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Last week, cold weather and light precipitation was forecasted for both the Portland and Puget Sound areas, but Portland got hammered as snow piled up throughout the metro area. Since little snow fell in the Puget sound region, we sent down thirty members of our team to assist our Portland counterparts. As a regional company today, we are excited to share resources to serve our clients better.
Pacific has a teamwork culture which we call TEAM ORANGE and it shined bright last week. Both teams banded together working long hours - from Wednesday night through Friday - plowing, shoveling, de-icing and sanding properties.
This was a total miss by all the weather forecasting services making it challenging. Prior to last Wednesday's storm, we watched the forecast very closely for over a week. We monitored the prediction of cold weather arriving and the potential for some minor snowy conditions. We planned to pre-treat sites and then react to any minor clearing, as it was anticipated temperatures to drop into the teens.
It started to snow on the east side of Portland and in Vancouver around noon on Wednesday and we began to deploy there with our Hillsboro, Sherwood and Salem offices on standby. By 5:00pm, there was plowable snow on the ground on the east side and in Vancouver so we deployed our plow trucks and plow sub-contractors. It was very challenging to deploy on short notice after the snow started and especially when traffic began to snarl.
About that same time, snow began to fall in Hillsboro and the southern portions of town, as the forecast was still predicting light dustings! As the evening unfolded and snow began to pile up to the west and south, we again scrambled to deploy our crews and subcontractors there as well. Even PLM President, Bob Grover, spent a 15-hour shift in a plow truck!
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