CALGARY – City officials say a new early warning weather forecasting system helped avert disaster at construction sites in Calgary’s downtown core over the weekend.
“We were forecasting 150 kilometre an hour winds at 250 metres, 24 hours in advance,” says Cliff De John, Building Regulations with the City of Calgary.
As a result, the majority of construction sites were prepared for Sunday’s fierce storm that sent debris flying, smashing windows on several high rises.
The Calgary Emergency Management Agency was also ready for action thanks to the system, knowing what hour the storm would hit and where it would be most dangerous.
“It helped no doubt, it helped with our operations triaging and getting personnel in place and did the same thing for CEMA,” says De Jong.
Beginning in January, the system will be mandatory for all construction sites five stories and over in the downtown core and the Beltline.
However, the system wasn’t able to save all construction sites; workers at a Ledcor site in Crowfoot raced to cut tarps that threatened to pull apart scaffolding near a busy shopping centre.
“We were certainly afraid of the scaffold coming down,” says Randy Januszewski, Manager of Health and Safety. “We had guys climbing up the scaffold and cutting the tarps down. In conjunction with the retailer there, decided to shut the store down for safety reasons.”
Januszewski says the company looks forward to when the city can provide the system to site across the city.
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