Report blames SQ, MTQ for errors that lead to fiasco
There was lots of blame to go around in the Highway 13 fiasco that saw hundreds of motorists stranded for more than 12 hours during the March 14 snow storm.
Florent Gagné, a former deputy minister of transport, released his report into the disaster on Friday and said both Transport Quebec and the Sûreté du Québec have adequate emergency measures in place, but because of several grave errors, they were not activated in this case. He compared it to having a properly working car, filled with gas and its tires checked, but you can’t go anywhere because no one thought to turn the ignition key.
In this case, that ignition key wasn’t started because of a breakdown of communications on every level at both agencies, “both vertically and horizontally.”
Here is a summary of Gagné’s report and its recommendations.
CHAIN OF EVENTS
Between 6 and 8:30 p.m. on March 14, three big rigs got stuck on the highway. In fact, there were five major breakdowns on the highway between Highway 20 and Highway 40, causing traffic chaos. Meanwhile, snow clearing trucks were stuck in traffic and unable to clear the highway from 4 p.m. on because a shift change landed the new crew in gridlock. Highway 13 was closed at 4 a.m. on March 15 as police and Transport Quebec authorities proceeded to evacuate the highway. The City of Montreal was asked for help at 3:24 a.m. and a bus for evacuees from the fire department arrived at 4:29 a.m., while other buses arrived an hour later. A temporary shelter was set up in Lachine at 7:09 a.m., and six people took advantage of it. The highway was finally reopened 11:42 a.m.
TRANSPORT QUEBEC
The highway is one of several in the region monitored by a traffic control centre located downtown called the Centre intégré de gestion de la circulation. The centre was recently given an $11-million technology upgrade, and Gagné says the technology had some bugs during the crisis. The report said the system was slow and there appears to be problems with the equipment, “especially during periods when it is in high use, which was obviously the case during the storm.”
The situation was further aggravated by the fact that there were several major traffic incidents happening concurrently on the island, so it took several hours before Transport Quebec officials recognized the gravity of the problem.
Transport Quebec was also not getting all the information it could have from its road patrol team, because several of them operate on third-party contracts and don’t have cellphones to communicate with the control centre.
Transport Quebec also didn’t have access to the radios of the Sûreté du Québec officers. If they had, they might have heard about SQ Lt. Paul Arsenault, who was stuck on the highway.
Gagné criticized the fact there were no supervisors working at the centre during the crisis. When one manager was informed about the situation, he communicated with his superiors by text message, a method of communication Gagné said was inefficient.
SÛRETÉ DU QUÉBEC
The SQ also had several communications breakdowns, Gagné found. The fact an officer was stuck on the highway for the duration of the incident should have made the agency aware of the problem. However, while Arsenault was in contact with his supervisor, and was trying to call towing companies to come and help alleviate the situation, his concerns were never sent up the chain of command so that a general state of emergency could be issued.
The SQ missed another opportunity to act because the first call about the incident was mislabelled as a collision, and all 228 subsequent calls related to the incident were labelled the same.
The incident was never properly labelled to trigger more resources, he said.
OTHER ISSUES
Gagné found there is a problem with towing companies that have exclusive contracts on highways, because they are responsible to bill people who are towed. However, he pointed out that only one trucker refused to be towed because of the bill he would receive. This was not the main cause of the gridlock, Gagné found.
He also found that Roxboro Excavation, the company in charge of snow clearing, was not at fault in the incident, but he recommended the government review its contract to ensure that snow trucks stagger their shifts better during storms.
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
Gagné recommended agencies improve the communication internally, and between each other, and review training and emergency plans. He also recommended they perform regular drills of emergency procedures.