The OPP is keeping a close watch on Highway 69 on whether part of the Trans-Canada Highway should be closed because of forest fire smoke.
Constable Carmel McDonald, who is the Community Safety Media Officer with the Sudbury OPP, says there is no magic number or distance to determine if police need to close the roadway.
“The wind and humidity are factors and that will dictate how much smoke will come across the highway,” McDonald said.
McDonald says an OPP staff sergeant and acting inspector are on site monitoring the situation.
“If and when the smoke causes a traffic hazard and motorists aren’t able to see safely, then the highway will be closed,” she said.
McDonald says closing the highway is not a decision the OPP will make lightly and the decision will come from command.
“But the decision won’t take long,” said the constable. “As soon as it’s a risk to public safety, the highway will be closed.”
McDonald says the problem area where smoke is involved starts around the Grundy Lake Provincial Park region, about an hour’s drive south of Sudbury.
McDonald says the smoke appears as light fog along the highway.
The advice from the OPP is for motorists to slowdown and to drive with their headlights and taillights on.
McDonald says if Highway 69 has to close, then traffic that would normally head south on the roadway will have to head on Highway 17 to North Bay and then continue the southbound journey by taking Highway 11.
Northbound motorists will have to first come up Highway 11 and when they hit North Bay, they take Highway 17 through the city and continue west toward Sudbury.
