Olds was paralyzed early last week as a late winter storm left roads snow covered and extremely difficult to navigate.
According to Ken Ryning, who operates the weather station at Olds College, a total of 22 centimetres of snow fell in the area between March 4 and 6. Adding to the problem, winds gusting from about 40 to 50 kilometres per hour caused drifting in many areas.
“We had every piece of iron we had available … out. It was managed really good,” said Norm McInnis, the town's chief executive officer, when asked about the response to the storm.
“The first priority is to open driving lanes. We have a plow truck … just go down the centre of the road to make sure that people can at least dig themselves out of their driveways into an opened up driving lane,” he said.
School bus routes and major arterials are next on the priority list. While the town's policy states that the town will start clearing snow 24 hours after snow has stopped, McInnis said in this case, the town was clearing well before snow stopped falling.
“We've got guys that watch the weather and make sure we're mobilized and ready to go as quickly as we can,” McInnis said.
There are also different levels of service the town provides, depending on the amount of snow that has fallen. In the event of snowfalls that accumulate “an excessive amount of snow” the director of operations or designate has the discretion to provide plow service at points that provide the most traffic flow.
The snow didn't pose a lot of problems for police simply because many people just couldn't get mobile, Staff Sgt. Kevin Morton said.
Although the RCMP responded to a few highway incidents during the early part of the storm, by the time the snow got extremely heavy, the RCMP weren't that busy.
“We had some events on the highway during the initial part with the snow and some of the slipperiness, but we weren't out there a lot,” Morton said, adding that the officers from highway patrol in Innisfail responded to a heavier volume of incidents. “During that heavy, heavy (part) of snow … we were assisting traffic services at a couple of incidents but we weren't doing a lot of (incidents) because … we weren't going to be going to every non-injury accident. If you got stuck out there, you were on your own,” he said.
“There was some work but we weren't run off our feet by it,” Morton said.
On Monday, RCMP assisted with about three incidents, including a jack-knifed transport truck north of the Olds overpass in the southbound lane. Unlike some incidents that can tie up police for 12 to 14 hours, these incidents only cost members a couple hours' time, Morton said.
“It was really bad enough that a lot of people decided to stay home. By Tuesday morning, everything was so impassable in our area that we had nothing serious because people just couldn't get around,” he said, adding that the most complaints were due to parking issues, but the RCMP didn't respond to those because the it had snowed so much.
“We understood that some people were where they were because there was just too darn much snow to deal with,” he said.
"We had every piece of iron we had available ... out. It was managed really good."Norm McInnis, CAO, Town of Olds
