Six-year-old boy’s death prompts warning abut ice levels on drainage canals
AIRDRIE, Alta. — An official in the community of Airdrie, just north of Calgary, says ice on a drainage canal can be deceiving and is urging caution after a little boy’s death.
Wilf Richter, with Airdrie’s planning and engineering department, said the overland drainage system is meant to capture rain water or snow melt and direct it away from homes in the surrounding neighbourhood.
With temperatures above zero last week, Richter said “obviously the ice got much more fragile and softer.”
“You’ve got water melt and snow melt going on top of the ice, it makes the ice softer, and even if it doesn’t go on top of the ice, it certainly flows in from underneath,” Richter said in an interview Tuesday.