City hall continues to clean up from the record-breaking snowfall that occurred on Oct. 23, with crews slowly re-opening some streets and transit partially coming back online.
It’s estimated that more than a foot of snow — over 30 centimetres — fell on The Friendly City on Sunday night, which broke the old record of six centimetres from Oct. 23, 1997.
After clearing priority one roads, city crews are now working on priority two roads. However, because of the snow in the back lanes, the municipality has paused garbage collection until Monday, Oct. 31.
“Our crews have been working really hard since Sunday when the snow started and we’ll get caught up as quickly as we can,” city manager Jim Puffalt said during a recent media scrum. “The weather is looking to turn (warmer) later on this week, so we’ll keep evaluating.
“But obviously, there’s some roads that need to be done, and I know that driving to work (recently), there were some that were pretty rutted up. So, there will be some trouble areas we need to address, for sure.”
City hall’s goal is to clear in-town highways first, followed by arterial streets, collector roads and then residential streets, he continued. However, because the municipality does not have the resources to clear every street simultaneously, it clears the important roads first so residents can access a major street and reach — for example — the downtown or hospital.
Several years ago, city hall expanded its snow-clearing service by having crews work through the night. Puffalt noted that after the city council meeting on Oct. 24, he saw snow piled in the middle of First Avenue Northwest. When he came to work on Oct. 25, crews had removed those windrows.
“They do what we need (them) to do to get people around,” he said.
Puffalt thanked most residents for staying home on Oct. 23 and allowing city crews to begin clearing major roads.
Council discussion
Snow clearance was one topic council discussed during its Oct. 24 regular meeting.
Coun. Dawn Luhning asked city administration whether it hires contractors to clean the streets — especially Main Street — whenever significant snowfalls occur and is too much for city crews to handle alone.
City hall usually hires contractors to perform that work when it initiates its snow-clearing plan because the policy is predicated on those extra bodies, said Darrin Stephanson, director of public works. Moose Jaw’s streets cannot be completely cleared without contractors supplementing municipal forces.
That said, city hall reached out to contractors on Sunday and none were available, he added. So, city graders cleared the streets that day.
Coun. Doug Blanc was concerned about the numerous broken tree branches that littered the streets and sidewalks. He wondered if the municipality uses contractors to remove those pieces, considering it takes a while for city crews to remove branches from streets and boulevards.
It was a hectic 35 hours after the storm began and the parks and recreation department received more than 200 requests for service about tree branches being down, said Derek Blais, director of parks and rec.
It takes time to clean that up, and as was noted earlier, no contractor was immediately available to support that task, he continued. However, some people should be available soon to help remove trees, especially ones that have damaged property, fallen on roofs or fences, or have affected safety.
“We’re just going to chip away at it over the next few weeks,” added Blais.
The next regular council meeting is Monday, Nov. 14.
