Snow on the ground is many things to many people. For children, it’s a winter wonderland. For others, it’s a few days off of work. But for some employees at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, it means a long cleanup. The center, as with much of the eastern United States, experienced a winter storm with blizzard-like conditions Jan. 4, shutting down the center for four days. “We were expecting about between 5-8 inches per the forecasts,” said Doug Smith, Langley emergency management specialist. By his unofficial count, Langley received close to 10 inches. “It was hard to measure because the winds kept blowing everything around,” Smith said. Langley emergency management staff started preparing for the storm days in advance, including meeting with organization point of contacts. On Jan. 2, emergency management deployed crews to start pretreating roads, building entrances and sidewalks, said Jose Caraballo, deputy director of Langley’s Safety and Mission Assurance Office. To date, crews have used at least 4,500 gallons of brine solution for the roads, in addition to tons of salt and sand.
Image credit: NASA/David C. Bowman