It was the last day of February, but nobody told Old Man Winter.
A snowstorm Monday afternoon made driving treacherous in Nelson, resulting in several crashes, although no one was seriously injured.
“There were seven accidents reported between 3:20 and 8:10 p.m.,” police Sgt. Howie Grant says. “Five involved multiple vehicles. One involved a sign, and another a [parking] meter.”
Police responded to a jackknifed pick-up truck and trailer in Rosemont and to several people who collided with parked cars when their brakes locked up coming downhill. Cedar Street was closed after turning into a sheet of ice.
“The buses were struggling and even the sand trucks were having difficulty,” Grant says. “I think it caught everybody off guard.”
He believes most people did adjust their driving habits, however. Things were a little better Tuesday as the temperature rose, but roads remained slick at higher elevations.
Corey Scanlan of Western Auto Wreckers says their tow trucks were very busy Monday, although things quieted down by Tuesday morning.
“[Monday] afternoon we had six trucks on the road for about six hours,” he says. “We couldn’t keep up.”
Most calls came from downtown, although none of them was serious. “Just a lot of fender-benders, people sliding all over on the skating rink,” Scanlan says. “The roads were just atrocious.”
In one of the more dramatic crashes, Tony Salway was driving down Hall Street across from the community complex shortly before 5 p.m. when he slid off the road, narrowly missing a house and a tree.
Salway wasn’t hurt, although he says it upset his two dogs in the vehicle.
“I was coming down at no more than 20 km/h. I lost it on the right, so I went across to the other side because I thought I saw some sand, but it was the same thing.
“It was traumatic, and I think unnecessary,” he says. Salway blames the city for not sanding and salting the road, or alternatively, not closing it.
“There’s damage to the car which the city should pay for. I’m thinking of billing them. It was their fault. I wasn’t the only guy who spun out there.”
103.5 The Bridge program director Drex Wilcomes caught the crash on video and has posted it on the radio station’s Facebook site.
The public works department was unavailable for comment Tuesday morning.
— With files from Andrea Klassen