A Prince George rescue team's speedy response is getting plowed under by city snow crews.
For years now Fort George Highways Rescue (FGHR) has complained to the City of Prince George about their crews leaving snowplow windrows across their driveway, but when the snow started to fall hard this weekend and the thick berm got piled across their laneways again, the volunteer crew finally had enough frustration.
"When we get a big dump like this, we get calls. We knew it was probably going to happen, and there was that berm in our way, so I called in a few of our guys on their time off and we had to go at it early in the morning. Sure enough, we got two calls later in the day," said FGHR Chief Keith Laboucan. "If we hadn't put in all that work, our members would not have been able to get into our hall when they responded to the calls, and our trucks would not have been able to get out."
The trained volunteers from FGHR are called out to the areas of the regional district that have no other fire department or rescue response teams. In other words, they get the farthest flung and often the most extreme emergency calls, and to the victims they are the often the only ones coming. Their specialty is cutting trapped victims out of vehicles. Ambulance and RCMP are the only other agencies responding to these cases, and they carry only basic hand tools to free those victims.
"It seems to be an ongoing issue with our driveway being blocked after snow crews come by, almost as if city crews are unaware of the emergency rescue department there," said Laboucan. "If something does not change in the future this could mean the difference between life and death.
"We're at the point that we don't know what to do. We have been talking to the city a long time about this," he said. Ironically, their headquarters at Ospika Boulevard and 15th Avenue shares a back fence with the city's work yards. "We checked and noticed the ambulance and fire places are plowed out, so need to be part of that too."
The berm on Sunday morning was about two and a half feet deep, more than a foot wide, contained a lot of small rocks and was hard-packed. Laboucan said shovels did little to break the windrow down, and snowblowers were given a good mechanical workout to open their way again.
With all the snow still falling, Laboucan is worried that it is going to happen again soon, and without warning. They have a private contractor, Acme, that clears their parking lot but the city's clearing crews usually come by up to a day after that has been done.
"Kudos to Acme for clearing out our parking lot, and even if they aren't on duty and notice our driveway is plugged they go out of their way to clear us out," Laboucan said. "But if a grader goes by and we don't get a loader stop in to open up the driveway - and to be fair, sometimes we do, it is hit and miss - then we're plugged."
