An emergency alert urged drivers to stay off highways Friday, as a fierce winter storm reduced visibility to near zero in many areas and led to crashes, including pileups, in southern Manitoba.
At least 50 to 60 collisions had been reported on southern Manitoba highways by Friday afternoon, according to RCMP, and dozens of highways were closed, including the Trans-Canada from Winnipeg to Brandon, which was closed for most of the day Friday but reopened by about 5:30 p.m.
The Southern Health regional health authority declared a code orange at Bethesda Regional Health Centre in Steinbach and Ste. Anne Hospital Friday morning, after a multi-vehicle crash near Ste. Anne, about 45 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, a Shared Health spokesperson said.
A code orange is called when a hospital needs to prepare for a potential sudden influx of patients.
Manitoba RCMP reported 30 crashes by noon on Friday and just hours later, that number had doubled. It pushed some hospitals to brace for a mass influx of potential patients.
Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg also issued a code orange alert, warning that a code orange may be called, shortly before 11 a.m. in response to several multi-vehicle collisions outside the city, the spokesperson said.
The province of Manitoba issued a news release, and also sent an alert via phones, just after noon, advising drivers to avoid travel on any southern Manitoba roadways amid worsening conditions. It was the first time a dangerous road conditions alert had been sent by Manitoba’s Emergency Management Organization, a provincial spokesperson said.
“Priority on the roadways needs to be given to emergency vehicles,” the province said in its news release, also warning that it is illegal to travel on closed roads.
“The highways are treacherous, there’s no other word to describe it,” RCMP Sgt. Paul Manaigre said. “I don’t think there’s probably an officer in southern Manitoba that isn’t dealing with a crash right now or writing it up. It’s crazy.”
It seemed most crashes hadn’t resulted in injuries, but police will have more information on the severity of the collisions later in the day, he said.
“[It’s] clearly a day to stay home and just wait it out.”
The province said for the safety of plow drivers and other motorists, it was pausing snow-clearing operations on roadways where visibility was reduced.
The roads will be salted or sanded once winds die down, said Tara Liske, Manitoba’s executive director of highway regional operations, but “it’s ultimately the RCMP that will have to reopen the highways.”
The City of Winnipeg, meanwhile, said it would begin plowing streets and sidewalks at 7 p.m. Friday, based on its street-clearing priority system.
The highway closures, which stretched throughout southern Manitoba, included the entire Perimeter Highway in Winnipeg, which was shut down by 10:30 a.m. and reopened just before the start of the afternoon rush hour Friday.
Winnipeg police said dozens of vehicles were involved in collisions, including a pileup on Fermor Avenue east of Lagimodiere Boulevard. About 20 vehicles were involved, and one person was taken to hospital in unstable condition, police said.
Manaigre said RCMP believe the driver crashed with another car and got out of her vehicle, and was then hit by another vehicle.
“It’s not something we see too often,” he said, but reminded drivers to stay inside their vehicles and wait for emergency responders after a crash.
Chris Parks said his wife was in one of the vehicles involved in the pileup. She was on her way to work when her pickup truck was hit from behind, and got wedged between two semis.
WATCH | ‘She’s lucky to be alive,’ man says after wife involved in pileup:
Chris Parks spoke with CBC shortly after his wife was pulled out of her truck by paramedics following a crash involving several vehicles on Fermor Avenue east of Lagimodiere Boulevard in whiteout conditions on Friday, Jan. 17.
“It was total whiteout,” Parks said from the scene of the crash, where he went to pick up his wife after she called him. She was checked by paramedics and released, he said.
“She’s lucky to be alive.”
Firefighters from Roland responded to another pileup crash involving six vehicles near highways 23 and 3, about 80 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg.
And to the east, Daniel Boonstra said it took him about two hours to make a roughly 100-kilometre drive from Winnipeg to Whitemouth.
“A lot of vehicles in the ditch. Just east of Dugald, there’s a car accident just before the railway tracks.… I had to take the backroads to get around it,” he said.
“In the city, the visibility is good … but once you get out to the open, it’s absolutely brutal.”
Power outages, school closures
The wild weather is the result of a cold front bringing strong northerly winds throughout the southern half of the province, where Environment Canada issued blizzard warnings that included Winnipeg, the Red River Valley and the Interlake. Those warnings were lifted by mid-afternoon Friday, with Environment Canada saying the worst of the conditions would taper off later in the afternoon or early evening.
Meanwhile, extreme cold warnings were issued for Manitoba’s far north, as well as some western Manitoba areas and a swath to the east, between Lake Winnipeg and the Ontario border.
Wind chills in the range of –40 to –45 are expected in parts of western and central Manitoba, as well as the north, on Friday night and Saturday morning, Environment Canada said.
Power outages weren’t as widespread on Friday as during other weather events, a Manitoba Hydro spokesperson said, but the hazardous road conditions made it hard to resolve them.
“The way we find outages and fix them is often by just patrolling up and down the line just to see what’s broken. That was very difficult to do,” said Peter Chura.
“We had at least one vehicle that ended up in a ditch today.… That slowed us down a little bit.”
There were still some outages as of Friday afternoon, but Hydro was “certainly over the hump,” said Chura.
WATCH | Dashcam footage shows travel chaos as blizzard slams Manitoba:
Dashcam video shows multiple vehicles on the side of Highway 9, near Lockport, Man., on Friday morning, as blizzard conditions and low visibility led to crashes and road closures across southern Manitoba.
The blizzard also led to multiple school closures, including an unusual situation for one school division.
The Seine River School Division, which covers a large area south and southeast of Winnipeg, decided just after 8 a.m. to close its schools for the day, but some students had already been picked up by buses.
The division posted an alert on its website, saying students would be dropped off at the closest school — not necessarily their own — for pickup by parents. The alert said parents would be contacted to let them know where their kids are and how to get them.
In a letter to families later in the day, the division said conditions were “windy but manageable, with good visibility and open highways” early in the morning, but as conditions quickly worsened, it decided shortly before 8 a.m. to close schools. Notices were sent to families and staff just after 8 a.m., the division said.
“I sincerely apologize for the late notice regarding today’s school closure. I understand the challenges and frustration this may have caused,” said the letter, signed by superintendent Colin Campbell.
Several other school divisions cancelled classes on Friday, while some stayed open for the day, but suspended bus service.
WATCH | Stormy winter weather prompts highway closures, travel warnings in Manitoba:
It was mayhem on Manitoba highways today as a blizzard paralyzed the southern part of the province. The chaos took hold Friday morning as powerful winds whipped up whiteout conditions. It left drivers in ditches and RCMP responding to dozens of crashes.
Red River College Polytechnic closed its campuses at 4 p.m., cancelling all evening classes due to the changing weather conditions.
Meanwhile, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority says community health services — home care services, in particular — may be affected by the weather, and clients whose visits will be postponed or cancelled can expect to be contacted by phone and notified of the change.
Temperature plunge
Along with the snow, temperatures across the south are expected to fall throughout the day on Friday.
In Winnipeg, an early morning temperature of 2 C was forecast to drop to –13 C by the afternoon, with a wind chill value around –30.
The daytime highs through the weekend and into early next week are forecast to be between –21 C and –26 C, with overnight lows between –24 C and –30 C.
The normal for this time of year is a high of –13 C and low of –23 C.
