By Lt. Steve Warren, CPD
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – From 4 p.m. until 9:30 p.m., 49 crashes were reported to the E911 Center. Thirty-one of those crashes were inside the Clarksville city limits and eighteen were on county roads.
As of 9:30 p.m. almost all local precipitation is still sleet. District Two Shift Sergeant David Keenom said, ” I’m only seeing about ten percent of the vehicle traffic we normally have downtown this time of night. Most of those vehicles are front-wheel or four-wheel drive.” Patrol officers advised a lot of the accumulation on the ground looks like snow, but it is pure sleet at this point.
See weather forecast here.
Officer Coz Minetos stated, “It changed from rain to ice so fast that some people appear to have been caught off guard.”
Many motorists chose to leave their stuck vehicles on the side of the road, some after sliding into fixed objects such as trees and mailboxes.
“Some people called friends and relatives to come and get them on the roadway, and we (C.P.D. officers) gave some people a ride home to get them out of the weather,” said Minetos.
By 6 p.m., wait times for a tow truck were already over an hour as wrecker services were slammed with telephone requests.
Patrol officers report the main roads aren’t as bad as the back roads. “The ice is still coming down and streets with hills and curves are where drivers are having the most trouble, ” added Minetos.
Only four houses are known to have lost power so far.