HALIFAX — While Halifax County Emergency Management (HCEM) continues to monitor and be ready for winter weather expected this weekend, most folks are relieved after last weekend’s snow, as it went well from a safety perspective, according to HCEM Director Tina Hinton.

Advertisement

She added the thing that stood out most about the last storm was everyone heeded the warning and stayed inside.

Michael Felt, director of Halifax County Department of Social Services, agreed. His office was on a two-hour delay Monday and most people couldn’t get out, so his department was slammed Tuesday.

Felt said while the storm wasn’t so bad logistically, it still took its toll on a lot of people.

“We saw over 250 people Tuesday,” he said. Most of those people were there for emergency heating assistance.

Felt explained, while Northampton County had blankets to give out, Halifax County did not. Felt said Northampton has an anonymous donor. “Halifax does not have access to blankets,” he said.

Hinton said Wednesday there were no major power outages or accidents due to the weather and she was optimistic things would remain as such.

Schools resumed Thursday mostly on a two-hour delay although there were still some secondary roads in bad shape. Halifax County Superintendent Elease Frederick said hopefully they will resume their regular schedule Friday.

She said school leaders will meet soon, “We’ll be getting together probably Thursday to discuss when the days will be made up,” she said. “We have some snow days already built into the schedule so we’ll be looking at that.”

Frederick said the information will be posted at the school Web site halifaxcounty.k12 as soon as it’s available.

While Hinton coordinates with county municipalities in emergency situations, town administrators and councils still have to contend with what’s going on in their own neighborhood.

Although no one was available for comment in Hobgood, other Halifax County municipalities report they’ve faired well through this snow event. Hinton confirmed all Halifax County municipalities were fine.

Betty Willis, mayor of Littleton, probably summed it up best, “Storms don’t come through here that often and it might be a time when you need to just sit down and celebrate the fact you don’t have to rush for a change.”

Willis said Littleton didn’t really have any problems, but she’s concerned about the quick thaw on the town’s water system. “I hope things don’t warm up so fast things burst,” she said.

When asked what the town was doing to prepare for the next storm, she said, “We’ll do the same thing we did last time. We’ll just let God do his thing and when He’s done doing His thing, we’ll do ours.”

Town Administrator Nancy Jackson said things were wonderful in Scotland Neck. While there were a few issues with garbage pick-up there and in all Halifax County municipalities, other than that everything was back to normal.

Bobby Davis, town administrator in Enfield, said the streets were the biggest problem there, “We were lucky though. We had no power outages. Everything is fine.”

When asked what Enfield is doing to prepare for the next winter storm, Davis said, “We’re having a staff meeting to decide who’s on stand by. We have an emergency management plan and we’ll see to it we have chainsaws ready and plenty of fuel. It usually works out pretty good,” he said.

Hinton said there are no conference calls planned at this point for the wintry weather expected to move in Thursday night and last through Saturday. Weather officials were predicting this event will only bring light snow and freezing rain at press time.

Hinton said if bad weather does come, her department will continue what it’s doing right now — coordinating efforts and overseeing situations as they arise. “We’re already prepared,” she said then laughed good-naturedly.