City Races To Fill Potholes
Before the sun rises in Canarsie, Brooklyn, a backhoe is already filling trailers with piping hot asphalt. The late freeze/thaw cycle this spring pushed back pothole filling season and now the city is working furiously to fill hundreds of thousands of potholes.
Guy Ferraro, a 20-year veteran pothole filler, sauntered by. "Yeah, this is crunch time," he said. "This is when we get some overtime, fill those holes."
Ferraro is the supervisor of a five-person pothole filling crew in Brooklyn. He drives a large truck with a “hotbox,” or trailer on the back filled with three tons of asphalt. By the afternoon he’ll need another three tons. They fill as many as 150 potholes each day. Most holes take less than five minutes to fill.
Ferraro won’t say if this year is the worst year he’s ever seen, but, "Yeah, this is pretty bad," he said.
How to fill a pothole:
1. Rake out any debris.
2. Heat liquid asphalt, known as AC-20, up to 275 degrees, fill up a tin watering can, and pour it in the pothole.
3. Fill the hole with the steaming asphalt.
4. Rake over the asphalt so it's even with the road.
5. Pour some more AC-20 over the asphalt, sealing it in.
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