Central Texas tried its best Monday to stay out off the roads for this highly anticipated winter storm.
Schools and many businesses were already closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and traffic was light, but Austin/Travis County EMS still responded to 136 road-related incidents from midnight to 3 p.m. Monday.
Thirty-five wrecks required EMS assistance, including a critical injury where a car hit a pole near South Lakeline Boulevard and Ridgeline Boulevard. Another person was seriously injured in a collision between a car and an 18-wheeler at Interstate 35 and 15th Street. Icy roads contributed to both wrecks.
Freezing rain, sleet and slow are expected to hit overnight Monday across Central Texas. The city of Austin still urges people to stay home, and if they must drive, to be careful.
"Today is a day you should stay inside, if you don't have to go outside. Make sure you get a good book, sit by the fireplace, watch a good movie, but stay inside," OEM director Otis Latin said.
Emergency officials say they’re prepared. The Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is a joint effort between Travis County, the city of Austin, the Texas Department of Public Safety, Capital Metro and the Texas Department of Transportation. With at least 50,000 students, even the University of Texas is in on the briefings.
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Weather preps
News 8 Austin’s Bob Robuck reports from the Office of Emergency Management.
 
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All 130 of the city’s de-icing trucks were called out Monday to keep a handle on the roads. As roads crews try to keep the highways safe, they have a new challenge with the toll roads.
"The toll roads haven't had much traffic on them. And the way the de-icer works, the more traffic that drives on it, the better it is, it actually keeps it agitated and it makes it work better. So we've got sections of the toll road where, because of the holiday or the weather, there isn't much traffic right now. We're having difficulty keeping it open. We're keeping it open, but we're having to assign trucks specifically to sections of the toll road just to keep them open," TxDOT spokesperson John Hurt said.
Major employers like Dell, Applied Materials and Sematech closed early on Monday and will monitor the weather to see if they’ll reopen Tuesday. Even Whole Foods Market and News 8 Austin are putting employees up at downtown hotels to make sure they remain staffed.
“I keep hearing this will be a record setter. We anticipate if it gets as bad as they say it's going to, that this year is going to be just like it was in '98. We had tremendous call volumes, lots of collisions and lots of people hurt," EMS spokesperson Warren Hassinger said.
Georgetown, Lockhart, Manor, Smithville and Bastrop ISD have all cancelled school on Tuesday. Austin ISD will make a decision whether to close by 6 a.m. Tuesday.
Austin Community College and Texas State University – San Marcos also cancelled classes on Tuesday. St. Edward's University is closed until noon. No word yet from UT or other Austin universities.
