SASKATOON – It’s a school kid’s dream come true.
Jason Delawski has been stranded on his farm for more than a week and it doesn’t look like he’ll make it to school for awhile.
The combination of snow and rain on top of already soggy soil made rural roads in eastern Saskatchewan impassable.
“It’s a real good break,” said Delawski, a 15-year-old Grade 9 student at Sturgis Composite High School. He said he’s been using his unexpected free time to catch up on his sleep.
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His mother, Alice, drives a school bus and she’s also stranded on the farm, 30 kilometres from the nearest highway. The roads are so soft her 48-passenger bus can’t make it through the mud. Clutch damage has occurred to some buses and almost all will need wheel alignments.
“There’s no bottom to the road. You drop right out of sight,” said Alice.
No one has resorted to horseback yet, but Delawski said their only transportation is a four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle.
“We’re stranded here,” said Alice, who is worried her husband, who has a heart condition, may become ill. “If something happened there’s no way anyone can come and get him.”
Alice has been a bus driver for more than 20 years and said she’s never seen the roads in such poor condition.
Several rural municipalities in the area have asked school divisions to keep buses off the roads in an attempt to reduce road damage.
Parents with four-wheel-drive vehicles must now take their children to town or to the nearest highway to be picked up by school buses there.
“The parents have really made an attempt to drive the kids in,” said Sandra Corbett, principal of the Preeceville school, adding few children took the opportunity for an unscheduled holiday. “That kind of surprised me,” she said.
About a dozen rural municipalities have declared their communities disaster zones and have requested funding from the provincial government to repair the roads when they eventually dry up.
“We’re asking for more gravel allocation,” said Lynn Kardynal, administrator for the RM of Preeceville. Heavy vehicles and regular traffic driving on the roads have torn up the base and pushed gravel into ditches. Rain, wet snow and mild nights have prevented the roads from drying.
“It’s all going to depend on the weather and lately the weather hasn’t been too good,” he said.
