Icy roads leave car half-toppled on lawn after night of freezing rain, fog in Calgary

Freezing rain overnight left a thin coat of ice on roads all over Calgary Thursday morning, sending one car over a ledge onto someone's front lawn.

No one was injured in that single-car mishap in hilly Patterson in the city's southwest. 

Police say there were 83 collisions, four involving injury, from midnight to 2:30 p.m.

The icy conditions impacted pedestrians, too. EMS said that between 6 a.m. and noon, paramedics responded to 50 calls related to people slipping and falling in Calgary. The agency said it had to schedule four additional ambulances to support the unexpected number of calls coming in.

Fog advisories that were issued for Calgary and much of southern Alberta Wednesday evening were lifted by late Thursday morning, with the exception of Lethbridge.  

The frozen rain also lead to seven pole fires around Calgary, cutting power for some time to almost 10,000 customers, Enmax said.

Crews were called to Heritage Drive and Hamlet Road S.W. where a power pole went up in flames and partially collapsed, fire officials say.

That prompted Enmax to temporarily cut power in Kelvin Grove, Haysboro, Glenmore Park, Eagle Ridge and Chinook Park.

Another pole caught fire in Springbank Hill on 85th Street S.W. 

Enmax spokesperson Gina Sutherland says wood poles are susceptible to fires in this weather.

You've got temperatures hovering right around zero degrees, you've got wet weather, and that's combining with all of the salt from the roads that's in the air," she said.

"And that builds up in our insulators and what happens then is it acts as a conductor, and short circuits, heats the wood and ultimately causes a fire."

Environment Canada cautioned visibility on the roads could be reduced to near zero, and that travel was expected to be hazardous.

Snowfall warnings remained in effect Thursday morning for Crowsnest Pass, Waterton Lakes and Fort Macleod.

Those areas were expected to receive between 10 and 20 centimetres of snow, tapering off Thursday evening.

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