Snowy Daze sends city to digging

The sudden burst of winter did not go un-noticed at the Daily News, which featured two stories and a number of photos on Rupert's days of post winter surprise.

CITY DIGS OUT AFTER GETTING BURIED BY SURPRISE DELUGE
By Patrick Witwicki
The Daily News
Friday, March 30, 2007

Environment Canada may have other ideas on the subject of snow in Prince Rupert, but for most long-time Rupertites, it was a late-March snowstorm that no one has experienced in a long, long time.

The previous heaviest March snowfall for a single day in Rupert, according to Environment Canada, was 22 centimetres, recorded on March 7, 1995, and even though no official word has been released on the Wed. March 28 total snowfall by Environment Canada (the website currently states that Rupert received 49.5 millimetres of ‘rain’ that day), nearly every local involved with the storm will tell you it sure felt like a record-breaker.

In fact, the heavy wet snow caused numerous problems, from various accidents, transit coming to a halt, and even an overnight power-outage.

“This certainly is unusual,” said Bob Gammer, BC Hydro’s community relations coordinator for Northern B.C.

“Many crew members were working well into the night.”

For Rupert specifically, most of the problems, such as power and cable outages, were fixed by Thursday afternoon. But in Terrace and the outlining areas (including the Nass Valley), 5,000 residents were still without power, and could be continue to be into Saturday.

On the North Coast, coastal villages like Port Simpson and Metlakatla are also expected to be without power until Saturday and landslide and avalanche warnings throughout the area have made it difficult for B.C. Hydro to respond, said Gammer.

Stewart is also currently without power.

The main problem that both B.C. Hydro and the city of Prince Rupert had was getting to all the problem spots, because the snow continued to wreck havoc on the area.

“The heavy wet snow weighed trees down, and brought them down on our power lines, and broke poles as well,” said Gammer. “And the snow slowed down calls.

“Because it’s so widespread, (it’s been difficult) getting around to all the areas impacted.”
There were rumours that B.C. Hydro was short of workers in the area, but the fact is there were so many widespread problems, the workers were spread too thin. More workers have been brought in from Vancouver to help deal with the crisis, however.

As for the city, the municipality also had trouble keeping up with the snow, especially after one of its three ploughs broke down at approximately 9:30 p.m. Wednesday night.

“One plough lost the blade on it, so we had to shut it down,” said Bill Horne, operations field manager for city works. “And then, a chain broke on another plough, and took out a blade at the bottom.”

The repair on the second plough took 90 minutes, and by then, catching up to the chaos was almost impossible.

“Normally, streets like Herman (see related story on page 3), Pigott, and McKay are priorities, but (Wednesday) night, we just couldn’t keep up,” said Horne.

“So we just stuck to the main routes.”

The city kept their mechanics on call all night, however, worried that something else might happen to the remaining plough.

“The toughest part was keeping up with the snow,” said Horne. “It made it rather difficult on the east side.”

Once the power went out in Prince Rupert shortly after midnight, cable followed, but went back into service late Thursday afternoon.

Chad Cunningham, marketing manager for Citywest, agreed it was an early spring crisis that no one in Rupert could have predicted, nor was ready for.

“This is a huge snowfall that caught everyone by surprise,” he said. “We’re asking our customers to be patient, and we’re looking at disaster planning right now, so if there’s another freak snowstorm next year, we’re ready for it.”

Citywest has been busy working with B.C. Hydro to get all customers back online, and while Rupert is back with power, other areas of the North Coast are still without cable, and in some instances, power. Citywest also pointed out that B.C. Hydro’s first concern was safety issues with fallen wires, and once the most dangerous concerns were fixed, they could move on to restoring people’s power and cable.

B.C. Hydro has been working hard at restoring that power, but even they need a break, said Gammer.

“Many of our crew members were working well into the night,” he said. “But regulations state that after working 16 hours, they must have a mandatory rest of eight hours.

“So that’s why we didn’t have that many out this morning.”

Once the snow stopped, the massive clean-up began on Thursday, luckily, under sunny skies.
“This is Prince Rupert,” said Cunningham, summing up his thoughts on the unpredictability of the region’s weather. “Look at it (now), it’s actually quite beautiful. Who would’ve known that (on Wednesday)?”

COLD TRIGGERS HOT DEMAND FOR FIREFIGHTERS
By Patrick Witwicki
The Daily News
Friday, March 30, 2007

The Prince Rupert fire department lived a month in one day on Wednesday, in response to all the emergency calls that came in due to the unprecedented snowfall.

“It all seems to come in all at once,” said fire chief Ron Miller. “I think we received 12 within half-an-hour. We got multiple calls almost simultaneously. That’s probably the heaviest (snowfall) in such a short period of time in my 30 years (working here).”

Perhaps the hardest to deal with was one from the top of Herman Street, one of the steepest roads in Prince Rupert. An ambulance arrived on the scene to deal with a 911 call, but couldn’t get up the hill.

The fire truck arrived, and made it to the top of the hill, but due to concerns about the road, officials had to resort to plan B to get the patient into the ambulance and off to hospital.

“The ambulance wasn’t able to get to where it needed to go, but happily we joined together and got the job done,” said Miller. “It was our crew members in their private vehicles that helped us out.”

The city also attended as quickly as possible to plough Herman Street in an effort to help both the fire department and the ambulance services.

“There was a fire truck at the top, and an ambulance stuck at the bottom,” said Bill Horn, operations field manager for city works. “We got there as quick as we can.”

But the city was having trouble keeping up with the calls as well after one of their ploughs broke down (see story on pages 1 and 2).

The other problem occurred when the power went out, especially on the east side of town where only the major streets had been cleared.

“Whenever you have power surges or outages happen, you do get a lot of false alarms,” said Miller. “But you have to respond to all of them.”

Keeping on top of every call throughout the night was difficult, but manageable, he said.

“We didn’t run into any delays in any of our calls, but some calls took longer than they normally would (due to the weather or backlog),” said Miller. “All in all we got through it.