CANMORE – What started out as a jovial winter walk soon turned into a $7,000 hospital trip for one Canmore woman.
Camila Contreras, 30, said she was crossing the street on Jan. 2 outside Georgetown Pub when she slipped and fell, breaking her leg in three places and dislocating her ankle, and now she's wondering if the Town of Canmore's snow clearing budget is sufficient.
“I was crossing the road where Georgetown Pub is … there was a lot of ice, I fell and I broke my leg. I broke three bones and I dislocated my ankle. I went to the hospital, they did they X-ray and they said I need surgery,” she told the Outlook during a phone interview.
“I had surgery Friday (Jan. 3) in Banff. They put some screws and plates in there, and now I’m with cast for two to three weeks. Then I’ll get another cast, it’s like a cast, but you can remove it. To get back to walking it’s going to be two to three months."
Contreras said her boyfriend is essentially her sole support right now as she’s unable to do many things on her own. In addition to this, Contreras moved to Canada from Chile and is in the process of getting permanent residency. She does have insurance, but it doesn’t cover the cost of surgery. She said she's angry the slip happened almost two weeks after the snowstorm.
"I have to depend on someone, I'm using crutches," said Contreras. "I wonder if the Town's budget [for snow clearing] isn't big enough? It should be. It's very frustrating because I was just walking in town and I was very, very careful because it was super icy. I kept thinking 'wow, this is super dangerous.' Now I'm in bed, I can't move... and it happened two weeks after the storm."
Corey Brooks, Contreras partner, said the ice gathered on the roads days after a record snowfall frustrates him. He said the couple, now saddled with an expensive hospital bill, has contacted a lawyer, but the prospects don’t look good.
“They say that slip and fall cases are very difficult, especially going after a municipality,” said Brooks.
“Simply because there’s so many factors they want to take into consideration like was the person being careful. They say it’s a personal responsibility to be careful as well.
"On top of that, that the city just can’t be there all the time making sure that a person’s not falling. I say I understand that, that makes a lot of sense, but this whole situation came because of a heavy snowfall, so of course the city does what they can to clean it up, but then after a while they must have some obligation to try to clean up patches that are really bad.”
The Bow Valley received record amounts of snow from Dec. 20-23, resulting in 50-80 centimetres from Canmore to Lake Louise.
The Town of Canmore's streets and roads supervisor Geordie Heal said a period of short rainfall during the snowstorm made it more difficult for snow clearing and plowing.
“We had anywhere 50-80 cm in a fairly short period, depending on where you were, and we also had a rain in there as well, which made things even more difficult,” said Heal.
“So the strategy there was to, upon forecast, go out and hit intersections with salt and sand. The problem with that rain, it had created issues with moisture and that would freeze. We’d see that freeze by the end of the day after we’d already been there at one point during the day. It just made for a really challenging situation.”
The municipality approved a new snow clearing policy earlier this year, which would see priority zones 1 to 3, to adequately clear snow. The key changes in the policy would see priority one service level responses after two cm of snow within 24 hours, as opposed to the previous five centimetres and 48-hour response time, which will remain as the response time for priority two service levels and beyond.
According to the Town's website, a priority 1 area includes arterial roads, collectors, school bus routes, school zones, public transit routes, and handicapped parking stalls on roadways and is cleared after a minimum two cm of snow falls. A priority 2 area includes the downtown core, industrial areas and emergency accesses and is plowed after a minimum of five cm of snow falls. A priority 3 area includes local roads, parking lots and laneways. The latter are plowed "only as necessary or required," according to the Town's snow clearing policy.
“We do manage the high priority areas. The downtown area for sure sees a higher level of service. Removing snow from roadways is based on a priority and then we also remove snow based on if there are emergency equipment accessibility concerns, we’ll get in there and make sure that’s opened up. If there are historically problematic areas, like a hill or high traffic intersection or a challenging corner, we’ll get in and move that snow out of there,” explained Heal.
“What we did in this situation was we employed a number of private contractors to help remove snow as it was coming down, so we removed in the neighbourhood of 600 truckloads, I would say. A truckload is 14 imperial yards, so just to do the math it’s around 8,000-9,000 cubic meters – to give a rough estimate – of snow being removed from roadways.”
The Town of Banff had similar snow removal issues during the snowstorm, with Mayor Karen Sorensen taking to Facebook to update the community on Dec. 23.
“During the last three days we have received approximately 47 cm of snow, a record amount. All streets have at least one lane open and are passable. Yesterday we managed to get all parking lots plowed. Snow removal operations started this morning in the downtown core with Town staff and contractors and will continue tomorrow as well.
"Some staff will continue to work on Christmas Day and Boxing Day to plow and sand as required. Full snow removal operations will commence again on Friday Dec. 27.
"We are following the Snow and Ice Policy, with attention as per our priority zones, for this event and remind everyone that it may be some time before snow removal will take place in some areas."
Heal said the budget for snow removal and plowing in the Town of Canmore is roughly $320,000 annually with room for that number to increase. While it may have appeared slow moving, he said Canmore crews were out trying to combat the ice and snow blanketing the roads during the holiday snowstorm.
“[Snow plowers] are typically out somewhere like 3 a.m. in the morning,” said Heal.
“We’re watching the forecast, we have night patrols deploying the equipment, they’ll generally get out somewhere in that 3-4 a.m. in the morning window, and they’ll salt and sand intersections and hills. This one was challenging where we just had freezing and then some warmer temperatures ... it just made for a difficult situation. We’d have to come back and hit those areas again.”
Contreras and Brooks said they have yet to contact the Town of Canmore about what happened, but are hoping to connect to find some sort of solution as Brooks feels the area was neglected.
“You just watch a circumstance go from just going out for a stroll to costing you $7,000 – you can’t walk, you’re in lots of pain, [and] lawyers can’t help you,” said Brooks.
“Just the fact that it was on the street, for some reason, the Town is not really considered liable, or it would be difficult to prove that they were, when it’s clearly evident [in my opinion] that the area was neglected.”
Contreras said while the accident hasn’t been a pleasant experience, she’s felt very moved by the community as a whole, which didn’t hesitate to reach out and help.
“I’m super grateful about the community,” she said.
“I posted on Facebook and lots of people reached out to me offering help – if they can come and help me or if I need something, even to go to the hospital. I just want to say a big thanks to them. They don’t know me but they offered me their help. Someone brought me their wheelchair, and a shower stool, and showed me how to use them.”
Visit https://canmore.ca/municipal-services/road-maintenance/town-of-canmore-511 for more information on Canmore’s snow clearing policy.
