The ice which covered the sidewalks of Montreal was so thick, in the wake of the weather cocktail of January 11, that the situation was “impossible to resolve” quickly, assured Monday the elected official responsible for snow removal.
Maja Vodanovic assured that the City teams had done everything in their power to make the sidewalks safer. Urgences-Santé reported 1,400 calls to paramedics for falls on sidewalks in just a few days, a recent record.
“There wasn’t 3 to 4 mm of ice like we sometimes get after an icy storm. There was 3 to 4 inches of ice. And it takes 2 to 3 passes of [chenillettes à trottoirs] Bombardier to resolve the situation,” argued Mme Vodanovic on the municipal council.
The situation is a result of the changeable weather in early January, she explained.
” SATURDAY [le 6 janvier] and Sunday [le 7 janvier], we received 15 cm of snow, then 17 cm of snow on Tuesday. After more than 30 cm of snow, it was 5 degrees Celsius and everything melted. We received 18 mm of rain, it continued to melt,” described the elected official. Then, “it froze overnight. It was absolutely impossible to break the ice on Thursday morning, it was impossible. Because the ice was caught between two Andeans. Even if we had added salt before, it was melted. If we had added sand, it would be at the bottom. »
Montreal has even reassigned certain teams from loading snow to de-icing sidewalks. “Can we do better for sidewalks in another situation? Absolutely,” said M.me Vodanovic.
The latter responded to questions from the mayor of the Pierrefonds-Roxboro district, Jim Beis, who was very critical of the state of the sidewalks.
The opposition elected official underlined that an elected member of the executive committee, Marianne Giguère, had recently criticized the impacts on snow removal of the policy of pooling snow removal equipment.
“The district consultation service, which oversees snow operations, attempted to pool devices, to rebalance resources and see if savings were possible,” wrote Mme Giguère on Facebook on January 19. “It makes sense on paper, but on the ground, it seems to cause reductions in services for certain districts. We are there. »