By Kellah Lavoie

Cleaning-up a pointy problem

Apr 10, 2011 | 11:50 AM

The Prince Albert Fire Department is helping to clean up the city.

When they are not battling blazes, they have been picking up needles.

“We’re just cleaning up one of the local trouble spots when it comes to needles in the city” said battalion chief Cutis Mickelson, while under the train bridge in the Downtown area.

“This is a big of problem area because it’s a place, the people that use these needles, it gives them a bit of a place to hide out of the eye of everybody else.”

He said in five minutes crews collected about 75 needles from the area. They also burned off foliage to find any that were hidden underneath.

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“We’ll get calls throughout the year in this area,” he said, adding it’s not their only hot spot.

“There’s other areas around the city that have a few spots like this, but we work towards cleaning them up as quick as possible in the spring.”

Doing the clean-up when the snow goes takes the strain off for the rest of the year. They already have well over 1,000 needles off the ground, Mickelson said.

“In the spring time we are ran pretty ragged when it comes to picking up needles throughout the city.”

In past years city crews have cleaning up the area, taking away brush, and, Mickelson said, it has been helping.

When it comes to fixing the problem, he said there is no sure-fire solution, although needle drop-off site are making a difference.

“We’ve been quite surprised by the number of needles people drop off,” he said.

“It takes workload off of us.”

klavoie@panow.com