Where were the ODOT trucks?

I have to admitting to being more than little displeased with the Ohio Department of Transportation Sunday morning and early afternoon for its apparently lack of preparedness for the snow storm that struck in Central Ohio.

We were in Delaware, Ohio, for a family gathering when the rain switched to snow about 10 a.m. Sunday. Fearing flight problems back to Washington, D.C., our daughter and her husband contacted Southwest Airlines via their iPad to learn of an 11:55 a.m. flight, but were unable to immediate switch to it from their 4 p.m. flight. So, as we drove them to Port Columbus International Airport south on U.S. 23 to I-270 around Columbus to the airport in terrible road conditions that did not appear to have been scrapped or salted, our daughter continued trying to get the flight switched and finally succeeded.

The normally 35-minute drive took more than an hour and we saw several cars that had spun off the road. Once on the outer belt, we inched by a terrible accident in which we later learned the driver had been killed and two teenage passengers had been seriously injured when their mini van went out of control and crashed front-first into a bridge abutment.

Even with that serious accident, we still saw only one salt truck on the busy loop around Columbus.

When we got to I-70, the road continued to be barely passable at 30-35 mph, with no salt trucks in sight. A normally hour drive from Columbus to Zanesville took nearly two hours, with only the dumbest of motorists attempting to drive faster than 40 mph ... which there were several.

Once east of Zanesville we had apparently gotten ahead of the storm and roads were just wet, with no ice or snow. On I-77 south to Parkersburg the roads were not even wet so it was back driving at regular speeds.

So, where were the salt trucks on U.S. 23 , I-270 and I-70?