Some of you guys know I drive a snow plow for the City of Edmonton. When it starts snowing heavily all of a sudden, we often only have 7 people working for an entire quarter of the city. So if the snow is extreme, it will usually take at least four hours to have 14 people on the road working. Weekends are even worse.
During warm weather, more salt is used. As much as 50% salt, mixed with sand. When it's cold, very little salt is used, sometimes only 2% salt. And if it's snowing heavy, no matter how much sand/salt we put down, it doesn't make a bit of difference. The only real time anything is effective, if after the roads have been plowed, or the snow is so hard packed that it is almost ice. High priority roads are obviously plowed first, but it can't happen right away. It sometimes requires 4+ trucks to plow a single road, and if there are only 7 trucks working, it's impossible to do it.
I'm sure Calgary is the same, but in a major snowstorm, the only way for us to be effective is if we had at least twice as many people and trucks as we do. We simply do not have the money or the equipment to do our job properly.
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