Contact for AIM roads: 778-646-2300 or aimroads@acciona.ca

Well we made it through the Great New Years Darkness of 2020. Wasn’t that a storm and botch of epic proportions!! We’re fortunate in a number of ways; it wasn’t too cold, and friends and neighbours looked after each other. Hydro did their best and brought in crews from other areas of BC to help get us back and running as quickly as possible, but still, some were out for at least 6 days. This did provide us with the opportunity to assess our emergency preparations, and I for one, found myself lacking. It was a good education and I’ll be spending some time and money to make sure I weather the next one better (bad pun I know).

One of the big problems was the roads. AIM didn’t have the right, or enough, equipment to provide us with some semblance of passable roads. Hydro crews had problems getting to spots, emergency vehicles couldn’t have gotten everywhere they may have needed to go. I’m hearing that just now, 10 days later, some roads are being plowed for the first time by AIM. We’re fortunate that many neighbours have some equipment that will move snow, but we can’t expect to rely on that as the mainstay of our transportation during a storm!

I’m being asked who to contact to vent our angst. Well AIM is the contractor, in their first year of a 10 year contract. The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure signed that contract. So AIM is responsible for maintaining the roads, and MoTI is responsible to make sure they do. In my mind, AIM takes most of the responsibility for what was done/not done during the Darkness. Their contact info is aimroads@acciona.ca and help line is 778-646-2300. This is the best way to contact them as these phone calls and emails are logged and passed on to the local area foreman very quickly. Then depending on the severity of the issue will be looked at as soon as possible. This way, they can track the number of calls, locations and other information and determine areas of most need.

So, hopefully this has been a learning experience for AIM because we don’t want to go through that again.