Charlottetown still struggling to clear last weekend's snowfall

Charlottetown is asking the public for patience and co-operation as its public works crews continuesnow and ice removal from last weekend's storm.

Officials say it has takencrews twice as long as usual to clean up the 21 centimetres of snow and almost 7 millimetres of rain that fell Sunday because equipment has continued to break down.

"We have had quite a week," said city public works committee chair Coun. Mike Duffy, noting about 90 per cent of the work is now done and is expected to be finished by Friday morning.

Sunday's weather "caused a lot of problems," Duffy said.

"That stuff came down and it froze as soon as it hit the ground," he said. "It just made different layers and it was really hard on our machinery."

'Limited amount of machinery'

About half of the city'ssidewalk plows broke while trying to clear the snow and ice from the sidewalks. Although they were repaired and back in service quickly, breakdowns of all city equipment continued due to long, hard use, Duffy said.

The city has six plow trucks, 13 sidewalk machines and three large blowers, two of which were sidelined as of mid-afternoon Thursday. It also contracts as many as 30 trucks to transport snow.

Some of the city's equipment broke because debris like logs and lawn chairs were left under the snow in the streets and sidewalks. A large bag of garbage jammed a blower Wednesday night, which meant snow already piled in the street didn't get removed.

"When you only have five or six pieces of machinery to do 44 square kilometres of land they call the city of Charlottetown, that's a pretty big tract of land to be trying to remove snow off with a limited amount of machinery," Duffy said. "Be patient and we'll get the job done."

Nature may not be patient however: anotherstorm system could bringmore "significant snow"to P.E.I. Sunday, although it's still a bit too early to predict amounts, saidCBC meteorologist Jay Scotland.

Officials noted people are becoming impatient with the lack of snow clearing and have been parking on the side of streets before snow has been cleared, which is a violation of the city's winter parking restrictions.

They also warn that private snow-clearing contractors and the public are not supposed to dump snow in city streets or on city property, and violators could face a fine of $500.

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