'Very grateful': Good Samaritans help stranded commuters during B.C. snowstorm
'Very grateful': Good Samaritans help stranded commuters during B.C. snowstorm
Good Samaritans came to the aid of commuters during the harrowing snowstorm that rocked B.C.’s Lower Mainland Tuesday night.
For Alisha and Carl DeLeon, it was a night filled with distress as they both attempted to make it back to their North Delta home.
For Alisha, who is 36 weeks pregnant, her drive from New Westminster took 10-and-a-half hours.
"Really uncomfortable and the unknown is frustrating,” Alisha, who was stuck near the Queensborough Bridge told CTV News.
“I tried to look up some information on how long I might be there,” she said.
“We have two other kids here too so we weren’t sure when we’d be able to come home to them,” she added.
Meanwhile, her husband Carl was stuck in his own vehicle up near the Alex Fraser Bridge.
DeLeon says she had run out of food, causing her blood sugar to drop, creating an even direr situation.
However, she says at around 1:30 a.m. some Good Samaritans came to the rescue.
"They hopped over the meridian and were handing out tea and desserts to cars who had been sitting there a long time,” Alisha said, adding the gesture was "very helpful."
For Carl, who waited anxiously for his wife's arrival after he finally got home after 1 a.m., the kind act certainly isn’t going unnoticed.
"We just really want to say thank you to them whoever they are and for whatever reason they did that,” he said. “It was really a blessing for us because that could have been a much worse night,”
Meanwhile, a Sikh temple in Richmond also stepped up, letting hundreds of stranded commuters stay the night.
Among them was Rajveer Bhatti, who was stuck on a busy bus for hours.
“Phones were dying, people started panicking,” she told CTV News.
Bhatti said she thought about trying to get an Uber, but decided to join others on the bus who made the 15- minute walk to the nearby Nanaksar Gurdwara Gursikh Temple.
"They provide us a hot drink, they provided us a phone charger so we can connect our phones to call our parents and inform our families,” Bhatti said.
She says they were also provided with a hot meal and a place to sleep.
“That was kind, we were very grateful they did all of that hospitality for us,”
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