CANMORE – Just over a week after a massive snowstorm caused traffic chaos on the Trans-Canada Highway, Alberta Transportation will conduct a post-storm review.
The review will look at Volker Stevin, the company responsible for maintaining the highway, after hundreds of people were left stranded for more than 12 hours. The company has also promised to review its own response.
“We look into all concerns raised to make sure maintenance contractors are operating to the standards required by Alberta Transportation,” wrote Anna Neale, communications advisor for Alberta Transportation.
“This includes post-storm reviews that look at the maintenance response during a snow event and identify ways to improve.”
The early season snowstorm, which dumped up to 50 centimetres of snow on Oct. 2, caught many motorists by surprise, causing semi-trailers to jackknife and dozens of other accidents on the highway.
At the height of the storm, thousands of vehicles were left stranded in a 12-kilometre stretch in the eastbound lanes of the highway from Dead Man’s Flats to the rock cut east of Lac Des Arc.
As conditions deteriorated and day turned to night, many motorists took to social media to vent their frustration about the lack of help and information.
“We understand how difficult this situation was for drivers,” wrote Neale.
“Highway maintenance and emergency response efforts on Highway 1 were hampered by the road conditions because several semi-trucks jackknifed across the highway, blocking traffic and emergency access. As snow accumulated, more vehicles became stuck, further blocking traffic and hampering highway maintenance and emergency response efforts.”
Neale defended Alberta Transportation’s response citing the frequent updates from Alberta 511.
“Like most weather events, this was a very fluid situation across the region,” she said. “Alberta 511 is updated frequently, in real time, as weather and road conditions change. 511 operators were actively responding with the best information they had available as this situation evolved.”
She said operators were communicating across multiple platforms well into the morning of Oct. 3, including calling drivers back by telephone who reached out. They were also in contact with maintenance contractors on the ground so they could provide updated information to the public.
Officials with Volker Stevin said it was well prepared for the approaching storm and dispatched 14 snow plows west of Calgary as it began to snow.
The majority of those trucks focused their attention on removing snow on the Trans-Canada, Highway 40 and Highway 1A, said Fred Desjarlais, vice-president of the company.
Despite his company’s best effort, he said dozens of accidents bogged down it ability to clear snow in an effective and timely fashion, including trapping several plows in the traffic jam.
“Mother Nature was in charge of this one,” said Desjarlais, who expressed his empathy for those that were left stranded.
“What we’ll do is a full post-storm review, so we’ll review all the details of our actions and how many resources we had there, where they were deployed, the timing of the circumstances and what things could have gone better. We’ll have a series of recommendations that we’ll put forth to our own crews internally, but also to Alberta Transportation and to the RCMP.”
He said normally at this time of the year his company has meetings with the RCMP and officials with local jurisdictions to prepare for the winter season, however this time around winter came early.
“We exchange phone numbers, we talk about strategy, we talk about how things will go. Unfortunately in the Bow Valley the meeting has yet to occur for the year and we got baptized by snow,” said Desjarlais, adding his company’s winter contract for the Bow Valley begins Oct. 1 and Sept. 15 for Kananaskis Country.
He avoided pointing the finger at any one organization for leaving hundreds of people stranded on the Trans-Canada, including why the highway took so long to be shut down.
“We don’t control what decisions they make, but what we try to do is if we have the proper lines of communication, we will always try to influence what we believe is the right decision.”
The RCMP defended their response and said they don’t have the legal authority to shut down highways or roads.
“The RCMP are not responsible for shutting down highways. We follow the guidelines of the Alberta government and Alberta Transportation so once they advise to shut the highway down, then we just help them out in maintaining the highway at that point,” said RCMP Const. Mike Hibbs, a media relations officer for Southern Alberta.
He declined to state when the RCMP received direction to shut down the Trans-Canada Highway, however he said officers were on the highway as early as 3:30 p.m.
“We had members there all night long dealing with the public and making sure people were safe,” said Hibbs.
He added that at least seven RCMP members were on duty throughout the day and were backed up by dozens of firefighters from Canmore Fire-Rescue and the Exshaw Fire Department.
Canmore fire chief Walter Gahler said he was pleased with his crew’s response.
“I was very impressed with our response from the fire-rescue point of view,” said Gahler.
“It’s the type of call that’s really easy to critique from your couch or if you are in the middle of the mess for 12 hours, but the actual conditions on the ground are so complex they are very difficult to mitigate.
“You have to visualize what’s happening. It’s a full-blown blizzard, 40 centimetres of snow on the ground, literally 15 kilometres of parked vehicles, bumper-to-bumper, two lanes wide, no shoulder to drive or walk on and a lot of people had gone to sleep.”
He said his crew got involved around 9 p.m. after the RCMP asked for help.
“This was an RCMP event, this wasn’t a fire-rescue event and at some point I think they realized they did not have the resources so they asked Canmore Fire-Rescue to provide some staffing to help them, which of course we’re happy to do.”
He said his crews started from the Canmore end of the traffic jam and walked the entire stretch of highway going car-to-car to get people moving.
“I can’t speak to why people were saying they didn’t see any emergency responders for 12 hours. From what I saw we had people moving down that line from 9 or 10 p.m. through to 7 a.m., so at one point one of our firefighters or RCMP officers should have come past your vehicle.”
He also pointed out that they did not receive a single 911 call from the highway throughout the entire ordeal.
“We didn’t receive a 911 call on this because I think most people on the highway were by and large uncomfortable and really irritated, but OK, not endanger per say,” said Gahler.
He said one of the biggest problems was that a lot of truckers were asleep when they arrived to move them and a lot of trucks were parked beside each other blocking the entire road.
Despite being pleased with how they responded, Gahler said they would also be conducting an incident debrief to see if there are ways to improve their response in the future.
Robyn Dinnadge, manager of communications for the Town, said the Town decided to mobilize its emergency command centre, including setting up a warming centre at Canmore Collegiate High School, around 11:15 p.m. to support the RCMP.
Like the other organizations involved in the emergency, she said the Town will also conduct a formal debrief and put together a public report.
“At this point I think everyone is very pleased with how well the team worked together, how quickly we were able to assist the RCMP and set up a warming centre to accommodate 300 people,” said Dinnadge.
