State of emergency
Posted Dec 14, 2010 03:51:22 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SARNIA, Ont. – A state of emergency has been declared in southwestern Ontario after a snow storm and high winds left hundreds of people stranded on area roads.
Police in Sarnia say about 300 people are stuck in their vehicles on Highway 402 in Lambton County and may be there for some hours.
The state of emergency allows officials to ask that Ottawa send help _ including the military.
Emergency Management Ontario also issued a Red Alert for the area from Sarnia east to London because the heavy snowfall is causing zero visibility.
Provincial police Const. Chrystal Jones said early Tuesday that vehicles are stuck on the highway and they can’t get the plows down to get them out because of the whiteout conditions.
The plows were pulled off the roads because of no visibility midday Monday, “so the snow is piling up.”
Things are nasty out east as well.
Weather warnings cover all of Atlantic Canada this morning — a day after strong winds and heavy seas hampered travel across the region.
Ferries were kept at dock in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and high winds limited travel on the Confederation Bridge from P-E-I to New Brunswick.
Nova Scotia Power said 25,000 customers were without electricity late Monday and another 2,500 were affected in New Brunswick.
Most of New Brunswick was under a heavy rainfall warning and winds are expected to blow at 90 kilometres an hour.
The Charlotte County area of southwestern New Brunswick was expected to receive 80 to 130 millimetres of rain by Tuesday.
Heavy rain and powerful winds were expected to blast away at Nova Scotia and P-E-I overnight and continue through the morning.
And our neighbours to the south are not immune either.
Authorities had to rescue more than 100 motorists in Indiana yesterday as they sat trapped in their cars in biting cold.
They were trapped by a storm that lashed the area over the weekend and has been blamed for at least 15 deaths.
LaPorte County police don’t know how many people were stranded, but say some had been stuck for as long as 12 hours.
The heavy lake effect snow in Indiana was part of a slow-moving storm that has been crawling across the central United States since Friday night.
The storm dumped nearly a metre of snow before it stretched further east, with snow in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
Indiana was hardest hit yesterday, with up to 40 centimetres of lake effect snow in some areas.
The upper U-S Midwest also has been gripped by bone-chilling cold, with wind chills well below freezing in many places.
