Stay off the roads, St. Louis

The irony of the phrase “perfect storm” is that it actually describes a negative—a random confluence of problematic events that combine to make a bad situation worse.

That’s what St. Louis, like much of the country, has experienced this week. The weekend’s heavy snowfall of 8 to 12 inches throughout the metropolitan area was joined by a layer of sleet that has formed the equivalent of an ice sheet covering the region.

Then – as if it was all planned by some malignant atmospheric prankster – the temperature dropped and has remained submerged, ensuring that this icy, snowy mess will stay with us for a while. The thermostat is not expected to creep above freezing again until as late as Friday.

We share the frustration that has been expressed by the public in online forums, including post-broadcast comment sections, about the apparent lack of effective road clearing, particularly in smaller neighborhoods and side streets in the city.

Wednesday morning, in fact, it still looked like no plow blade had touched most streets around Downtown except for the major snow routes, and even those remained slick. That Tucker Boulevard in front of City Hall was still largely covered by the turn lanes is not a good look.

But even those not inclined to have much patience for the work of city, county and state government should find some in this case.

Part of the problem is literally chemical; road salt can lose its ice-melting power anywhere colder than 20 degrees, and the city has been well below that for most of the time since Sunday’s sleet fell.

As the Post-Dispatch’s Kim Bell reports, another factor has been a shortage of experienced snowplow drivers — part of the broader labor shortage that has hampered government generally at all levels since the pandemic.

Neither would say that the current emergency will not highlight areas for improvement in service delivery. Snowstorms can be make-or-break events for political leaders, especially in cities. St. Louis leaders will have plenty of time after the ice melts to argue whether they met at this moment.

The storm could also spur useful discussion about Missouri’s famously inadequate state infrastructure resources, given the trouble the Missouri Department of Transportation has had clearing interstates in St. Louis area this week.

“Folks of Missouri, you get what you pay for,” wrote one Post-Dispatch commenter, noting the state legislature’s constant fixation on tax cuts. Others reported, anecdotally, that nearby Illinois roads and highways were noticeably clearer than Missouri’s.

The low temperatures have also exposed St. Louis’ continued inability to address the issue of homelessness, which at times like this becomes a life and death issue.

Nothing recently illustrated that better than the heartbreaking photo accompanying this editorial, by Post-Dispatch photographer Laurie Skrivan, of a homeless man being attended to by emergency workers on a Downtown sidewalk after collapsing on a cold Tuesday.

As the Post-Dispatch’s Bryce Gray reports, city funding provides only 80 of the 215 emergency beds available in the city, with the rest relying on shaky private funding. It is unsustainable. Particularly troubling is the report that Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ office was caught off guard by Sunday’s closing of public libraries that would normally serve as warming centers. Officials should not wait until the middle of a once-a-year blizzard to get clarity on such arrangements.

Until the thaw arrives in the next day or two, residents should follow by now familiar advice: Check on vulnerable neighbors, keep pets indoors and, as much as possible, stay off the roads. Even in these divisive times, we are all in this together.