SFU Students Stuck At School

Unless you live in Vancouver, then you probably did not hear about the problems that Vancouver university students experienced yesterday. In the morning, UBC (university across the town) had a security threat against its Biological Sciences Building. This was the second time in a week that that happened, but the issue was resolved quickly. However the students at SFU were not so lucky, because at around 3pm, several centimeters of snow suddenly dropped down. This might not sound like a problem to most of your, but Vancouver does not get a lot of snow, most drivers still have summer tires. That causes a lot of accidents, which in turn causes Translink to cancel all bus services.

The roads were not cleared until late in the night, but that is mostly the fault of students getting picked up. Most of the roads were blocked with heavy traffic and the plow could not get through. Another effect of it was even more accidents that took long to clear. Thankfully, SFU provided blankets and offered the gym for students that had to stay overnight. I did not stay, because I decided to walk down the mountain. The condition was not so bad for pedestrians, because most of the snow got packed down quite well and did not melt and refreeze to create ice yet.

While that meant that I got to see the entire traffic situation first hand, I did not manage to get any good pictures with my camera phone. But others started to upload pictures of the situation on Facebook, so you can see several high quality shot there. The following is a preview of some posted in the Tired of Being Snowed In on the Hill group.

For those wondering, the roads were cleared by the morning and normal life resumed as usual.