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City infrastructure surviving the extreme cold

Feb 13, 2019 | 3:51 PM

 

MEDICINE HAT, AB — The extreme low temperatures through the past two weeks have caused plenty of issues, such as dead car batteries, frozen water lines and icy road conditions.

However, when it comes to city services, they say this year is no worse than any other. In fact, it’s been better than average so far.

Since the beginning of February temperatures have been consistently in the minus 20’s, and even though the city is feeling effects, it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“So far this year we’ve had three water service calls come into our department in regards to no water,” says Brian Graham, manager of field operations for the City of Medicine Hat.

Those three calls for service were a result of leaving the home for an extended period of time, and not checking that the water was running.

“The main thing is for residents is to understand they have to have minimal heat on in their house,” says Graham. “Especially if they go away for a weekend or for a vacation have someone check their house, make sure the heat stays on.”

Graham says in the past years they’ve had to respond to more than 10 times that amount of water emergencies.

“The last two years had over 40 frozen water service lines, this year so far we’ve only had three, which is really good,” says Graham. “But we’ve probably got another two or three weeks of cold weather yet so we may have a few more come in.”

The cold doesn’t only affect pipes and water lines. When it’s combined with snow, it makes for some slippery streets.

With temperatures staying below minus 10, the compacted snow on residential roads isn’t melting, making them more like ice rinks.

However, Jeremy Petryshyn, manager of operations for municipal works for the City of Medicine Hat, says the priority is to make sure major roads and hills aren’t icy.

“We’ll deal with our category 1’s and 2’s and then we go do some sanding in the category 3 roadways,”he said. “But sanding is the majority of how we treat those roads.”

With residential streets, all they can do is sand the roads until temperatures warm up.

“We’re out doing some plowing and a lot of sanding of the road ways,” says Petryshyn. “We’re also going to start doing some snow removal next week where we’re going to go into the downtown and start removing some of the snow that’s in there.”

According to The Weather Network, Medicine Hat won’t be back up to seasonal averages for another two weeks.