Ice Age: DOT Spokesman Compares Buried Cars To Woolly Mammoths

Conn. DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick compared the buried, abandoned cars his department has been pulling out of the snow to woolly mammoths.

“When the glacier recedes the frozen mammoth will emerge,” said Nursick in an interview Sunday, describing buried vehicles they haven’t even been able to see yet.

Nursick said the “vast majority” of the public made his agency’s job easier by heeding warnings to stay off the roads, but those who didn’t really hampered cleanup efforts. “Our time is better spent clearing the roads than pulling someone out of an intersection because they decided to go sightseeing during a blizzard and got stuck,” he said. 

The DOT has their storm cleanup crews out in full force, with 850 plow trucks from both the state and private contractors as well as what Nursick describes as “heavier artillery”: 150 additional payloaders and about a dozen “massive industrial-sized snowblowers.”

“These things are huge. They would suck a car up and spit it out,” Nursick said of the snowblowers. “It sends out a jet of snow 100 feet in the air…These things just gobble up snow.”

But what indicates the scope of the storm more than anything else? Public feedback, which Nursick says has been overwhelmingly positive. “This is not a typical snowstorm. A typical snowstorm we get some complaints. Nobody’s complaining right now.”