Severe Weather Transportation Cancellation Procedure
With the winter season upon us, it is time to review the procedure that is followed in the event severe weather disrupts transportation. This includes freezing rain, ice storms, snow storms, extremely cold weather or any other condition that would make travelling hazardous for transportation carriers.
The procedure used to determine cancellation of transportation due to extremely cold weather occurs at 6 am using Environment Canada weather statistics at The Winnipeg Airport and The Forks. If the temperature/wind chill is at or below -45 Celsius at either location then all transportation is cancelled. The temperature at these locations at any given time is found at the following websites:
https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/mb-38_metric_e.html (airport)
https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/mb-36_metric_e.html (Forks)
Once the decision to cancel transportation has been made a media release will be sent out by the Province. Care providers and day programs are encouraged to check all media outlets for this notification. The media bulletin will be posted at www.gov.mb.ca/news. It will also be tweeted from the @MBGovNews twitter account.
In the event transportation is cancelled, as per the Day Program Coordinator, day programs will make every attempt to have staff available. If the choice is made to provide alternate transportation, the day program should be contacted first to ensure staff is on-site and flexibility is needed to pick up the individual in the event the day program is required to close early.
During the winter months, a common sense approach would suggest that no matter what the weather conditions are, if you feel the safety of an individual may be compromised then the decision to send the individual should not be left to the transportation carrier.
Reminder that due to winter weather conditions, all participants need to be dressed for the weather. Transportation will be refused if participants are not dressed for the weather.
Added: Thu October 24th 2019
