Staff photo / Ed Runyan Kavon Birchfield of Youngstown used a shovel from his vehicle Monday morning to help a driver regain traction and continue on his journey at the corner of Belmont and Granada avenues on the city’s North Side following about a foot of snowfall Sunday in the Youngstown area.

YOUNGSTOWN — Kavon Birchfield of Youngstown did not set out Monday morning intending to help anyone get their car out of snowy conditions on some roads as he left home.

Instead, his goal was to find salt for his house. He threw a shovel in his vehicle before he left in case the record amounts of snow that fell Sunday caused him to get stuck as he traveled through the city’s North Side and into Liberty.

But as he traveled down Belmont Avenue, he saw a car stuck in the intersection at Belmont Avenue and Granada Avenue across from Tod Homestead Cemetery. He pulled out his shovel and headed over, shoveling away the snow from each of the front tires, helping what appeared to be a young man proceed on his way.

When asked for his name and the circumstances of his act of kindness, Birchfield mentioned driving to multiple stores Monday morning in search of salt and said this was the second time Monday morning he had helped the same unfortunate driver. The first time was farther north on Belmont Avenue when he found the driver stuck in a parking lot.

“It can’t hurt to be nice,” he said.

Meanwhile, there were relatively few cars on the roads in the Youngstown area Monday morning because so many government offices, schools and other organizations announced Sunday and early Monday that they would be closed for the day.

The lack of traffic helped workers in downtown Youngstown clear away the accumulated snowfall resulting from the snowplowing that took place Sunday and early Monday. Large and small earth-moving equipment filled the intersection at Federal and Market streets, as trucks, many of them owned by the City of Youngstown, lined up to accept loads of snow for disposal elsewhere.

In residential and commercial areas in the city and locations such as Boardman, shovels and snow blowers were in use to clear away what appeared to be about a foot of snow.

One woman on Glenwood Avenue in Boardman asked a reporter who she should contact about her mailbox being destroyed and was told to contact the Mahoning County Engineer’s Office since Glenwood is a county road.

Mahoning County Engineer Pat Ginnetti said Monday that a person whose mailbox is destroyed because of plowing on a county road should call his office at 330-799-1581.

The woman, who did not want to be identified, said Monday morning she was shoveling for about the fifth time since the snow started to fall Sunday. She was heeding the advice to be careful not to suffer a medical emergency by shoveling too much or too hard.

“I just take a section at a time,” she said. In addition to being outside to shovel her driveway, she succeeded in being in her driveway when her mailman came by. He was able to hand her mail to her since her mailbox was now sitting up by the house with the sturdy mailbox pole by the street sheared off. It was not the only mailbox in the area that had been blown off by a blast of snow from the plow.