Ravens Look To Add More Workers, Equipment For Next Snow Storm

By Don Muret, Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal

The Ravens are tweaking their snow emergency plan to include hiring additional workers and bringing more heavy equipment on site to handle future blizzard conditions at M&T Bank Stadium. The club deployed 1,764 people to prepare the facility for Sunday's game against the Bears. About 700 workers formed crews to help clear the seats and other areas of the stadium during a 25-hour storm that dumped two feet of snow from late Friday until late Saturday. Ravens VP/Stadium Operations Roy Sommerhof said the plan overall worked well. Sommerhof: "There’s nothing major, but now that we’ve been through it ... we need more people, we can’t work someone that many hours in a row.” Aramark, the Ravens’ concessionaire, pitched in by serving workers 15,000 hot dogs and lots of hot soup and hot chocolate. The Ravens operate the stadium and are responsible for the $400,000-500,000 in expenses tied to the snow removal effort, Sommerhof said. The Eagles and Redskins activated similar snow removal plans prior to NFL games Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field and Monday night at FedExField. Aramark fed workers in Philadelphia and deployed its own staff to help clear snow in a building where it has the concessions and facility services contracts. To feed the workers, Aramark brought emergency food supplies from its accounts at Camden Yards in Baltimore and Citizens Bank Park and Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, said Aramark President of Stadiums & Arenas Marc Bruno. All that product had to be delivered on Friday before the storm hit the East Coast, shutting truck deliveries down on Saturday, Bruno said. Aramark deployed more than 1,000 workers to get the Eagles’ facility ready for the 49ers-Eagles game.