Snowplows to the rescue

Emergencies don’t take blizzard breaks.

Fortunately, local first responders are resourceful and have friends with big rigs and snowplows.

As the first big snow of the season fell in the area during the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 27, Montgomery’s ambulance crew received a call for help.

A driver had gotten stuck in the ditch near Kilkenny, climbed out of her vehicle, slipped, hit her head, and needed medical attention.

Kilkenny Fire and Rescue and Montgomery Ambulance were dispatched to the scene, but getting there proved difficult. The snow was piling up and the winds were high.

About 20 minutes earlier, at approximately 12:30 a.m., the City of Montgomery’s snowplowing crew had reported for duty.

Chris Roemhildt, the city’s public works supervisor, who also happens to be a Cleveland firefighter, had just begun to plow when he heard the call for Kilkenny rescue on his radio.

“Since I’m a firefighter, I always try to have my radio on, so I can help if I’m needed,” Roemhidlt explained. “When I heard Kilkenny paged for a car accident I knew Montgomery Ambo (ambulance) was getting called, so we had to make sure the ambo could get on the road and cleared the way to Highway 13.”

But, it wasn’t enough.

The ambulance crew requested assistance from the plower.

“They needed a truck to lead, to plow the way,” stated Roemhildt, who quickly took the payloader he was using back to the city’s garage to swap vehicles. “I jumped in the 550 one-ton truck that has a v-plow as fast as I could, and we started heading down 13 towards Kilkenny.”

Progress was slow. Roemhildt estimates he could only go between 10 and 12 miles per hour due to the blizzard conditions. At times, he was literally driving by feel, driving according to the vibrations from the plow on the road.

“It wasn’t fun... It felt like it took forever,” he stated.

On the way, Roemhildt called dispatch and asked...

To see more on this story pick up the December 19, 2019 print edition of The Montgomery Messenger.