I've been here 27 years and never seen this amount
of snowfall in such a short time.
A weekend of squalls left parts of Ontario blanketed in
over 100 centimeters of snow.
The prolonged event resulted in a number of Rd.
closures, collisions and power outages, especially in cottage country.
Yeah, this was certainly a significant weather event, localized obviously
to the area between Orillia Gravenhurst Brace Bridge in Huntsville,
which dropped a massive amount of snow.
Gravenhurst Mayor Heidi Lorenz declared a state of emergency in
her community due to the substantial snowfall and the prolonged
closure of Hwy.
11.
That left us in a pretty precarious situation, not being
able to access a significant number of our residents.
A state of emergency allows us to ask for more
resources from the province.
As of Monday morning, OPP said Highway 11 was still
closed as emergency services continued to work on removing stranded
vehicles.
We brought in extra snow blowing equipment from Pearson Airport
and other areas, loaders and dump trucks.
We were using ATVs, snowmobiles to get to locations to
respond to motorists and and residences with people in distress,
helping our other first responding partners as well, fire and
paramedics to make sure that they were being able to
get to location.
We also had aviation, our aviation assets in the sky
as the weather cleared, checking on on vehicles.
No, I can't overstate how kind and caring the people
of this community are helping their neighbors.
There's some reports of the people who live on the
highway.
We're going to the the doors of the cars to
bring them drinks and foods and just really doing what
they can.
Obstacles such as down trees and limbs, downed power lines
and vehicles blocking routes slowed the progress of returning power
to thousands of customers in the region.
They've got the crews here, it's just about clearing the
snow so that they can go.
With another blast of snow coming in the forecast for
Ontario, commuters are reminded to avoid travel if possible.
You know when we say the roads are closed and
we want people to avoid unnecessary travel, please take that
advice to heart.