Several bus routes throughout the Pembina Hills school division did not run on Jan. 15, thanks to the icy road conditions and strong winds.
“That is an individual bus driver’s decision, depending on the conditions in the area they’re driving,” said Wendy Scinski, Pembina Hills’ assistant Supt. of facilities and transportation.
Division schools remained open, however.
Scinski explained drivers would have started their day as per usual, and tried to drive their routes. As they drove, they would have evaluated the road conditions and made the decision either to continue or turn around and let their students know they weren’t coming.
There was no pattern to where the buses ran and where they didn’t.
On the Westlock side of the division, there are 39 different bus routes. In total, only 15 of those routes ran.
As of 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Busby (0/3) and rural Westlock (0/11) had no routes running. Fawcett (2/5) and Dapp (2/8) had less than half their routes run. Clyde (8/9) and the town of Westlock (3/3) were almost unaffected.
“It really depended on where the driver was,” Scinski said. “Some of the roads just seemed to ice over, while some were a little bit less so.”
She said she was initially surprised to hear many routes did not run, but after hearing stories from drivers and getting out on the roads herself, she understood the drivers’ decisions.
“If individual drivers thought it was unsafe, that was the call they made,” she said.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is the safety of the children, Scinski said. If the drivers didn’t feel they could keep their passengers safe, they weren’t going to risk driver what is essentially a “box on wheels.”
She said one or two buses did end up in the ditch on Wednesday, but could not say when those incidents occurred or if there were any children in those buses at the time.
