A bit of a break this week for those working at snow clearing in Corner Brook

Public Works Chair Councillor Doonna Wheeler says it’s been a struggle for the past couple of months with double the amount of snow nearly daily making it hard to keep up with snow clearing major routes within 16-24 hours. 

Fortunately for those who clear the snow in Corner Brook, there’s been a bit of a reprieve this week. Many city streets are down to the pavement and crews, including contractors, have been working on widening roads and sidewalk clearing. Councillor Donna Wheeler is Chair of Public works and joined Bayfm with Lenny Benoit to walk about the city ‘s process for snow clearing. She says it’s been a struggle for the past couple of months with double the amount of snow nearly daily making it hard to keep up with snow clearing major routes within 16-24 hours. 

Wheeler says side roads take a little longer to get to and the city only has a certain amount of equipment to do the job. She says there are smaller trucks and loaders to do side roads and the city has fielded a lot of phone calls about this recently. Calls are triaged and prioritized but Wheeler says it’s hard to do when there is a large volume of calls and people need to have patience. She admits to being guilty herself by making a call and 20 minutes later it was done as part of their snow clearing route. Wheeler says there is a foreman on every shift to assess calls but there are a lot of streets and not everyone is a priority. Meanwhile, she says the city is looking at buying more equipment which will be a discussion for next year’s budget.