The City of Saskatoon now has a plan in place for severe snow events like the one the city experienced back in November. The November 2020 blizzard costed the City $14 million dollars.

Council passed the Roadways Emergency Response plan during Monday’s regular meeting. The new plan will be put into action when there is a snowfall greater than 25 cm and/or a combination of snow, freezing rain and wind along with reduced mobility to the point that light vehicles cannot travel on city streets.

Phase one of the plan includes clearing priority one streets, access to emergency facilities and access to critical city services 12 to 24 hours after the snowfall ends. Phase two will then include grading major transit routes and some priority two streets. The third phase will see grading completed on priority two and three streets, this will be around 96 hours after a storm. The last two steps include clearing local streets and removing the snow.

Goran Saric, Director of Roadways, Fleet & Support says, “We have a fine-tuned response plan for snowstorms that we scale up for the handful of times each year when more than 5 centimetres of snow accumulates.”

With this response plan in place, extra staffing and contractor resources would be activated and Saric says because it is a more robust, multi-agency strategy it will allow the city to respond faster and more efficiently.

The City’s previous extreme blizzard was in 2007 when 36 centimetres of snow fell in one day. Last November 30-40 centimetres of snow fell.