The old saying claims that March will come in like a lion and out like a lamb, but this year it seems the lion has eaten the lamb, along with all its friends, family and acquaintances.
The cold weather continues unabated as April approaches, and it kept emergency services personnel in the Westlock area extremely busy on roadways last week.
Between Monday morning and Friday evening, there had already been more than 20 collisions, and the icy roads were contributing factors in most of those incidents.
“The roads are very icy, and I don’t think that there’s any highway or side road that’s exempt, just with the wind, the snowdrifts and the freeze-thaw,” said Westlock RCMP Cpl. Sandra Milner.
“The roads were bad everywhere, and on a lot of the secondary roads the drifts were higher than you would expect at this time of year.”
Although there were so many collisions, injuries were fortunately minimal with just one reported.
“I know there was one injury collision, which was on Highway 44 just north of the Pickardville turnoff,” on Wednesday afternoon, Milner said.
Mostly, these collisions were the result of the weather as opposed to being the result of specific driver errors under the Traffic Safety Act.
“There was one where the person was passing unsafely on icy roads. I’m not aware of any other one where there have been charges laid,” she said.
Nonetheless, she cautioned that drivers need to be aware of the conditions and take precautionary steps.
“Slowing down is the big factor. Don’t drive while distracted, whether you’re trying to use the phone, eat, drink a coffee or have a cigarette,” she said.
“Keep both hands on the wheel and drive defensively.”
None of the collisions last week involved drivers or passengers who had failed to put on their seat belts, which might have played a significant role in minimizing injuries.
“Seat belts save lives,” Milner said.
Deputy Chief Brian Byrnell of the Westlock Fire Department echoed the sentiment that drivers need to be more careful on icy roads.
“I’ve been up here for 10 years, and this is the worst I’ve seen the roads in 10 years,” he said.
“People just aren’t driving to the conditions.”
It’s especially frustrating for him, he said, because he sees first-hand the additional risks the incidents have on emergency response crews.
“It puts our lives at risk, it puts the ambulance lives at risk and it puts the RCMP lives at risk, because we’re going to calls that shouldn’t be happening,” he said.
One particular concern he said he has is that many motorists don’t respond properly when a fire truck comes up behind them.
“They’re supposed to pull to the right and stop, not pull to the right and slow down. Pulling to the right and slowing down is actually more of a hazard than stopping, because now we’ve got to try to pass them,” he said. “That’s the No. 1 safety concern for us going to the scenes.”
Snowplows have been out on the highways all week and help to mitigate the dangers associated with the icy road conditions, but there is a limit to how much they can do in this type of weather.
“The highway staff are out doing what they can, but the salt is only effective in certain temperatures. When the temperature drops at night everything freezes back up again,” she said.
Fortunately for Westlock residents, however, the temperature is expected to rise sharply by the end of this week.
Environment Canada’s forecast as of March 25 is for sunny, clear skies by Wednesday of this week, with high temperatures reaching up into the double digits. “We’re all looking forward to spring. It has to start at some point,” Milner added.
