Keith Kirk, of G&G Builders, clears the parking lots at Charleston’s George Washington High School Tuesday afternoon. Kanawha County schools will be closed for a fifth day on Wednesday, partly because many school parking lots remain blanketed in snow.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — 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…
