PACIFIC NORTHWEST EDITION
A Supplement to:
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March 10 2024 Vol. VIII • No. 5
“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded in 1957.” Your Pacific Northwest Connection – Sharon Swanson – 1-760-518-4336 – sswanson@cegltd.com
After performing some of his regular job duties as the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Transportation Maintenance Coordinator, Jake Jensen found himself in the middle of a six-hour rescue mission after storms engulfed Western Oregon.
By Lori Tobias CEG CORRESPONDENT
On a Saturday afternoon in the middle of January, Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Transportation Maintenance Coordinator Jake Jensen was on his way back to the Veneta maintenance station after assisting co-workers with downed trees on a nearby rural highway. A severe winter storm was expected to paralyze much of western Oregon, but the forecast for the lower Willamette
Valley, where Jensen worked, suggested the area would escape the worst of it. The forecasts, it turned out, were wrong. At approximately 2 p.m., Jensen encountered a line of traffic at a standstill. So began a more than 6-hour rescue mission that left Jensen wet, cold and exhausted, his truck damaged, but everyone safe. The storm had begun pelting the Portland metro area and areas north of Eugene on a Friday night. Saturday, the temperatures around Eugene dropped, the winds picked up and soon the already saturated ground began to freeze.
“The temperatures dropped into the double digits,” recalled ODOT PIO Mindy McCartt. “We had been getting pelted with such precipitation that everything was saturated and wet. It froze and never completely thawed, and then rained and refroze .... ODOT gets out with the de-icer and salt, but with those frozen layers, nothing is going to break through that. Add in the wind and the cold and you are going to get what we like to call exploding trees — saturated trees that freeze from the inside. If you have not been in a wooded see RESCUE page 6