If you’ve been outside in the past few hours, you probably noticed that a lot of the sidewalks are incredibly icy and a lot of people are falling or slipping. I walked over to Rome Hall several moments ago to check out a fire truck and EMS activity. While I was slipping around the brick area, I ran into Jim Schrote, the director of Facilities Management. He was coordinating all of the salting around campus.

Schrote said they had put salt on the sidewalks, but the rain had washed a lot of it away. A lot of his staff left in the early afternoon, but he called them back to resalt the campus. “The rain is our worst enemy,” he said. “It’s better to be freezing rain than water.”

He said about 50 employees would be working throughout the night until 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. Part of the reason they were taken by surprise was because the weather had predicted flurries for this afternoon, Schrote said. He added that it is supposed to warm up after midnight tonight.

Metropolitan Police Department Officer David Hunter said he has been all over the Foggy Bottom area helping people who have fallen. “There’s people falling everywhere,” he said.