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Highway 93 drivers stranded without service

A recent storm had drivers stuck without cellphone service on Highway 93. With limited reception in the mountains, you might find yourself without service when it matters most. Jasmine Vickaryous reports.

Imagine needing to call for help, only to find you’re on your own.

Accidents can be common on winding mountain roads, and recent snowstorms and flooding show, with limited cellphone reception, you might find yourself without service when it matters most.

“Just after we got past radium, we began hitting dead stop traffic,” said Jessica Scott.

On Sunday night, hundreds of people were stranded on Highway 93 due to a jackknifed semi and bad road conditions, unable to get a signal for updates or to call a loved one.

“Fifteen minutes outside Radium there’s absolutely no cell service for that entire stretch of the highway,” said Scott.

“So we can’t reach anyone, we can’t look at road reports to see what’s going on. It literally became a telephone game where we were stopping people on the road and asking them what they saw and what they knew,” said Keri Blakeney.

“We know that there were people who spent the night on that highway, couldn’t get a hold of their families. For us, our gas tank was at half so we were worried about it running out of gas,” explained Scott.

The stretch of road from Banff to Radium on Highway 93 is notorious for having no cell reception.

“When my family travels that road we always text each other. When we get to the junction just before we lose cell service, we’re letting each other know, that this is where we are, we’re about to enter this road. Then we text when we get to the other side too,” said Blakeney.

The solution is more cell towers, but in a statement to CityNews, Parks Canada says:

“The last proposal was received in 2013 and, at that time, the company made a business decision not to pursue the installation of wireless infrastructure along Highway 93 South.

“Topography and lack of electrical power pose unique challenges to the provision of wireless services in the mountain national parks.”

If you are out of service and need to make an emergency call, you might not be completely out of luck.

When making an emergency call, your phone will look for any available signal.

“It will find any tower, from any provider. When you’re out in the bush or on the highway, your phone will do its best to put that emergency call through for you,” said Tom Keenan, a professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary.

Even without cell service, Blakeney says people leaned on each other.

“There were a lot of people who bonded together on the road on Sunday. They were making snowmen on the road and making the best of a bad situation. Being stuck there, you really are at the mercy of people driving by.”

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