Freezing rain, heavy snow, poor road conditions and a lack of spare bus drivers has led to dozens of bus route cancellations within the Pembina Hills School Division over the last two weeks.
As described on the Pembina Hills website, it is generally up to individual bus drivers to decide if the weather conditions are too poor for their buses to run, but division policy also states that no buses will run if it is –40C or below at the start of a route without factoring in windchill.
In a short news update posted to the website, freezing rain on the morning of Feb. 13 led to 25 bus route cancellations and several delays throughout Pembina Hills, as well as one bus getting stuck in the ditch on Highway 44 near Jarvie.
Though some of the students were upset and scared, there were no injuries and a spare bus was able to transport all the students to school safely. A tow truck later recovered the bus that got stuck in the ditch.
The heavy snow and lack of visibility on Jan. 17-18 also led to dozens of cancellations throughout the division, with some communities just shutting down service entirely.
However, the absolute worst day for cancellations was on Jan. 20, when many buses didn’t run due to a heavy sheet of ice covering their windshields.
“With it raining so much when the drivers were starting their routes and it being like –18C, it was freezing almost instantly on their windshields and they literally couldn’t see,” said director of transportation Shantelle Haitel.
“There were a couple of drivers who reported to me that they hadn’t even made it to their first stop yet and they were out of windshield washer fluid. That’s how much they were trying to keep their windshields from freezing and it just was not working.”
The website was updated later in the morning to say that most routes were running, but Haitel noted that many parents didn’t send their children to school that day and some buses literally had no students to transport even though they were listed as “running”.
Another problem that Pembina Hills is grappling with right now is a lack of spare bus drivers, which led to at least one route being cancelled in Westlock on Jan. 20-21.
In addition to advertising for spare bus drivers on Facebook and online, Haitel said the problem is bad enough that they are hanging physical banners at their rural schools in order to get the word out.
Anyone who is interested in becoming a spare bus driver can either call the Transportation office at (780) 674-8510 to get more information or check out the Pembina Hills website.
