Greater Sudbury council member Robert Kirwan issued a statement via Facebook today regarding slow response times from snow plows.
The Ward 5 councillor's statement is as follows:
A number of people (including myself) have been asking about the status of the snow clearing operations today, so let me share with you the information I received from the Manager of Operations, Mr. Randy Halverson, who I can assure you is as professional and efficient a manager as I have ever met.
A general call out was declared at 6:00 pm last night. That means that all available contractors and staff were called out and deployed. One of our challenges in April is our winter control Contractors are no longer paid standby (as of the end of March) and generally speaking demobilize their equipment.
Staff contacted the contractors at the beginning of the week in anticipation of this storm so thankfully a lot of them were able to respond. But we still have less equipment on the road than we normally do for a snow event.
At this point crews are addressing both our main roads and our subdivisions. There has been a significant amount of snow accumulation over the past several hours and we know that more is coming. Crews have been out on the roads since yesterday morning plowing and will stay out until everything has been cleaned up.
Our route design is based on a 24 hour turnaround. So it is expected that most areas will see a first pass by late this afternoon unless we experience some equipment issues. Staff expects that we will need to complete a second pass on most areas based on the forecast for the next twenty four hours.
I hope this helps explain what is happening on our roads today.
The staff are doing their best and we ask for your patience as we get through this storm.
