January 15, 2010
It may strike any sane person as a slightly odd situation. A front page newspaper article involving a small front end loader, the local council and a guy trying to do snow removal. This however sums up the situation in large parts of England over the past week. Being an island in the northern Atlantic, you would think England and its people would be well suited to dealing with all sorts of weather. I would learn the hard way once again how wrong a person can be.
The English weather service predicted a heavy snowfall for large parts of England. The warning is stated by the Met office website as "light flurries leading in some areas to accumulations" This warning had been going out for days. At around five o'clock Tuesday afternoon, the first flurries began to make their descent to the ground along with several million of their friends. Growing up in Minnesota, I know when a heavy snow is coming down. This was a heavy snow with nice big fat flakes coming down at a quick pace.
Leaving work at nine thirty, I would catch the 9:37pm train to go back to Reading. Now this train ride should take thirty minutes and pass through Ascot, Wokingham and even a town called Early. Nope, I can't even make stuff like these town names up.
At the stop in Ascot, the guard on the train walks through to tell all the passengers they are holding the train in Ascot until they can decide what they should do. Apparently, the people who run the trains could not decide whether the train should terminate in Ascot or continue its run to Reading and wouldn't tell the train crew until they made the decision.
Fifteen minutes later, they made the decision to push on to the next station. Crawling along at about ten miles an hour, the train would reach Reading just shy of midnight.
The next morning, England wakes up to four inches of snow on the ground and in some places up to eight inches with more falling slowly. The rapid response to the situation? Schools and airports close, buses and trains are cancelled, shops shut. The local councils begin to tackle to problem with roads. In Reading, a city of 100,000 plus, they proceed to salt the main roads only. Secondary roads are unimportant and will be left as is. Four trucks would take care of the "gritting" the entire city.
Well the chaos would continue for days as more scattered snow showers dropped dustings across the town and country. The councils would be forced to cut their salting efforts by twenty five percent as the supplies began to run low. Then they cut the efforts to fifty percent as they had only enough stocks to last for another two days.
Now a question you may ask, is what does this have to do with the man and his digger?
A man who's brother owned an excavation company borrowed one of the loaders and proceeded to dig out the school where his children went. Asking no money, the good samaratian then dug out another nearby school. He proceeded to clear the road he was living on and helped to dig out his neighbors. His neighbors were exalting their good samariatian as he would not accept any payment for his efforts. He stated he was simply tying to help out.
While he was about digging out his neighbors a local official from the city council stopped him and told him he must desist from his efforts. If he continued, he would face a hefty fine. Asking the reason, the city council member told him he might "damage the road." Remember this is one of the roads the city decided was going to be left because they have insufficient salt to actually "grit" the road.
The city council published a statement a few days later which states, "While we appreciate people trying to help with the situation, they should only do so after contacting the offices on 08........" Wait, those offices were closed because they couldn't make it in because of the snowfall.
A week and half later and temperatures have been above freezing with rain showers. The snow has gone and the country of England pats itself on the back for how well they handled the crisis. Rail got back on line after a week, airports only closed for a few days and people emptying groccery stores in panic buying because they feared they would run out of essentials.
Yep, flurries of stupidity.
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