Winter is officially here and within a matter of days, Saskatchewan residents went from enjoying warm November weather to digging ourselves out of our homes. With approximately 35cms of snow falling in Saskatoon and surrounding areas, along with strong winds that created drifts up to four feet high in some places, many highways and municipal roads across the province became impassable, including roadways within Martensville.
City of Martensville Public Works crews were out clearing roads on Saturday, November 7 and again on Sunday, November 8 until conditions gave almost zero visibility. Following suppertime on Sunday, crews were back at it and working late into the night to keep the main roads open.
On Monday, November 9, crews worked a 12-15 hour shift, working as late as possible. In addition, the City of Martensville brought in some contracted trucking and had rental equipment to help get roads cleared as quickly as possible. Tuesday saw another full day of work around the city, and on Remembrance Day, there will be a full crew on hand continuing the hard work of clearing the roadways.
“We are doing as much as we can with what we have and we are hoping to get it all picked up sooner rather than later. Our main goal on Monday was to get every single street at least one passable driving lane for emergency vehicles so they could get to every single house. We realize that people may not have been able to get out of their driveways, but as of right now, we have approximately 80% of roads that have at least some sort of path going through it. We are trying to get passes down some alleys as well so people can get out of their garages,” Scott Loyns, City of Martensville Engineer explained.
With these extraordinary circumstances that we are in, it is important to remember to remain patient and have understanding that these things don’t get cleaned up overnight. Crews are working tirelessly and can only haul so much snow at a time. “We are trying to work with what we have and do the best we can as fast as we can,” Loyns said.
In order to help expedite this process, Loyns stated that if residents are able to move vehicles off of the streets, it would help immensely. “When the crews are out and about, they are able to get more of the snow off of the street when they don’t have to go around vehicles. They aren’t able to get it all when vehicles are in the way; however we do understand that there are lots of vehicles trapped under snow.”
Additionally when clearing driveways and sidewalks, please try to refrain from moving snow into the streets. “If we have already done a street and people move snow into it, it increases the amount of time it takes to complete the roads if we need to do them twice. With the amount of snow, it makes it difficult to keep driveways clear and if people add to it, it makes it that much more difficult,” Loyns explained.
Although the weekend snowstorm created difficult challenges for residents, one thing was made clear through this and that was the fact that people come together to help one another in tough times. Through the blizzard, there were people offering their services to help others that had gotten their vehicles stuck in the snow. On Monday, social media was filled with images and stories about “snow angels” helping clear sidewalks and driveways for their neighbors, proving that we truly are in this together!
