Sarnia politicians seek snow rescue relief
Heavy snowfall and high winds shut down the highway for four days, trapping people in their cars — some for more than 24 hours — on the provincial highway stretching between London and Sarnia.
Lambton County council held a special meeting on Thursday to discuss who should pay for the rescue. The county paid about $250,000 in extraordinary costs for warming centres that sheltered and fed people who had become stranded on the highway.
Warwick mayor Todd Case said the county can't lose by applying for disaster relief funding.
"If it's successful, that's terrific," said Case. "Then the municipalities involved will get some of the money back, and if not, well so be it. We do these things for the right reasons, and the municipalities will obviously eat the costs, and that's the way it will be."
Some politicians doubted the application to the Ontario Disaster Relief Assistance Plan will be successful. The province does not generally approve applications unless they are about four per cent of a local government's budget, said Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley. In Lambton's case, that translates into $2.3 million.
Bradley voted against asking for help.
"It was a very positive exercise we went through," said Bradley. "A lot of people were really touched by what happened, and let's not get into arguing over what is a fairly minor amount of dollars in the scheme of things."
The Ontario Provincial Police and the Canadian military were not seeking payment for their part in the rescue operation.
The OPP used snowmobiles, and the military used helicopters to locate people and rescue them from their snowed-in vehicles along the highway.