Photo provided MARTINS FERRY resident Hyacin Ray and her son Milan, 2, stand with the snowman they made during the recent snowstorm that dumped several inches of snow onto the Ohio Valley.

MARTINS FERRY — City workers tackled the first big snowstorm of the year and did a great job, said Mayor John Davies.

Davies said his initial plan to only have so many plows and salt trucks out in one shift, but when the snow started piling up on Wednesday he was forced to have more go out at one time.

The city’s priorities are its hills and with most of the city’s homes built on hillsides, there are plenty to keep clear during a storm.

“We have 39 miles of road in the city and about 30 of them is hill. … It’s flat from Zane to Seventh Street to Third Street — everything else is hill,” he said.

Davies said during a big storm it is always a battle to keep the hills clean. He said at one point in the storm there was a car that slid on Mackey Avenue and hit a utility pole.

This same storm caused accidents all across the Ohio Valley including on major interstates where state road employees work continuously to keep lanes of traffic open.

At one point the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department declared Belmont County in a Level 1 Snow Emergency.

The goal of plowing the hills in the city is to try and help people get down the hills and to help ambulances and police cruisers get up the hills when there is an emergency, he said. At one point during the storm a cruiser that received a call for service had to park at the bottom of Ohio Street hill and officers had to walk to a house. The road was just too slick to drive up.

Typically the plowing priorities and patterns are Mackey Avenue, School Road, Hillendale down to Ohio 647 and then on to Crawford Heights. Next is downtown and other streets in town.

“It started snowing so hard and fast we had to have all the trucks out,” he said.

Davies noted he did receive a few comments via social media from people complaining about their road not being cleared, but at least one of those residents live on a flat, dead-end road.

“The roads were bad for us to be on. Our guys did a good job all in all. … We tried to keep it clear. I didn’t hear of anyone being late to work (Thursday) morning, so they did their job,” he noted. “Our guys are dedicated to taking care of our people. They know they work for the people. I’m pretty proud of our guys.”

Davies said for the future storms those who do not need to drive should avoid doing so, and not be tempted to go for a joyride to look at all the snow.