Rankin Inlet remains shut down May 16

A loader and a snow plow struggle to remove snow — more than 90 centimetres — from Rankin Inlet streets May 16. (PHOTO BY DOUG MCLARTY/ARCTECH DESIGN)

(Updated at 3:15 p.m.)

The mayor of Rankin Inlet, Robert Janes, has told everyone in the Kivalliq community of 2,900 to stay home May 16 after a three-day blizzard dumped more than 90 centimetres of snow.

All schools, government offices, banks and stores remained closed during the afternoon of May 16 — after the Government of Nunavut had announced earlier in the day that it would re-open its offices at 1 p.m.

“Further to the Mayor’s announcement on radio, at the request of the Mayor, GN operations will remain closed this afternoon in order to allow the hamlet an opportunity to clear roads. All GN vehicles are to remain off the road unless absolutely necessary. GN employees, you are being paid to stay home so please stay home and allow the hamlet work crews a chance to get the roads opened up,” said a message from the GN posted on the Rankin Inlet news Facebook page.

The GN promised to fine-tune its “bad weather” policy this past Marchafter the GN decided to keep government offices open in Iqaluit March 12 despite an advisory from the City of Iqaluit asking people and vehicles to stay off the roads due to the large number of stalled vehicles in the streets.

That left GN employees forced to choose between going to work on roads that the City of Iqaluit had asked them not to drive on, losing pay, or using their special leave credits for holiday time.

After thus incident, Nunavut Employees Union also said it wanted to ensure that GN workers wouldn’t be called in to work again when roads are unsafe.

In Rankin Inlet, a front end loader and a snowplow, shown here early May 16, are still trying to clear roads in the community.

Environment Canada said the blizzard conditions would end by the afternoon of May 16, but another five to 10 cm of snowfall were likely to fall before the end of May 16, and winds would continue to gust up to 60 kilometres an hour.

“There’s an easterly wind this time of year that usually gives us a tremendous dump of snow and there’s large accumulations,” mayor Janes said .

Speaking during the afternoon of May 16, he said the request for residents to stay off the community’s roads was “cautious” move.

The hamlet’s snow-clearing crews hoped to clear the roads by the evening, Janes said.

“One of the problems is the snow is very soft and it’s very mild, so the heavy equipment sometimes is getting bogged-down,” he said. “We have single lanes cut through most of the main arteries, but the side-roads and some outlying areas, we still haven’t got there yet. We’re just asking people to stay off the roads until we get that done.”

Equipment operators had snow drifts as high as 15 feet-high to remove, said Janes, adding that there was no telling what was under the drifts, “so we’ve got to proceed with caution.”

RCMP Constable Mark Fowler of the Rankin Inlet RCMP detachment said of the blizzard produced “the most snow that I’ve ever seen” — and even at least two times the record-breaking 46 cm snow that was on the ground in 2009, according to Environment Canada.

“It was pretty bad out there yesterday evening and afternoon,” he said May 16. “We can get around by ski-doo. Our trucks are completely snowed-in.”

When asked if the detachment had any calls for emergencies, he said, “No. Thank God.”

But the stormy conditions in the Kivalliq region have hampered search efforts for Michel Pilon, 39, a worker at the Agnico Eagle Meliadine gold mine project near Rankin Inlet, missing since May 14, and Alvin Kannak, a 72-year-old elder from Baker Lake, missing since May 7.

Search efforts to find Pilon were suspended during the night of May 15 due to the blizzard, while the RCMP in Baker Lake said the search for Kannak had been temporarily suspended due to the weather.

with files from Jane George and Peter Varga