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Icicles above sidewalk could cause a splitting headache: Fixer

Pedestrians in the Yonge St. railway underpass are in danger of having their skulls pierced by the huge icicles.

thestar.com
April 5, 2016
By Jack Lakey

For people hiking through a Yonge St. railway underpass, the biggest danger is not from passing traffic but overhead.

If somebody happened to come along at the wrong time, one of the icicles dangling above the sidewalks in the underpass could split their head like a melon, and maybe even kill them.

The freeze-and-thaw weather over the last couple days is causing the snow we got on the weekend to melt, and then reconstitute as ice when the sun goes down and the temperature drops.

For the most part, it’s no big deal. But if the melting snow creates icicles, it’s only a matter of time before the weather warms up and they fall down, and possibly on someone’s head.

Our colleague Olivia Ward, whose sophisticated reporting on international news has long graced the Star’s pages, said she gambled with her life while walking through the underpass on Yonge, south of Front St.

She said the underpass has always been creepy, “but today - horrors - I looked up and saw a large row of icicles, sort of ice stalactites, hanging overhead along the west side of the pedestrian walkway.

“As soon as the temperature goes up they'll fall on someone like the Sword of Damocles.”

Ward added that she called 311 to report the problem, “but the woman who finally answered asked me the same question about 17 times - exactly where are the icicles? I explained over and over, to no avail.

Finally she asked me to hang on ‘for a minute.’ And nearly 15 minutes later I had to hang up.”

We went there and found icicles dangling from both expansion joints in the ceiling of the overpass, which extend from one side to the other and across the sidewalks on either side.

Some of the icicles are nearly a metre long - one that was hanging above the northbound traffic lanes was easily two metres long - and are indeed like a sword that could pierce someone’s skull.

STATUS: Rob Burlie, who’s in charge of road operations in that area, emailed to say he dispatched a field investigator as soon as he heard about it, to make the underpass safe for pedestrians by knocking down the icicles.