St. Joseph Streets Department and emergency personnel are on day two of responding to winter driving conditions that took many by surprise.

Keven Schneider Interim Superintendent with the Streets Department said the first truck went out Friday at 1:15 p.m.

“We got a report of some mist in Manhattan but they said it was a small band and they thought it might get here at 11 but 11 came and went and noon came and went around 12:30 it started misting so we started looking at it. But they just said it was misting they didn’t say it was doing anything,” Schneider said. “We started watching it and boy it wasn’t 15 minutes and we said boy we’ve got to run. So we cleared phase one and started in.”

Schneider said if crews would have tried pretreating the roads based on the forecast they had they wouldn’t have started until 4 p.m.

“Our forecast was really nothing until freezing drizzle at 6 and that was only a 30 percent chance,” Schneider said.

Sgt. Quentin Abbott with the St. Joseph Police Department said from about 1 p.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Saturday morning officers have responded to 75 crashes and 49 assist motorists.

“A lot of the calls we’re getting now are hit and run calls where maybe overnight some vehicles were struck and the people are just getting up and around and noticing it,” Abbot said. “It looks like we’re starting to get caught up.”

Mosaic Life Care told us by 9 p.m. Friday they had already seen around 50 people come into the Emergency Room for winter weather related incidents. Both Schneider and Abbott are urging St. Joseph residents to stay home if they don’t have to go out.

“I would only go out If I needed to and even then I’d be very cautious because most of the residentials have not gotten anything. If you’re close to an emergency route those aren’t too bad,” Schneider said. “We’re now on secondaries which go into the residentials but even those got covered over again last night.”

Schneider said crews are now concerned with overnight temperatures and snow in the forecast.

Abbott said if someone has to get out to use commonsense driving.

“It’s starting to snow and some snow moving into the forecast,” Abbot said shortly after 9:30 Saturday. “With the additional snow on the way and accumulation if people don’t need to get out I wouldn’t. It’s probably a lot safer to stay home.”

Abbot said Friday night there was a least one emergency vehicle that hit ice overnight and was damaged.