SNOW: Haywards Heath couple’s ‘snow-case’ drama

Firefighters from Haywards Heath said they were out well into the early hours of the morning today (Tuesday) helping people stuck in their cars.

Crew manager Gary Miller said: “We had to take a couple of people down to the coast and then we came back to Haywards heath and were just driving round checking on people stuck in their cars, making sure they were safe and warm or the AA had been called.

“We eventually got back at about quarter to four in the morning and by then there was no one stuck in their cars, in Haywards Heath at least.”

Crew manager Miller said they picked up one couple who were trying to get home after returning yesterday evening from a holiday to ‘somewhere hot’

They had managed to get a train from Gatwick Airport to Haywards Heath but were then unable to get a taxi home and were stuggling to drag their suitcases along South Road. The fire crew picked them up and gave them a lift home to Ashenground Road.

“It wasn’t far but they were extremely grateful,” Crew Manager Miller said.

Earlier in the evening rush hour, the crew had helped move gridlocked traffic around Commercial Square where the steep hill down to the square from Perrymount Road and up to it from the Mill Green Road direction made for even more treacherous driving conditions than elsewhere.

Crew manager Miller said a couple of vehicles slid on the roundabout and collided with the walls and had to be moved to the fire station yard after the drivers were unable to continue their journeys.

The officers also helped control traffic on Mill Green Road where a broken down coach was partially blocking one carriageway.

The road was made one-way for a period of time when it was at its most treacherous and then reverted back to two-ways when some of the abandoned vehicles had been moved.

Both West Sussex County Council and the Highways Agency have issued statements saying they did grit the roads yesetrday afternoon but were hampered by blizzard conditions that blew the snow into drifts and back on to the roads as well as and by roads clogged with traffic when the snow hit suddenly.

For more snow coverage see this week’s Mid Sussex Times on Thursday.