Severe summer weather can cause headaches for those working in the City of Moose Jaw's engineering department.
Max Zasada, assistant city engineer, told the Times-Herald a lightning strike on June 21 caused severe damage to the traffic light controller at the Main Street and Caribou Street intersection.
"Unfortunately, the cabinet pretty much got destroyed," he said, adding the intersection has been without traffic lights and controlled by temporary four-way stop signs ever since.
Zasada said the replacement control unit must be specially ordered, which is why the city has yet to repair the problem. He expects the new part to arrive either later this week or next week.
However, Zasada said there are often minor problems that cause temporary damage to local traffic lights, due largely to the age of the system. For example, a recent power surge caused temporary loss of the light system at the First Avenue and Fairford Street West intersection.
According to Environment Canada (www.weatheroffice.gc.ca), a storm accompanied by lightning brought 21.6 millimetres of precipitation to the Friendly City overnight Monday.
On Tuesday morning, repair crews attended malfunctioning traffic lights at the Coteau Street and Ninth Avenue intersection following the overnight storm. Zasada said the city is updating Moose Jaw's traffic light system to prevent future breakdowns, but can only attend to a couple intersections (on average) each year.
Severe summer weather caused the gas price at the South Hill Esso pumps to appear cheaper than it actually was early Tuesday morning. An overnight storm caused a power outage that reset the electronic sign displaying the store's gas prices, making it appear about 10 cents below the 102.9 cents per litre price at Esso on Tuesday.
However, staff fixed the problem before anyone had a chance to try and purchase gas at that lower price.
Carter Haydu can be reached at 691-1265.
Lightning strikes wreak havoc with traffic lights
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Comments
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- DP
- - September 18th, 2009 at 17:06:30
Actually, both intersections that Max mentioned are brand new, not old and tired, and part should be available on a phone call. How about the lights they installed at 5th and Cariboo last year? Have you noticed that in the left lane there is a 3 light standard, and the right lane has the left turn arrow? How smart is that? How about the 20 months it took to fix the traffic actuators at the Peavey Mart intersection? How about the 11 months it took to put the walk and don't walk signs in front of the light bulbs at the Main and Thatcher pedestrian crossing? How about the yellow flashing stop ahead lights at Main and thatcher that are connected backwards for over 1 year. Perhaps its time to put the professional back in professional engineer.
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- Danny Chilldave
- - September 18th, 2009 at 16:52:52
I don't think the multiplex has much to do with this, but I'd like to try to find a way to blame it.
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- Phil
- - September 18th, 2009 at 16:37:43
Last year a clock at the Kinsmen swimming pool by the steam room quit working. Time stood still for three weeks and finally a new clock arrived. I asked what took so long and the lifeguard explained they could not get authorization to purchase a new one so they finally removed one from the guard room so they could have one by the deck of the pool. If they can not fix a clock how can they fix a street light?
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- Dave
- - September 18th, 2009 at 15:59:50
How about this stupid city always keep a spare setup on standby for times like this?
And why don't we have more parking at the multiplex??
