PERFECT STORM ON HIGHWAY 13
Montrealers are a hearty bunch, and as much as some of us might grumble about our inclement weather, we generally take even the nastiest storms with a fair amount of sangfroid.
That Zen is a bit harder to achieve, however, when you’re snowed in on a busy stretch of highway with no apparent rescue in sight.
That’s precisely what happened the night of March 14 to hundreds of motorists who were trapped for as long as 14 hours on Highway 13 when a blizzard walloped the Montreal area with nearly 40 centimetres of snow.
It was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a perfect storm: three big rigs got stuck on the highway, several other cars broke down, and the snow-clearing trucks meant to clear the highway got stuck in the monstrous traffic jam that ensued.
Some motorists slept in their cars despite sub-zero temperatures. Others simply abandoned them. Others still had their cars towed against their will — and then were stuck with a bill of several hundreds of dollars.
Then-Montreal mayor Denis Coderre and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard decried the imbroglio and promised to get to the bottom of what happened to ensure it doesn’t occur again — cold comfort for those hundreds of people who experienced an unforgettable night, in the worst sense of that term.
Postscript: In May, a government-ordered report into the Highway 13 fiasco found a lot of blame to lay, and laid much of it at the feet of front-line service providers: Transport Quebec, for problems at its traffic control centre; the Sûreté du Québec, for communication problems and poor co-ordination; and trucking companies that have exclusive towing rights on highways.
In November, a Quebec Superior Court judge gave the green light to a class-action lawsuit against the city and province seeking $5,000 for each driver stuck on the highway overnight.