county to use their own resources," Messina said of the Kanawha school system. "They are encouraged to, as they do in other circumstances, retain the services of contractors."
He said the DOH's resources might become available to Kanawha as that agency finishes with the roadways.
Kanawha Schools Superintendent Ron Duerring said the snow days will be made up Feb. 15 (Presidents' Day), March 25 (Good Friday) and May 25-27, three days tacked onto the original end of the school year. If classes are canceled Thursday and Friday, Duerring said, he doesn't know when they would be made up.
Because of the mounds of snow along the roadways, Duerring said, there's nowhere for kids to stand at bus stops, meaning a sliding car could possibly hit them, and he said there was only a path cleared down the middle of many side roads, hindering the buses' movement in rural areas.
"When people look at this, they only look at Charleston," he said. "They don't realize how big we are out in the outskirts."
According to the Division of Highways, as of 4 p.m. Tuesday, all primary roads were open in Kanawha County, and between 60 percent and 90 percent of the county's secondary roads were open. However, estimates of "third-priority" roads open ranged from 20 percent in the North Charleston area to 50 percent in the Elkview area.
Duerring said the county still could take advantage of an initiative that allows counties to count work that students complete at home during snow days as instructional days, thus preventing them from having to be made up. Two Northern Panhandle counties, Ohio and Hancock, already have done that.
Jefferson County, at the tip of the Eastern Panhandle, canceled classes for the rest of the week on Tuesday, and neighboring Berkeley County canceled Wednesday and Thursday classes. Besides Kanawha, several other counties canceled classes, including Boone, Lincoln, Clay and Logan. Several other counties, including Putnam, instituted a two- or three-hour delay for Wednesday.
Carrie Bly, spokeswoman for the Division of Highways, said there are more than 1,400 miles of roadway the agency is responsible for in Kanawha County, and about 36,000 miles of roadway statewide, including all the roads that aren't inside incorporated cities and towns.
Bly said extra equipment already is coming into Kanawha County from the division's District 2, which includes Cabell, Mingo, Logan, Lincoln and Wayne counties. In the Eastern Panhandle and rural counties, she said the DOH is employing private contractors and sometimes funding gas for volunteer farmers to help out with their snow blowers.
"We've got our own problems, I guess is what I'm trying to say," Bly said when asked about helping the school system. "We're covered up just like them. I seriously doubt we'd be able to help out in any way at this point."
Staff writer Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report. Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.