COOPERSVILLE, Mich. — The blizzard may be over but the cleanup has begun, especially along roadways where numerous cars were stranded. Eagle Towing was one of the many tow companies out all weekend in West Michigan towing vehicles stranded everywhere from I-96 to US-131 to the back roads.
“I think we saw 80–90 calls of services yesterday,” said Andrew Heykoop during an interview with FOX 17 on Monday. “We fielded probably 600 calls a day. We were only able to get to a very small percentage of those.”
Heykoop is the operations manager at Eagle Towing on Arthur Street in Coopersville.
By midday Monday, they’d helped or towed 70 vehicles, he said. Because the weather wasn’t as severe as the weekend, the number trended upward throughout the rest of the day.
“Out on the farm country roads, you had zero visibility with the high winds when they started seeing 30–50 mph cross the open fields; you couldn’t see in front of you,” Heykoop said about the weekend’s weather. “And then you were hitting drifts that were anywhere from four to six feet. And then you just can’t see. So, trying to get to these people was just a monstrous feat.”
Heykoop lauded the dispatchers who he said fielded thousands of phone calls over the last few days, trying to make sure law enforcement or tow truck drivers got to all of them. And, some of the vehicles they found had the drivers still inside.
“Fire services, law enforcement, other towing companies just worked through to try to extract those people,” he said. “Several of them, the vehicles themselves are disabled. So they were starting to get into the chilly conditions. Actually it was a medical necessity to get them out of them.”
The Ottawa County Road Commission was out as well, tending to calls and stranded vehicles, said Louis Hunt, the director of emergency services. The vehicles that did not have someone inside had yellow tape put on them or their antenna, indicating they’d been checked.
“Usually you know one of our law enforcement agencies will be pulling up on that type of a call,” Hunt said during a phone interview on Monday. “And they’ll be asking the individuals, ‘What wrecker service do you want?’ And they get to choose.”
Hunt said it's best when your car gets stuck to let the tow truck pull you out. Doing it on your own may make the situation worse.
“They know what they’re doing,” Hunt said. “But, also they can block roads. They can have all of the overhead lighting that you need so that people are very aware of what’s going on over there.”
Hunt added that people are retrieving their cars from tow lots this week. And, even though the tow services will cost money, people won’t be fined for leaving their cars stranded.
As for Eagle Towing, their work continues.
“Right now that people want to start moving around, we’re seeing a lot of jump starts on the semis, a lot of frozen brake lines and then just trying to get them out and going,” Heykoop said.
READ MORE: Postal truck driver survives horrific crash
