Charlottetown crews 'working hard' to get snow cleared, mayor says

Crews will be working around the clock to get streets and sidewalks cleared so that schools and businesses can get back to normal, says Charlottetown Mayor Philip Brown.

Their work will likely be complicated by freezing drizzle that began falling in all three counties of P.E.I. on Tuesday night, with Environment Canada warning that "thin, hard-to-detect layers of ice" could be on the ground by morning.

The storm that began Friday dumped more than 60 centimetres of snow on P.E.I.'s capital city and even more on the eastern part of the Island — more than 80 centimetres as of Monday night, before things started to clear up Tuesday morning.

Schools and many government offices, including Charlottetown City Hall, were closed Monday and Tuesday, and many schools will be closed again Wednesday because they're not yet ready to be safely occupied. 

"The cleanup crew have been going 24 hours and their priority is for emergency services, police, fire, ambulances, to get to any spot they have to in case of an emergency," Brown told CBC News on Tuesday morning.

"We have over 250 kilometres of streets and roads plus close to 150 kilometres of sidewalk and multi-use paved pathways that we are working hard to get open so that schools and businesses can get back to their daily activities."

Public works manager Scott Adams said city sidewalks should be cleared by the end of the week. He said snow clearing is taking longer than usual because there's too much accumulation for it to be piled up or pushed to the side of roadways, so it has to be hauled away to a snow dump facility near Charlottetown's airport. 

Many secondary roads throughout the Island are still down to one lane. Curbside garbage pickup has been postponed the past two days because the collection trucks are unable to make wide turns, said Island Waste Management CEO Karen MacDonald.

"They're wider than a school bus. They're wider and longer than, like, let's say an oil truck. They have a much larger turning… radius requirement, so a single lane would give them no ability to turn."

Monday's collection was moved to Saturday, but Tuesday's collection will not be rescheduled. 

Instead, MacDonald said, the excess bag limit will be waived for people in affected areas, and anyone who can't store extra waste for a month can contact Island Waste Management's customer service line for help.

While communities continue their cleanup, many residents of P.E.I. were out and about Tuesday after being cooped up during the storm.

"I bet there were drifts in front of my house at least 10 feet deep, so I've been stuck inside and I'm finally out," said Dale Downing of Kilmuir.

He said the roads were still icy and bumpy, and wished drivers would slow down. Because some sidewalks haven't been cleared, pedestrians are forced to share the roads with vehicles.