Arkansas DOT crews assisting in clearing Louisiana roadways

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – If you want an example of why you’ve heard over and over again to stay off the roads, Louisiana has seen many – with cars slipping on roadways, getting stuck, and overturning. Superintendent of Louisiana State Police Colonel Robert Hodges, said in a press conference that as of Wednesday afternoon, troopers have responded to over 100 weather-related calls for service and numerous crashes across the state. Officials said staying off the roads for one more day will help us all get back to normal.

Deric Wyatt, the state maintenance engineer for the Arkansas Department of Transportation, has been working non-stop with over 60 of his fellow ARDOT employees since the storm hit. They have been using their extensive experience plowing snow to help clear our highways and interstates while local crews lay down salt and sand, some of which ARDOT provided for Louisiana. He said their goal is to have major roadways cleaned up by Thursday evening into Friday morning.

“As far as I know, we’ve never come out of the state of Arkansas to assist another state in this fashion,” Wyatt said. “There’s – I don’t know about 40, 20 miles of bridge and about another 40-some-odd miles to before we get to the river bridge there in Baton Rouge.”

During the afternoon press conference with state officials, Governor Landry said he believes we will be fine if we can just get through the next 24 hours. He said so far, we have seen two lives claimed from a fire and wants to remind everyone to turn heaters off, limit open flames, and don’t use gas stoves or ovens to heat your homes.

Warming shelters will be open through Friday morning depending on the conditions.

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