Well this morning we got up and the storm has stopped or past us, the wind is still pretty strong but is diminishing gradually. The Confederation sea bridge is still closed to all traffic, it has been closed for 12 hours now and I can just imagine that many trucks on the mainland side in New Brunswick are just waiting, parked in the special area for the bridge to re-open. The weather was just as bad in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and Cape Breton (Isle Royale) sticking out into the Atlantic, they always get the brunt of all storms. What it means for us on PEI is that the grocery stores will start having shortages in fresh produce like salad and imported fruits from the USA or South America. You can still get the essentials since we have lots of farmers and livestock farms.
My main concern is digging my car out from under the snow, right now the front of the car is buried in snow, our parking lot is clean, the plow guy came by early around 5am and cleaned it all out. The City and the Province have re-started the plowing of the streets and the highway and secondary roads after a 12 hour stop, so now they have to catch up. Matt Rainnie the host of CBC Island morning was telling us that another storm is coming this is just a break, an intermission if you like, the new storm should arrive by early hours of Thursday and dump another 25 cm of fresh snow. So Wednesday off I go for more food shopping and essentials.
I don’t think I would want to live outside of a major town on PEI in Winter, here we have all the services and living at the corner of two main city arteries means the roads are cleaned first. I heard stories of people in the country side and they are left to fend for themselves, no one can get to them, the wind is too high and there is too much snow on the road. Stories from last night are of 3 babies being born during the height of the snow at home. The way it is organized on PEI is when a storm hits, emergency plows stand by at Fire Halls, all of whom are staff by volunteer fire fighters. If a call comes in the emergency plow will open up the road for the Fire trucks and hopefully make it on time to help, like in the case of births at home. It becomes a neighbourhood affair, since everyone knows everyone else.
There are some tragedies of homes burning down and the Fire dept can’t get to them because the driveway to the Farm house is 200 feet long and has not been plowed or is too narrow. Last night a big barn full of bails of hay burned, the storm delayed the Fire Dept by 3 hours. Many of our secondary roads are also nothing more than soft red earth which in Winter turns to hard icy roads and are not necessarily plowed.
I don’t think many people will be going out for Valentine’s day given the state of the roads and everything is closed today anyway. Just stay home and read and enjoy the day. Until the next storm on Thursday morning.
I have to say that the City of Charlottetown is doing a wonderful job of cleaning the streets quickly and efficiently, a much better job than Ottawa who never seemed to be able to clean streets unless you called your City Councillor to complain.
