In preparation of the UK game Saturday night, Rupp Arena’s Engineering Department manager Brian DuFour worked for nearly 30 hours straight to clear sidewalks and parking lots of snow. 

The whole process took about 31 hours, and was tackled by DuFour’s team of 10, four contractors plowing the big lots, and about eight temporary helpers courtesy of Futura and the city’s workers.

“We got a couple hours of sleep last night, the Hyatt was nice enough to give us some rooms so we wouldn’t have to travel home on the roads and then try to get back,” DuFour said. “So we worked until about 11 p.m. last night, got up at about 4 a.m. or so, one of my guys came in at midnight, worked until 4 or 5, so we kept somebody continuously working.”

DuFour came to Rupp about a year ago, and within a week he was tackling the 17-inch blizzard that hit Lexington in 2015. Preparation for the game started at 5:30 Friday morning during the heavy storm that coated the city in about 10 inches of snow.

DuFour coordinates with the city’s snow removal team to clear the streets after his team pushes the snow to the edge of the sidewalk, where bobcats pick it up the hundreds of pounds of snow and take it away.

“Everybody was booked up, but there were messages on my phone Friday morning,” DuFour said. “The mayor had called tactical lawn care in Wilmore, they could help, and then George Milligan from public works said he had a guy’s name in Indiana and they were down here looking for work, so I put them to work.”

Besides the sidewalks and parking lots used by Rupp Arena, DuFour’s team of six will also volunteer to clear off lots and sidewalks for the Hyatt, the Lexington Center, the Mary Todd house and other surrounding areas for free. In turn the Hyatt will sometimes give rooms to DuFour’s crewmembers so they don’t have to risk driving in the dangerous snowstorms.

Clearing off the 40 acres of sidewalk and parking lots requires manpower and time including shoveling and salting by hand, which is what DuFour’s team did before recently purchasing an snow removal machine, but Rupp has never had to close because of the weather.

“It doesn’t happen. It’s never happened. Whatever it takes,” DuFour said. “What keeps it going is the guys who stay here all day and night and don’t complain. They got 35 mile an hour winds last night whipping at them and covered their face in snow, and they just kept going.”

Weather certainly wasn’t going to keep more than 20,000 UK fans from making the trek to support the Cats, even if it meant taking an Uber.

“We ended up Ubering, but it was fine,” marketing freshman Maria Massa said. “Ever since yesterday (the roads) have been pretty clear.”

Massa and civil engineering freshman John Lampe both live in dorms on campus where most of the streets were clear, but communications seniors Allie Klika and Lindsey Cullen were stuck under about ten inches of snow in the north campus neighborhoods of State Street and Montmullin Street off campus.

“I have a jeep. There were a lot of (cars stuck) on Montmullin,” Klika said. “A lot of the back streets are still not plowed at all. I think we’ll leave a little bit early, and I’d say people should drive slow. As it gets later, it will get colder and that’s when stuff starts to freeze.”