Churchill deputy mayor Shane Hutchins, a resident of the Northern Manitoba port town since his family moved there in 1967, says the blizzard that blasted his town for three days in the first week of March was unlike any he’s seen before.
“There hasn’t been a storm like this in my lifetime,” he said, noting there’s been snow and windstorms before but not for the duration and intensity of this one, which hit the town with wind gusts up to 120 kilometres per hour for three days running and prompted the Town of Churchill to declare a local state of emergency.
The town moved to a 24-hour snow clearing schedule as of March 14 in an effort to get snow cleaned up before milder weather arrives and more people are out and about, when children playing on snow hills near roadways could pose a safety risk.
As severe as the storm was, Hutchins said the response of Churchillians has been just as awe-inspiring. At the height of the storm, he says, employees of Stittco were out on snowmobiles delivering heaters to homes where furnaces had broken down and they continued to do so on foot when conditions made even using snowmobiles unsafe. The storm hadn’t even passed when town employees got out on the streets at 2 a.m. March 10 to get a jump on ensuring roadways were clear for emergency vehicles.
“The guys have been going non-stop since 2 a.m. Thursday,” said Hutchins.
The town’s executive director, Cory Young, said employees also rode out the storm at the town’s water intake station, 30 kilometres out of town, and the water treatment plant, where they had been positioned in advance of the blizzard’s arrival to ensure residents had access to water.
“It’s been an incredibly well co-ordinated response,” to an unprecedented event, Young said. “We got socked real bad. It was literally like a hurricane.”
The storm also affected Lynn Lake in Manitoba’s northwest, where it shut down the town office, West Lynn Heights School and the Lynn Lake Airport, as well as at least one business on March 7. Lynn Lake Mayor James Lindsay said the snow stopped for the most part there on March 8 and crews immediately resumed snow clearing, which they had begun on March 7. That work continued through to last Friday when crews got around to clearing low-priority alleyways after restoring the other roadways.
“The only problematic incident in town was when one operator encountered a fire hydrant buried under the snow,” Lindsay said. “It took most of our public works crew off snow removal for a while to find the shutoff valve and deal with the break.”
The biggest concern in Lynn Lake, said Lindsay, were reports of people who were on their way out of or into town who had not yet been in contact.
“This created a great deal of worry and frustration for a large number of community members as well as the families of non-residents who had no idea the location of their loved ones,” he said March 10. “There is no cellular service in northwest Manitoba beyond the Nelson House junction. This is an issue that our and neighbouring communities have become increasingly concerned about over the years. Fortunately, at this time, we are unaware of there being anyone else left unaccounted for between Lynn Lake and Thompson. We are aware that there are at least three trucks on the winter roads north of Lynn Lake, but all of them have been in contact with their home bases via satellite phone or through contact with the RCMP.”
Lindsay said that he understood that the trucks that were on the winter roads were equipped to stay where they were while waiting for road crews to arrive and get them moving again.
Like Hutchins, Lindsay says this storm was a new experience.
“I have lived north of the 53rd since I was a toddler, and for the last 13 years, here in Lynn Lake,” he said. “In all that time I have never encountered a blizzard like this.”
The massive amount of snow that fell in Northern Manitoba during the blizzard forced the organizers of the annual Hudson Bay Quest sled dog race between Gillam and Churchill to cancel the event, which was scheduled to begin March 17.
Hutchins says it will likely take a couple of weeks of 24-hour efforts to get Churchill back to normal again. Young says the town has three loaders and there are also two privately owned loaders assisting their efforts, with another couple at work on private property. Transport Canada has also lent the town a tandem truck to work alongside the two the town owns while the cleanup continues. The town is also in discussion with Manitoba Infrastructure about getting a snowplow to help clear the highway to the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, about 30 kilometres out of town. The town is responsible for keeping that highway open and crews had managed to punch a single lane through but more work is need to widen it and make it safe for travel. The town is still assessing damage caused by the storm but Young said the fire hall did suffer some damage.
Lindsay says the storm’s aftermath saw a lot of public and private cooperation as people worked together to get things back to normal.
“Since the snow stopped, there has been a number of people, from youths to adults, going door to door offering snow shovelling services at very reasonable rates, as happens every time it snows,” he said. “Others have spent the last couple days hooking up chains to trucks to pull people out of driveways and over windrows on cross streets.”
Young said Transport Canada did a great job to get the Churchill airport open as soon as possible and that a train is expected to arrive in Churchill on Saturday.
“This community is second to none when it comes to how we band together,” he said.
Hutchins says that long-time residents like himself know that what makes Churchill special isn’t beluga whales or polar bears.
“It’s definitely the people that make Churchill a special place. “There were a lot of selfless acts during the blizzard. It was a really proud moment watching the acts of heroism, the acts of selflessness. It’s really a proud moment as a Churchillian to see those kind of things happening.”
