Holy cow. #waterlooregion #kwawesome please be careful and stay home if you can today.
ALL schools, primary through postsecondary are closed, and I've seen some people grousing about that and "it's not that bad".
Well, two vehicles this morning have launched right off the 7/8 flyover onto King St. below. 1 fatality, one serious injury.
Two resource/supply problems are making this very very bad.
1) The Region, Cities .. and I think the entire province .. are out of road salt supply.
2) The snow accumulation is exceeding the ability of available equipment and operators to remove it.
Thus, roads are dangerously slick, and the plows have only been able to bank snow at the roadsides, not *clear* it. This makes curbs and concrete guardwalls into ramps. Freeway cattle chutes and the flyover are now skate park bowls coated in ice
Oh dear lord this photo. This is not only going to be serious evidence in an inquiry, it better end up in every roads&transportation engineering syllabus in any country that has snow.
The flyover was a goddamn half-pipe, it should have been closed before yesterday's accumulation started.
This is, by the way, Provincial MTO responsibility, not directly the region, but anyone and everyone should have pulled the alarm including the plow drivers who realized this was happening.
@johannab
In other countries, the people responsible get jailed. Just saying.
@johannab this happened on a bridge in Ottawa recently, a car hit it, popped over the side and landed on the ice of the Ottawa river. Incredible that nobody died. There is video of it...somewhere....
It was the Draveur Bridge in Gatineau, but the video is on toxic platforms.
@johnefrancis Oh shit.
Sooo... I replied to someone else - long long ago, I was a passenger in a very slow, responsibly driven truck with snow tires on it. Crossing a bridge in Ottawa over the Rideau. Lucky for us the bank wasn't quite up to the top of the guardrail. Bumper was at the top rail, tires stayed on the bank. Eventually got home and didn't leave the apartment for a week, I don't think.
@johannab And it's not the first time. February 2021 snow/ice storm buildup on the Glenn Jackson (I-205) bridge across the Columbia caused a fatal crash into the river.
One of our local news articles with a photo.
@RuthSachter oh dear lord.
And yeah, the article says this: "For decades, federal highway safety officials have warned about the risk of creating icy snow ramps on the side of plowed bridges."
We absolutely can see this coming and there's no excuse for letting people drive into this kind of hazard. Piling rather than clearing snow on any bridge or overpass negates every other risk mitigation measure ever calculated into the design.
@johannab That is absolute nightmare fuel.
@edebill NO kidding. Having once been a passenger, in a very responsibly driven, snow-tired truck that had traction become fiction in a microsecond on an icy bridge ... nightmare indeed. In my case it was a level, low bridge over the Rideau canal but thank gourds the snowbank was below the top of the guardrail. Bumper was right on the rail but tires stayed on the bank.
That picture is viscerally disturbing even though it shows nothing.
@johannab I get nervous on those high overpasses even in good conditions. That is just terrifying with the addition of not just ice but that banked snow.
When the University of Waterloo closes and cancels classes, that should be an alarm bell. They pretty much only do that when there is serious danger to a large number of community members - like students, faculty and staff who have travel to campus.
All workplaces should be closed.
This is an outstanding example of a major systems problem. It's academically fascinating but it's horrifying to witness the consequences of people still being required to navigate a city in these conditions.
