Duelling Mother Nature
Low snowfall amount frees money for other emergencies
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Monday, March 28, 2016
RANKIN INLET
The hamlet benefits a little bit on its bottom line during years when Rankin Inlet receives less than its average amount of snowfall, said senior administrative officer Justin Merritt.
Hamlet crews make opening the main roads their top priority when blizzards strike in Rankin Inlet. - NNSL file photo |
Merritt said snow removal usually takes the lion's share of the hamlet's annual budget of $25,000 for extra help.
He said a lot of overtime is paid to hamlet equipment operators during heavy snowfall years, and outside workers often have to be brought in to help carry the load.
"We only had one blizzard that kept everyone working all weekend long this winter, and you can usually count on at least three or four," said Merritt.
"During the infrequent times, like this winter, when we don't use the majority of the budget on snow removal, the money can be used on other projects if something else doesn't happen.
"But it's not the benefit some might think it is, because something will usually go wrong at the arena or something else we depend upon will break.
"There's always something that goes wrong."
Merritt said during the average winter most, if not all, of the $25,000 will be eaten up in wages and fuel.
He said overtime alone can cost the hamlet upwards of $60 to $70 an hour per operator.
"The crew will try to keep the main roads open as long as they can when the storm first starts, then Joe Tartak will make the call when it's too bad for them to go out.
"When the storm clears, they'll focus on getting the main arteries open to the health centre and to the airport for medevacs, then they'll get the fire department cleaned up so they can respond to calls.
"They'll try to get as many roads open in each area as they can with the piece of equipment they have, even if it's a just a single lane in some of them.
"At least twice during the past 10 years, the hamlet had to hire contractors to help, we got hit that bad."
Merritt said when a heavy blizzard hits, the operators will work around the clock in shifts.
He said a bad blizzard will see some operators log up to 80 hours on the job in one week.
"We don't want them to work any more than an extra eight hours per day because it's too risky once they get really tired.
"Right after the blizzard we just want to get the snow off of the roads.
"After that, we have a number of designated areas around the town where we dump the excess snow.
"We've also been pretty lucky during the past three years in that we haven't had to truck any of the snow away."
