Residents pitching in by reporting problem areas
What’s black, cracked and able to swallow the back of your car?
“I actually laid in a pothole, and I’m 6 feet! I laid in a pothole and there was still room,” said repair crew member Derrick Jones.
To report a D.C. pothole, residents must know the location, approximate size and depth of the offender. Then …
» call the mayor’s call center at 311
» use the online service request center at dc.gov
» text message or Tweet to twitter.com/DDOTDC
» or e-mail [email protected].
Potholes, aka the bane of D.C. drivers’ existence, send some cars to early graves and have some drivers taking a longer route to work.
But let the “Hallelujahs” ring out! There’s a pothole-filling party going on in the District to bury those pesky road hazards.
Potholepalooza, a monthlong blitz by the D.C. Department of Transportation, is a coordinated effort to fix as many potholes as possible in the city. Residents are pitching in by reporting the suspension rattlers.
About a dozen requests come in per day, said DDOT spokesman John Lisle, although over one weekend early in the event, about 70 potholes were reported.
“Last year was just getting potholes filled, and this year they named it,” Anthony Deas, general foreman in DDOT’s street and bridge maintenance branch, said of Potholepalooza. “I like the name, it means that we’re doing a lot. ‘Palooza’ means it’s pretty large.”
Nearly 5,000 potholes have been filled so far and there’s nearly a week remaining in the event, which lets the public report pothole locations and have them repaired in less than 48 hours instead of the usual 72.
Armed with scorching black asphalt, seven DDOT pothole repair crews have been filling the potholes since March 11, when Potholepalooza began.
“I think it’s funny,” said Michael Jackson, a member of the pothole repair crew that covers Wards 7 and 8 in Southeast Washington. “I feel like we’re comedians, like ‘laughapalooza’ or something like that.”
And which crew is the best?
“We are! Wards 7 and 8!” said Brenda Johnson, a member of the repair crew covering those wards.
One recent morning, the crew was working on Gainesville Street in Southeast. It took on two potholes while guiding residents’ vehicles around the orange safety cones, and waving hello to little kids out on a walk with their mom.
The workers jackhammer a square around the pothole, loosening the old asphalt, and then clear off the chunks. Tack — a dark brown, glue-like substance — is splashed around the edges of the square, and then 300-degree black asphalt is shoveled on. Finally, a steamroller goes over the entire patch, its vibrator shaking the surrounding area, but leveling the new asphalt to be even with the street.
Potholepalooza moniker notwithstanding, it’s just another day on the job for this repair crew.
“It’s after snow season,” member Eugene Love said, “and this is what we do.”
And they’re doing it for the residents.
“We want the citizens and constituents that live here to be happy with our work,” Deas said. “We’re here to correct a lot of the stuff that’s being damaged throughout the snow season. … People are tired of hubcaps coming off and tires rattling.”
