MERIDIAN, Idaho — Driving Highway 55 between Banks and Smiths Ferry is a beautiful and scenic drive — but sometimes it can be a little treacherous, especially during winter and early spring. A Meridian man shares with us an experience he’ll never forget.
Louis Keller is very familiar with Highway 55, and a couple of weeks ago, what he thought would be a routine trip up to Donnelly was anything but.
“Came around a corner and saw something fall across the road and when I got close, I ended up hitting a tree," Keller said. "Hit at the top of the windshield and broke a couple of other things inside.”
The result was a broken windshield and a gash across his forehead.
“I was bleeding pretty bad out of my forehead, blood across my face, got some gauze on it and got it to stop.”
John Tomlinson with I.T.D. says keeping the highways safe is a priority.
“What we’re trying to do is we’ve done an assessment; we’re trying to remove trees that are close to the highway to make sure people are safe," Tomlinson said.
I asked Tomlinson about I.T.D.’s road applications during the winter. Could that have anything to do with weakening tree roots? “We use whatever mix that is appropriate for the temperatures and for the weather. As far as contributing to anything with the trees, there’s so many factors that go into that.”
Mike Williamson with the Boise National Forest agrees, telling me their Forest Health Protection staff found multiple tree stressors along Highway 55. Tree density, needle diseases, bark beetles, ozone damage from vehicle exhaust, hot and dry summers, and road salt are all among the factors. Williamson added that no one factor stood out as a single driver of tree mortality, but a blending of these factors along the highway.
As far any future drives up Highway 55 goes, Louis Keller said this: “So it was an eye-opening experience, to say the least.”
And a simple reminder: if you see anything on the road that could cause a problem, call it in.
