Drivers now ‘holey' rollers

The rash of potholes is teaching drivers how to multitask: They have to swerve and swear at the same time.

With so many streets resembling the surface of the moon, drivers are desperately trying to keep their tires out of the craters.

The bad news: Things won't get better any time soon.

The region has been saturated by snow, ice and rain over the past month. Not only does all that moisture lead to tons of potholes during freeze-thaw cycles, but it also makes repair work a major challenge.

Patching material won't stick properly if a pothole is too wet. And more rain is forecast for much of this weekend.

“This is as good as it gets for forming potholes — and about as bad as it gets for patching,” said Fred Thole, Omaha's street superintendent.

When Tracy Boughton drives home on Military Avenue, she's constantly looking for chuckholes that could jolt her 1999 Honda Accord into the repair shop.

Some stretches of Military near 72nd Street are so bad the holes are tough to avoid.

“You have to be in the middle” of the lanes, she said. “You can't be left or right or you're going to lose tires.”

“A mutual understanding between drivers” exists, she said, to give each other enough room to swerve to the middle of the road if a monster pothole pops up.

The nerve-wracking scene is “kind of a recipe for disaster,” said Boughton, a marketing assistant at the Skyline Retirement Community near 72nd Street and Military Avenue.

Be careful out there, Omaha police say. Officers don't want drivers causing even bigger accidents while avoiding pothole accidents.

“We want people to do whatever necessary to keep themselves and others safe,” said Omaha police spokesman Michael Pecha. “If they do feel it's necessary to weave around a pothole, we just want to make sure that they're alert and aware of their surroundings.”

Omaha street crews went back on 12-hour shifts this week. They've had their hands full: They are still plowing and clearing snow. They've had to salt streets with the recent freezing rains. And in their downtime, they have loads of potholes to fill.

“We have more issues than we have resources for,” Thole said.

Rural areas are not immune to potholes, either.

All the snow and rain has “caused us a lot of problems,” said John Selmer, an Iowa Department of Transportation engineer for southwest Iowa.

Selmer said even more potholes will form as the weather warms over the next month and as more snow and ice melt on roadways.

“It's not going to be good for anybody,” Selmer said. “We just need a little break from the weather.”

The City of Omaha is receiving about 20 pothole complaints a day. Thole said the city is looking for patterns and filling whole stretches all at once.

“We're trying to get the very worst streets that we can,” he said.

Newer patches were seen Friday in areas such as 180th Street and West Center Road, as well as near 84th and Fort Streets. Some of the patches, however, were failing and holes were returning.

Military Avenue between 72nd and 78th Streets had only a few patches and dozens of chuckholes. Some holes were more than a foot wide and were lined up in strings spelling suspension doom.

A pothole on Dodge Street near 42nd Street was so big Friday that it exposed bricks that likely were part of the Old Lincoln Highway. A metal rail that was once part Omaha's streetcar system also could be seen.

Boughton said she's sure workers are trying their best to get a handle on things.

“I don't blame them,” Boughton said. “They're doing what they can.”

Contact the writer:

444-1149, tom.shaw@owh.com

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