'Just covered in ice and water': 145 weekend calls for tows in Manitoba back lanes amid spring thaw

Snow clearing crews and tow trucks had a busy weekend trying to keep up with Manitoba’s back lanes.

William Pooley and his neighbours have been struggling with the mess in their back lane brought on by the spring thaw.

“It just seems to be sort of like a half effort for all this stuff,” Pooley said in an interview with CTV News Winnipeg. He said his alley was cleared three times on Saturday but many of his neighbours still got stuck.

On the next street over, Matthew Csuk is having the same problem.

“Our back lane is just covered in ice and water,” Csuk said. “You can’t pass through it."

 CAA Manitoba was called to 145 alleys and laneways from Friday to Sunday.

“It was really unusual for us to get that many tow calls,” CAA Manitoba’s Heather Mack said. The government and community relations worker said not everyone who called CAA was able to get towed out.

“There were some vehicles that were still so stuck we still couldn’t remove them out of the back alley.” Mack said.

The city said it is finishing up the last bit of its back lane cleaning operations.

Ken Allen, the public works communication coordinator, said in an interview, ‘’We have about 930 kilometres of back lanes that need to be cleared.”

 Allen is expecting alleys to need more attention with the changing weather conditions,

“As long as we are into this time of the season where the temperatures are above zero during the day and below zero at night, we are going to be experiencing that freeze-thaw cycle.”

Pooley said many of his neighbours are seniors and cannot keep up with the ice and puddles.

He said he was dealing with chunks of concrete scraped to the curb and gigantic potholes after Monday morning’s snow crews came down his street. Pooley said his street was in need of repairs, but now the street has been damaged further.

“I hardly believe this is the only street in Winnipeg that looks like this after they’ve been down here,” Pooley said.

Allen said it is not unexpected for there to have been some damage throughout the city after the difficult winter. He said if damage was done during snow clearing, it could be exposed when the snow melts.