It takes a village.
Garden Bay resident Pat Wenger says if it wasn’t for their neighbours coming to the rescue during the massive snowstorm Feb. 3 and 4, which paralyzed much of the Sunshine Coast, she has no idea how her husband would have survived.
Hans Wenger started doing dialysis fours days at week at home Jan. 1, 2023, after months of training and having a dialysis machine installed. Pat explains it’s vital Hans sticks to his dialysis schedule, which is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, because he could become very ill, or even worse, if he goes longer than two days without it.
“We woke up Monday to the snow. We had understood there might be a bit of snow, but woke up to that dump, but it's just the normal dialysis day,” said Pat. “Everything was kind of prepared, so we got my husband on about nine o'clock [a.m.], and 10 o'clock, bang, the power goes out.”
Pat added, they have instructions on what to do with the machine if the power goes out, but nothing worked.
“Lesson learned, but we lost the blood in the circuit and you know, that always creates a little bit of anxiety,” said Pat. “It's not life threatening for my husband, but it always causes me anxiety when that infrequently does happen, so then we wait for the power to come back and phone BC Hydro.”
But, Pat says, the roads hadn’t been cleared and to get from where they live you have to drive down a hill and then navigate a corner at the bottom, which she describes as “tricky in the snow.” Then it’s a matter of getting from Lee Road to Irving's Landing Road, a steep hill with a sharp incline they have to wind their way up in order to get to the Sunshine Coast Highway. So, the couple already knew they wouldn’t be able to drive anywhere and hydro wouldn’t be able to reach any local problems unless the roads were cleared.
That’s when Pat called the Ministry of Transportation and Transit and left a message explaining their situation and asking for help to get the roads open. They then called Hans’ kidney team at Vancouver General Hospital for advice.
“Hans has had two days off and we only got an hour into the [dialysis] run and it looks like the power’s not coming back on, and the nurse said, ‘Well, the only option you have is to come to Vancouver.’ And I'm like, 'Lady, we can't get out of our area.'”
Pat said by then even the highway was closed due to fallen trees and that’s when the anxiety really started to climb, despite Hans’ reassurances he felt fine. Then miraculously, the power came back around midnight. Pat said the problem then became, the machine needs seven hours to regulate in order to perform dialysis, which Hans then undergoes for five more hours. Already exhausted, the couple decided they’d start again first thing in the morning.
“But then bang, at two o'clock in the morning, the power goes out. So, I just started praying that it's going to come on by morning, but it did not. So, now we have to do a [dialysis] run and we can't get out,” says Pat.
That’s when she turned to their community email group to ask for help, because the couple didn’t have enough fuel to run their generator long enough for Hans’ dialysis. Their immediate neighbours managed to reach them by all-terrain vehicle and delivered a large container of fuel and, as word spread, people who also needed gas to run their own generators, shared what they could spare. Eventually neighbours who could finally dig out from the snow were able to reach the nearby gas station and the Wengers received a steady supply of fuel, making Hans’ situation less precarious.
Pat says she did finally hear from the ministry on the Thursday after the storm and the worker she spoke with advised they should have been better prepared and suggested they might want to consider living somewhere less remote.
“They said, ‘You're the one that's decided to live remote and you should have been prepared. What if it was an earthquake? Your husband’s on dialysis, you should have 100 gallons of gas in your garage in case of emergency.'”
Pat and Hans have lived in Garden Bay for 22 years and love their home, but she says they’ve actually started talking about moving. She notes Hans is on a transplant list and if they could find a living donor, he would no longer need dialysis and they wouldn’t have to leave their home and move closer to Sechelt.
In an email response to inquiries from Coast Reporter, the ministry said “safety on provincial roadways is the top priority.”
The email explained Capilano Highway Services holds the contract to provide road and bridge maintenance services throughout the Sunshine Coast, which includes all of Highway 101 and 1,246 side roads, but excludes municipal roads in Gibsons, Sechelt and Powell River.
The ministry added in advance of incoming storms, Capilano closely monitors the weather from specialized forecasting services, however, that can be unpredictable in winter and the snow accumulations on Feb. 3 and 4 were significantly higher than what was forecast. Some areas experienced more than 30 cm of snow by midday on Feb. 4.
The ministry noted Capilano responded throughout the storm with 24 pieces of winter maintenance equipment and five additional machines brought from the Lower Mainland to help. As well, maintenance crews worked 24 hours a day and crews put in more than 200 hours of overtime during the storm.
“Roads are prioritized based on classification and highest use, with the highway and major side roads cleared first to maintain access, then bus routes, paved roads with steep hills and corners, and finally paved, flat roads and gravel roads,” said the email.
The ministry said during this storm, the Pender Harbour area experienced hydro outages due to impacted power lines, so Capilano crews worked closely with BC Hydro to clear paths so they could get where they needed to be. Clearing crews also worked with arborists to ensure the many fallen trees could be cleared from blocked roads.
“Capilano was in close contact with emergency services throughout the Sunshine Coast Regional District to aid with emergency service providers as needed,” the email continued.
The ministry said it recognizes climate change has resulted in more challenging weather extremes, so it continues to review new technologies in snow and ice removal so they may be incorporated into road maintenance contracts.
