‘The worst I can remember’: midwestern Ontario digs out after massive winter storm

Residents are working to recover following the worst winter storm in decades, CTV London’s Scott Miller has the details.

Don McCullough has been a tow truck driver near Paisley for nearly 40 years, and he says he’s never worked in conditions like he had to earlier this week.

“I would say this is likely the worst I’ve seen it that I can remember,” said McCullough who owns and operates McCullough Tirecraft near Paisley.

More than 60 centimetres of snow, and winds exceeding 50 km/h whipped up a wicked storm for Bruce, Grey, Huron, Perth, and Wellington counties this week.

At one point all roads in Bruce County were closed, and plows were pulled from the roads making them impassable.

“I was out in some of these conditions yesterday - specifically on Lucknow Line and I was personally in whiteout conditions, taking people from their vehicles that were stuck and driving them into Goderich - and we had to leave these vehicles on the side of the road. So, they’re just being removed now, and that was just one area that was really horrible to drive through,” said Huron County OPP Constable Craig Soldan.

In Huron County, Soldan said there have been 24 collisions since Monday and another 33 vehicles left stranded on impassable roads.

In Northern Bruce and Grey County the OPP report 38 collisions since Monday, including four involving seven or more vehicles.

Saugeen Shores Police say they charged 16 people for driving on closed roads over the past two days.

“You may think ‘well I only have to go five kilometers up here to home,’ but at the end of the day it’s illegal to drive around an emergency road closed sign. It’s against the Highway Traffic Act. There is a fine for that. It does come with demerit points if you’re charged by the police,” said Constable Soldan.

McCullough said he towed more than 100 vehicles over the past three days, and he was forced to pull his tow trucks from the roads due to the horrible conditions.

“They billeted close to 20 people around Tara - and that’s just Tara. So, I don’t know what else was done in the other areas but people out in the country were taking stranded people in that we couldn’t get to. The roads were just impassable,” said McCullough.

The weight of all that snow has caused some roofs to collapse across the region as well. Vern Steffler’s auto shop roof near Wingham buckled and collapsed yesterday forcing an indefinite closure of his business.

“I was doing some repair on my snow blower, and I happened to look up and I heard some creaking and groaning, and I could see the steel splitting open - it’s never done that. We’ve had this shop since 1994, and it’s never done that before,” he said.

A number of barn rooves have collapsed across the region as well. In short, it’s been a very challenging winter for Ontario’s snowbelt, which is more than living up to that moniker this year.

“Just when you think ‘Okay, all right all right. Yeah. We’re done,’ And then you walk out the door and there’s another 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground,” said McCullough.

Cleanup efforts continue out on the snow clogged roadways - some of which remain closed.

“Right now, we’ve got some really heavy drifting especially in the southbound lanes of Highway 21 and Highway 4 and Lucknow Line. So, we’re working at getting that pushed back - and once the wind has died down in there and the lanes are clear then we’re going to reopen the road,” said Soldan.

McCullough said he still can’t believe what he saw on Monday: the worst winter conditions he’s seen in nearly four decades.

“That that was mind boggling what we were dealing with on Monday. Never ever have I seen anything like that in this area before” he said.