Cumberland House highway leading CAA Worst Roads Campaign

“Right now because of the roads still being frozen in some areas … it’s in the best highway condition there is. As soon as it starts thawing and all that it’s going to go back to what it always is and it’s really a rough terrain. It’s not a highway for us; it’s all mud and stuff like that, it’s real rough when it comes to spring and summer,” Deschambeault said.

Cumberland House is an isolated community with Nipawin being the nearest community an hour and a half way.

Deschambeault said because of the isolation it’s important for the community to have a good road.

“It’s a one way road into the community; it’s the only road out. We’ve been faced with many life-threatening situations, especially when it pertains to medial circumstances when an ambulance has to come and get our community members and they get stuck, and unable to come through,” she said.

Conditions are sometimes bad enough that if the community gets too much rain the ground at the airport gets so saturated STAR Air Ambulance wouldn’t be able to land if there was an emergency.

Deschambeault said Hwy 123 is dangerous and the community has been pushing for a better road for a long time.

She said the leaders previous to her had lobbied for improvements to the highway and at one point had an agreement with the government to do 30 kilometres every season, but that has since gone to the wayside.

A portion of Hwy 123 had upgraded to a grid road, but a lot of the highway still suffers from pot holes, broken pavement and huge ruts.

Deschambeault said so far all the fixes to the highway have just been Band-Aids.

“After a while [Band-Aids] start losing their quality and again were back to big ruts. From 90 kilometres into Cumberland it’s all gravel and that’s where face a lot of hardships, it just saturated with it rains, lots or ruts,” she said.

Deschambeault said the CAA campaign has allowed the community to push for votes to help create awareness and hopefully make something happen in terms of repairs.

“If we come together as a community and vote at least we brought awareness to our conditions and I think if other communities or other people outside of our community realize we are the worst road through votes I think they may pay more attention to it. I think it’s going to be harder for highways to be ignored if we put it out there,” Deschambeault said.

To vote and for more information visit CAA’s Worst Roads website.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid

by Sarah Wallace

Cumberland House highway leading CAA Worst Roads Campaign

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