More on Snow

Was it right to close Ysgol Brynhyfryd for such a long period during the early January snowfall? A woman from Llanbedr clearly thinks not. She’s written in yesterday’s Free Press to express her amazement.

By my calculation, Ysgol Brynhyfryd never opened as planned after the Christmas holidays. Tuesday 4th January 2010 came and teachers were turning pupils back.

And what foresight they showed. Opening would’ve resulted in a dash home sometime during the early afternoon; and parents & school buses being stranded in traffic chaos, the likes of which we have never before seen. As examples, here are some of the true stories from Rhuthun people who’ve spoken to me:

• "I left Wrexham reasonably early but it still took over an hour and a half to get to Rhuthun."
• "It took six hours to get from Rhyl to Rhuthun and I left just after 3.30 p.m."
• "Dinbych Vale Street was like a car park, with abandoned cars all over the place."
• "After about an hour and a half of getting nowhere, I just left my car and walked back to work where I waited for the traffic chaos to ease before trying again."
• "The worst part of my journey from Flint to Rhuthun was between Flint and Mold. We spent hours going nowhere. At Flint Mountain, only one vehicle went down the dip and up the other side at a time."
• "I was on the A55 for four hours before even reaching St Asaph."
• "I could see a snowplough ahead of me just caught in all the traffic, like me, going nowhere fast."

So much for Tuesday. Brynhyfryd was closed on Wednesday to Friday as well. Was this over the top? Probably not. This isn’t the 1960s or 1970s or even the 1980s (or earlier) when we used to just get on with things. This is the litigious 21st century. Whatever you think about health & safety—and many of the anecdotes are probably myth—it’s there to protect us. And there are none more vulnerable than our children. If the pavements of Rhuthun were anything to go by, the school site was nothing if lethal with snow on compacted ice. Imagine the consequences of just one broken arm or leg. Remember, too, that one person died in Rhuthun after a slip. Brynyfryd has a school population of some 1,200 children. I appreciate that the school has a wide catchment but that’s equivalent to almost a quarter of Rhuthun’s population. How could teachers guarantee the safety of this large number of people in the prevailing conditions?

Parents may not like the decision (and we’re sure many of the pupils probably longed to get back, by Friday), but it was the sensible thing to do. If parents are happy for their charges to sledge or snowball, then the responsibility rests with those parents. If, however, something happens at school then that’s an entirely different matter.

If the assertion that Rhuthun carried on as normal were true, how come the town emptied that very week?