Fuel mismatch, continued blizzards, are making it nearly impossible to clear snow in Clyde River
CBC
Clyde River, Nunavut, has faced weeks of multi-day blizzards and now the hamlet's senior administrative officer said the problem is the community doesn't have the right fuel to run their new snow-clearing equipment.
Normally the hamlet relies on a bulldozer and two loaders to clear streets and remove snow, but in late January the bulldozer and one of the loaders broke down.
Jerry Natanine said the source of the problem is that their new equipment needs diesel fuel, and the community doesn't have any.
The community hasn't had diesel fuel since the current tank farm was built in the 1990s, said the deputy minister for Community and Government Services, Kyle Seeley.
The tank farm in Clyde River only stores gasoline and Jet A fuel, he said, which has always been used to operate heavy equipment and heat homes.
Natanine said that's something the hamlet wasn't aware of, because their old equipment ran just fine on Jet-A fuel.
"So when [the] hamlet got new machines… it didn't even come to consideration that there was fuel that wasn't going to be right."
In fact Natanine said he and others in the hamlet always thought the fuel stored at the tank farm was diesel.
"Like all the houses use, we call it diesel. Every time we're going to go buy some to use our camp stove or something, we always say we're going to go buy some diesel. And I don't know. It's unbelievable."
The community depends on trucked water and Natanine said Monday that some households have now been out of water for a week.
With no heavy equipment operating to clear snow, he said they're facing the daunting task of using borrowed snowblowers in the community and hiring people to shovel out the huge piles of snow that have drifted across roads and up the sides of buildings.
Teema Palluq, who has been digging out his home, said the snow has piled up to about nine metres from the ground to his rooftop.
Natanine said the hamlet also has an arrangement with the airport to use their snowplow, but that's only after airport runways and other critical infrastructure has been cleared.
Natanine and Seeley said arrangements have been made to allow the hamlet to borrow diesel fuel that was cached after the sealift season for an Environment project scheduled for the spring. That would allow the hamlet to run its new equipment.