Caregiving and a Major Snowstorm in Montreal.
Montreal, February 2020. In this last week, we experienced one of Montreal’s classic major snowstorms. The snow started overnight on Thursday, February 6 and continued on through the day on Friday, finishing that evening. Fortunately, we have only one or two of these major storms each winter. We can hope that this was the one and only storm of this magnitude for the winter of 2019-2020.
For anyone who was travelling on that Friday, February 7, while major roads were manageable, primary roads in the city were challenging and secondary roads were often impassable. Visibility was very limited for all of Friday. And it was a cold day, with temperatures between minus 10 and minus 15C all day. Officially, the total snow accumulation was in excess of 35 cm (14 inches) but the reality was much more severe as there were strong winds through much of the 24 hours of the storm, causing major drifting in many areas.
As a caregiving organization, we have a moral and professional responsibility for the care of numerous clients through the greater Montreal area. If our caregivers do not make to their assigned client visits, we can be leaving clients in vulnerable situations. So we take these snowstorms very seriously.
We are happy to report we had only one cancellation of the Friday of the storm, out of a total of some 40 scheduled client visits. We commend our caregivers who stood at bus stops or tromped through piles of snow to reach their clients on this very snowy, cold and windy day. A bravo to the caregivers of Homecare Solutions. Well done.