As snow removal crews worked through the weekend to clean up in the aftermath of the blizzard that struck Olds on December 2 and 3, the town's administration was tallying the costs of digging out from the storm.
“It looks as though this may be a $50,000 event for us,” said Norm McInnis, the town's chief administrative officer. “It's going to blow the crap out of our 2013 budget. It's a good thing it's year-end.”
The town brought in extra equipment to remove snow from community streets following the blizzard, including two graders, a front-end loader, a bulldozer to move snow at a location where the town is storing snow and 10 trucks to haul the snow away.
McInnis said it's not yet known specifically how much of a bite the storm has taken out of the town's 2013 snow removal budget, but he added that $77,000 of the $80,000 allocated for snow removal contract services was already used before the blizzard struck.
The consequences for the proposed 2014 budget, however, will likely be minimal, he said.
“We'll probably just go into 2014 with less in our snow removal reserve but we'll have to do the final accounting after we're done here.”
Although no specific data for how much snow fell in Olds exists, Environment Canada recorded 22 centimetres in Red Deer on December 2 and 3 and 17 centimetres in Airdrie, the closest communities to Olds from which snowfall information was available.
Wind gusts were measured at 56 kilometres an hour on Dec. 3 and the temperature dropped as low as -16 C on Dec. 2 and -19.1 C on Dec. 3, according to incomplete weather data for Olds on Environment Canada's historical weather website.
Blizzard conditions forced the cancellation of garbage collection in Olds on December 2 and 3 and the community aquatic centre had to cancel some lessons on Dec. 3.
To keep residents and businesses up to speed about cancellations and snow removal efforts, the town ramped up its social media feeds with updates, emergency bulletins and even notices for people to clear snow from venting systems for their furnaces around their homes and from fire hydrants in case of emergency.
The Olds Fire Department was called out to four crashes on Dec. 2 at the height of the blizzard between 9 a.m. and 2:20 p.m., said department chief Lorne Thompson.
One of those calls that came in before 1 p.m. was to assist other emergency crews dealing with a crash involving dozens of vehicles on Highway 2 near the Didsbury overpass.
Department members also checked in on a number of vehicles that went into the ditch during the blizzard on local roads and Highway 2, Thompson said.
Fire crews returned to the hall by 3 p.m. and were not called out again during the storm.
Thompson said the volume of calls to the department was “typical” for the type of weather conditions that struck the area during the blizzard.
Many of the crashes, he added, were caused when vehicles were rear-ended by people travelling too fast for the poor driving conditions.
For future snowstorms, Thompson said, the department is calling on the public to do a better job of yielding to emergency vehicles trying to reach a crash scene.
“When we're responding to these calls, we'd really appreciate it if they pull over and completely stop,” he said, adding many motorists would not pull over for fire trucks travelling behind them with their emergency lights active because the motorists had not cleared snow from their rear windows.
“Please respect that we have to get where we're going.”
Other vehicles that did pull over but did not stop completely ended up kicking up debris that made it difficult for emergency responders to see, Thompson said.
As for local schools, only Olds Koinonia Christian School closed during the blizzard.
Kurt Sacher, superintendent of schools for Chinook's Edge School Division, said the reason for that closure on December 2 and 3 was because the rural roads around the school were “impassable” and so the school division determined it was too dangerous for staff or students to try to reach the school.
While Olds' other Chinook's Edge School Division schools remained open during the storm, bus service to the schools was cancelled from December 2 to 4 and some bus routes in the region were still inactive on Dec. 5, Sacher said.
This is the first time such a long cancellation of bus services has happened in his time with the school division, Sacher said, and the division is now looking at how it might respond differently to future inclement weather events.
The schools in Olds were kept open, he added, for safety in case a student is dropped off at school and has nowhere else to go.
Most schools, however, were “missing lots of students” while the buses weren't running, Sacher said.
Sandy Bexton, a spokeswoman for the school division, said only 30 to 35 per cent of Ecole Olds Elementary School's student population came to school on December 2 and 3.
That number increased to as high as 80 per cent on Dec. 4.
Ecole Deer Meadow School was down to 25 to 30 per cent on December 2 and 3 and 55 per cent on Dec. 4 and Olds High School only had 15 to 20 per cent of its students attend classes on December 2 and 3.
That percentage improved to 50 per cent on Dec. 4.
Alberta Health Services reported no major problems in the area due to the blizzard aside from the rescheduling of some home care appointments. FortisAlberta, however, did record an increase in energy use in Olds on December 2 and 3 compared to the same period of time last year.
Historical weather data shows those days in 2012 were only slightly warmer with a low temperature of -15.5 C on Dec. 2 and -18.6 C on Dec. 3.
