Police are responding to dozens of collisions on Ottawa roads after a winter storm dropped about 15 centimetres of snow on much of the National Capital Region.
“I’ve been doing this job 18 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Const. Michael Fathi said.
OPP officers responded to 27 collisions in the city overnight, with numerous vehicles left in ditches along Highway 417, Highway 416 and Highway 7.
Despite the large number of incidents, Fathi said most involved drivers “going into the ditch” and no injuries had been reported.
Those collisions happened between Monday at 6 p.m. and Tuesday at 6 a.m., and Fathi said the OPP doesn’t yet have updated numbers for Tuesday morning.
“The plows were out and working as hard as they could to clear the highways, but obviously with the accumulation that we got, snow was falling faster at some points than the plows could clear it,” Fathi said.
Ottawa woke Tuesday morning to about 15 centimetres of snow, after a storm that started Monday afternoon and lasted into the early hours Tuesday.
Environment Canada lifted snowfall warnings around 5 a.m.
By that time, the weather agency reported that up to 17 centimetres of snow had accumulated at the Ottawa airport.
Although the weather agency lifted all snowfall warnings in eastern Ontario, a risk of freezing drizzle remained in place Tuesday morning.
Another eight collisions were reported to Ottawa police, of which six were reported after 6 a.m. Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) said in an email.
City staff are reporting an average of about 15 to 16 centimetres of snow throughout Ottawa’s downtown, according to the city’s manager of road operations Bryden Denyes.
City snow clearing crews have been working since the early morning and are prioritizing main and arterial roadways, he said.
“We fully understand that it is a very busy day for families, but we always ask if there’s any way to make arrangements to move vehicles off roadways, that will help us get cleaned up faster,” Denyes told CBC’s Ottawa Morning.
4 accidents in Gatineau
Gatineau saw four accidents on slippery roads overnight, according to Gatineau police, including an incident of a ten-wheel truck hitting a lamppost at the intersection of Boulevard du Mont-Bleu and Boulevard de la Cité-des-Jeunes.
The 15 to 18 centimetres of snow that accumulated in Gatineau will be cleared from streets within about 16 hours and from sidewalks and multipurpose pathways within about 20 hours of when the snowfall ended, according to a news release from The City of Gatineau.