Her mother in law lives in a seniors complex on Little Harbour Road, which after Wednesday’s blizzard, still had many of its entries blocked by snow Thursday afternoon.
“This isn’t the first time this has happened. It’s not right,” Martin said. “It’s dangerous.”
She said for essentially two days, many of the seniors were trapped in their homes.
Elizabeth MacDonald, communications advisor for the Department of Community Services, responded to a request from The News for what the policy is on snow removal at senior’s apartments.
“We understand that residents of all our properties need to feel safe during and after a storm, and that they expect us to ensure snow removal is done in a professional and timely manner,” she said. “That is our priority and we take this obligation seriously.”
She stated that the policy for snow removal for properties managed by the Eastern Mainland Housing Authority is that parking lots are cleared by a private contractor who goes out to clear when two inches of snow has fallen; if the snow falls overnight they are to have the parking lots cleared by 7:45 a.m.
“With the exception of a few locations, housing authority ground crews clear the doors and walks,” she said.
The Eastern Mainland Housing Authority has two crews and they work at keeping the doors open during the snowfall until the conditions are such that the RCMP issue an advisors for persons to keep off the roads. When the RCMP issue such an advisory or road conditions become unsafe, Housing Authority staff are not permitted out for their safety. They would resume work when weather conditions permit.
The policy is that staff always clean the fire doors, main doors and main walkways first. Then they go back to clean secondary steps, secondary walkways, paths to garbage sheds and paths to generators.
“After a storm, staff work overtime to ensure each building is opened up as quickly as possible,” MacDonald stated. “Whenever we use private contractors, we always monitor to ensure that all obligations of the contract are being met. All of the province’s housing authorities expect their contractors to meet their contractual responsibilities and if they are not, we take this very seriously and will address these directly with our contractors.”
While their experience with their service providers has been very good, she said they always encourage tenants to call their local housing authority if they have any concerns around their apartment or building.
In response to why Hillside View wasn’t cleared until later in the day, she said it was because of the large snowfall.
“The day after the Jan. 22 blizzard, the housing authority’s contractor and housing authority staff worked diligently to remove all snow from parking lots, steps and entrances/exits according to the snow removal policy,” she said. “ The Jan. 22 blizzard resulted in a large snowfall and we do acknowledge that this slowed our staff down, however the housing authority added more staff in response.”
