KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As this trifecta winter storm started wreaking its havoc on Kansas City with highways shut down, a full ground stop at the Kansas City International Airport and travel becoming virtually impossible, Kansas City, Missouri City Manager Brian Platt says KCMO has never been more prepared.
“We’ve been aggressively pre-treating roads for 36 hours now, meaning we have a nice layer of salt down so that those first few inches that fall they will be melted by the salt that we have down to keep us ahead,” Platt said.
While not sugarcoating the fact that the brunt of this storm is still not past us Platt says there absolutely will be challenges.
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“The two big challenges we’re thinking of right now are the temperatures that will be extremely low and the volume of snow we’re going to get all at once those are two of the biggest things you can deal with when it comes to a snowstorm,” Platt said.
The first of those challenges came early Saturday afternoon when the airport came to a screeching halt with equipment not working properly stranding thousands of passengers
Among those affected were Chiefs players and coaches headed to Denver for Sunday’s game. The team was stuck for hours on the tarmac.
“Airport has resumed normal operations we had a significant amount of ice falling all at once in a lot of different places around town coupled with some equipment issues which you have from time to time during storms. Everything has been resolved and we’re back in business,” the City Manager said.
He says he is confident that from this point forward through the duration of this storm the airport will remain open.
This comes as the city has already made the decision to cancel all non-essential services, trash and recycling for Monday and Tuesday.
As this storm ramps up the man in charge of this preparation is clear that the months of prep and the days of laying the groundwork for this massive storm will pay off.
“We’ve never been more prepared at this point, never had more drivers, never had more trucks, never had more salt, we’ve never had more training in our history in Kansas City,” Platt said.
Platt urged the more than half of a million people who call the City of Fountains home to stay inside.
“Stay home, stay inside, stay off the roads. Just stay safe it’s going to take us a little time to clean our roads and get everything back to normal” Platt said.
The city will give another update on this storm and their efforts on Sunday at 1 p.m.
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