Grieving mother calls provincial pothole fix 'total insult' to daughter's memory
The grieving mother of an 18-year-old girl who was killed after an accident on the Buchans Highway says the government's reaction to her year-long plea to repair the section of road is an insult to her daughter's memory.
Amber Chippett was driving along the highway on Sept. 4, 2015, when she hit a pothole that sent the vehicle flipping through the air multiple times. She died shortly after the crash.
Her mother, Michelle Chippett, said Amber was driving to avoid a pothole, according to the other passengers inside the vehicle at the time of the crash.
"The turn's so sharp when she looked up there was a truck and a travel trailer coming towards her," said Michelle. "So she whipped back into her lane, she hit the first pothole...lost her control a bit."
Michelle was told Amber had nearly gained control of the vehicle when the car came up on a second dip in the road.
"When she hit the second dip she lost complete control and her car flipped head on."
Michelle says there have been a number of serious car crashes caused by that section of the Buchans Highway over the past four years.
She decided to fight for change, asking the provincial government to repair the part of the highway so no one else had to experience a loss like hers.
A constant battle for a fix
"I was every day making phone call after phone call, not getting answers," Michelle told CBC News. "Leaving messages saying they're going to return my calls."
She said at one point Premier Dwight Ball, then the leader of the opposition, called her at home to tell her he would look at getting the highway fixed "as soon as he was in office."
A year after Amber's death the pothole still hadn't been touched.
"To me every day coming down here and looking at that spot, is saying, well you know — they must not have thought her life was worth much," said Michelle.
"I mean, for them to leave that there for a full year, knowing that an 18-year-old girl died on that spot… and for them to leave that there for the full year and have a mother pleading with them every day to fix that, something's not right."
On Sept. 20, one year and two weeks after the accident that took her daughter's life, Michelle posted a photo of the pothole on social media that showed a white line painted over the dip in the road and an orange cone placed on the gravel shoulder.
The next day Transportation and Works Minster Al Hawkins sent an e-mail to the regional director of Transportation and Works about the Buchans Highway.
"I know we have discussed this before and it is certainly on our maintenance schedule," the e-mail says. "Can we get this taken care of and the cone removed."
Michelle was told the pothole would be fixed the next day, but she told CBC News the correction was "a slap in the face."
"That is a total insult on what I've been trying to do for the past year," Michelle said. "They came up, they threw a bit of cold patch on it, they rolled it in and never even fixed the shoulder of the road."
Michelle wanted the government to tear up the section of sunken pavement, replace a culvert and pave part of the shoulder.
She pointed out that another section of the highway up the road that was fixed at the same time included new pavement on the shoulder.
Michelle said she believes the year she spent asking for a solution resulted in a patch job that won't last the winter and took crews less than an afternoon to complete.
"She put more volunteer hours in with senior citizens and young kids than what they put in," said Michelle.
"She got the volunteer award from the Newfoundland government last year — what did the Newfoundland government give her back? Nothing."
Michelle said the province told her the corrections are complete.
A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation and Works sent CBC News a statement that said there "are no capital projects on Route 370 this year as part of the Provincial Roads Program."
The statement went on to say that "road upgrades and maintenance are ongoing initiatives."