Page 9 - Work_Force_February_2018

OSWEGO — Directly along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, the SUNY Oswego campus not only gets an immense amount of lake-effect snow, but the sub-zero winds blowing off the lake can cut like a knife.
“It can be very brutal,” says Lonna Orta, a CSEA member who works as a janitor in the campus’ Hewitt Student Union building.
Orta’s duties include snow blowing and shoveling the sidewalks and entrances all the way around
the building. Sometimes she and other janitorial staff spend an eight- hour shift just circling around a few campus buildings clearing snow, as it keeps coming.
The cold, though, is another huge challenge for her and her co-workers.
“If it’s below zero [degrees], we take warmup breaks when we need to, and we make sure we dress properly,” she said.
That includes wearing her bright pink snowpants, gloves, a hat or hood and her heavy jacket. Even bundled under all that winter gear, the cold can be biting.
“The blowing snow — it freezes to your face,” she said. “Your eyelashes freeze. It’s bitter cold and you can feel the sting in your face.”
Yet Orta and her co-workers continue to work outside to clear the walks.
“We need to make sure no one slips and falls,” she said.
WHITE PLAINS — When the worst of winter weather hits, most of us head home and hunker down.
For CSEA members working
as paramedics and emergency medical technicians for the Town of Greenburgh, that’s when the work ramps up.
That was certainly the case during a recent extreme cold spell, which included a little-known weather phenomenon known as a bomb cyclone.
“It was just as cold, windy and wet as you could imagine,” said Town of Greenburgh Unit member Kevin Lynch, an emergency medical technician who has worked for the town the past seven years. “Most of us here have been doing this work for a long time, so we have an idea of what to expect, but we still feel the cold.”
What to expect? Plenty of motor vehicle accidents, Lynch said, due
partly to the high traffic volume from the interstate and state highways running through the town. Workers also prepare for an increase in cardiac events and strokes resulting from residents shoveling snow.
To allow workers to respond in the heaviest snow and ice, town mechanics place chains on ambulance tires.
Unit President Jared Rosenberg,
a paramedic supervisor, said that in addition to wearing multiple layers of clothing to stay warm, paramedics and EMTs also stash turnout gear, much like what firefighters wear,
in emergency vehicles as an added layer of protection.
What’s one piece of advice Lynch offered for residents grappling with winter weather? Stay off the roads, if at all possible.
“It puts drivers in jeopardy, it puts us as first responders in jeopardy and it makes it tougher and riskier
Lynch
for the workers out plowing the roads,” Lynch said.
Even when the weather’s bad, EMTs never quit
Orta: ‘Your eyelashes freeze’
Bitter weather means increased water and sewer repairs
WHITE PLAINS — On a regular day, a water main break can mean long hours for our members making the repairs.
When the wind chill is 15 to 20 degrees below zero, it takes things to a new level.
“It hasn’t been this cold in 30 years,” said CSEA member Steve Meszaros, general foreman for the Town of Greenburgh Water and Sewer Department and a 38-year town employee. “We were dealing with 50 mile per hour winds and single digit temps, and we were out three or four times through the night.”
Water main breaks were just the tip of the iceberg, no pun intended. Workers repaired more than a dozen leaks during the blast of arctic weather, with jobs ranging from 16-inch pipe to a 3⁄4 inch service
line leak.
On top of that, workers handled
multiple sewer backups, fire hydrant repairs, and more than a dozen water meters inside residents’ homes that had to be replaced after freezing.
Broken pipes and shutoffs at homes were numerous, said CSEA member John LaVigna. At one house, workers even had to create a makeshift shield to protect them from water spraying from a burst pipe as they worked to replace a frozen meter.
According to CSEA member Charlie Gray III, a foreman, workers wore five to six layers of clothing, along with scarves and hats, allowing them to get the job done.
The work put some wear and tear on members’ work gear, said Meszaros, noting that workers there went through a dozen pairs of work boots and three dozen pairs of gloves over the course of the worst weather.
— Jessica Ladlee
Gray III
— Jessica Ladlee
February 2018
The Work Force 9
— Mark M. Kotzin
Visit our website at cseany.org to learn more about working safely in cold weather and how your employer should
be protecting you while you’re on the job.