A winter storm tore through Saskatchewan last Wednesday and Thursday making roads impossible to pass and stranding motorists either in their cars or, if they were smart enough not to venture out, where they last were before the snow started falling.
The RCMP media relations bureau released numerous no travel advisories starting last Wednesday evening and continuing all day and night Thursday cautioning people to stay where they are to keep themselves and their families safe.
The advisories stated roads were blocked by the winter storm in an area ranging from north of Saskatoon through Regina to the United States border and west to the Alberta border. They said the RCMP received 150 calls of vehicle incidents on the roads for crashes, vehicles stuck in the ditch or on the road and semi-trailers jackknifed.
The wind was blowing steadily at about 40 to 60-kilometres per hour with gusts at one point reaching 80 km/h.
The police said the storm reduced visibility to zero at points and long snowdrifts made roads impassable. They said nightfall on March 21 made travel extreme and the severity of the storm made it difficult for even emergency personnel to be on the roads.
Locally, Highway 44 was closed around noon Thursday and reopened mid-afternoon Friday.
Fred Wilson, Reeve of the Rural Municipality of Dundurn, said residents off sub-division roads in the RM were trapped in their homes for two or three days during the storm due to closed roads. He said the graders hit the roads in their attempt to clear the 300 kilometres of roads they are responsible for at dawn last Friday, but it was expected it would take a few days to get everything back in good shape.
“Some of our ratepayers have taken it upon themselves to open up a few spots on their own, which is gratefully accepted,” said Wilson. “We found it very hard, so our loader tractors had to go out with one of the graders because we don’t have a plow on the front of it, so just to break it open. The stuff is hard as a rock, but we’re getting by.”
Wilson said he’d like to thank their ratepayers for being so understanding with the time it is taking to get the roads back up and running, as the graders couldn’t go out during the storm and had to wait a few days to clear the roads.
“There was no point because every time you open (the road) up, it blew right behind the grader,” he said. “It just made it harder for people to get where they’re going so we didn’t even bother going out.”
To read more please see the March 25 print edition of The Davidson Leader.