The past couple of weeks have been busy for the city of Vicksburg’s Street Department.

First with the waterline break leading to work having to be done under Clay Street and then with flood preparations to keep water out of Vicksburg as the river rose, the department put in extra hours to make sure all was well on the roads for citizens.

As street department supervisor Carl Harris is one of the many people who keep the roads useable. Harris is over the different groups within the street department like the brick crew, the concrete crew, asphalt crew, welders, truck drivers and equipment operators. Being the supervisor means Harris is over not only the street department but also mosquito control and the right of way department- or grass maintenance.

He said there are 22 people who work in the street department and 15 in right of way.

“We have the second biggest department down here other than the police and fire,” Harris said. “When it comes down to public works, we are the biggest department.”

Harris gets to work before 5:30 a.m. each day and gets his orders from Street Superintendent Skipper Whittington and Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman. He then goes through work orders given to him from different city departments that need work done and helps determine what the crews will work on that day.

“Every day is a different day for us,” Harris said. “We may be doing something today and very seldom it will run over to the next day because we usually try to finish or it may change. If it doesn’t change, we just pick up from where we left off the day before.”

He said they cover all the city departments, like the water, gas and sewer departments, when they need help with street while they are doing their work. As each of the departments has to fix lines under the street or make repairs that interfere with the roads, Harris’ guys go in and get the roadways fixed back up so they are usable.

“We basically come in behind every department and we finish up what they [start], whether its pouring concrete, patching the surface back, putting the asphalt back down or hauling dirt and fixing a wash out, we’re always helping other departments,” Harris said.

Harris said the street department has most of the heavy equipment and because of that they used their machines to hang the steel that braces the logs for the flood gates. This is just the second time in the 12 years he has worked for the city that they have ever put up the flood walls.

“On a situation like this, every department comes together to pitch in and help out on that,” Harris said. “That’s what we done this year and in 2011 when we put it up. Everybody stepped up in each department, they worked overtime and they did what they had to do to get it done.”

He said work on the walls was done between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., around 10 to 12 hours a day for a week and a half. His guys helped put up six of the 10 or 12 total flood walls, he said.

He said his crews do a lot of stuff people may not notice or realize is part of their responsibilities. When the flood walls went up, the street department came together and took the bricks out of the concrete to erect the walls.

“They saw us hanging beams, but they didn’t see these guys pulling all these pallets of bricks out of the street,” Harris said. “We got good guys that work for us.”

He said the real work happens when storms roll through town.

His team tries to keep the streets cleared of branches and debris so that they are still usable, especially when the electricity is out. He said crews work daily to keep the street swept and clean and that all pot holes are covered, and the concrete crew is currently working on the sidewalks.

The street department, he said, gets all kinds of calls about broken light poles and street lights that are out.

Even though those problems aren’t necessarily their responsibility, Harris said they try to help out where they can.

“The streets and the bridges are actually what we are suppose to be maintaining, but anything that goes on in the street-wise, if they need help we’re there for them,” Harris said.