Area sidewalk salt shortage

With colder weather coming there’s a good chance sidewalks could get slippery again. Meaning you’ll need to salt around your property to keep yourself and others safe. But finding salt at stores in the past couple of weeks has been a real challenge.

It’s safe to say there is a shortage of sidewalk salt in the City of Hamilton. And I’m told that stretch of extreme cold and icy weather we’ve had is to blame. If you don’t have salt right now, we’re about to tell you where you can find some.

Empty shelves and familiar signs. Nearly everywhere you look they are out of sidewalk salt.

Lennox Mitchell works at Home Hardware: “We constantly have customers coming in and looking for salt or ice melter.”

Stores didn’t expect the extreme cold we had in December. And their supplies of salt reflect that.

Lennox says: “It’s in today, gone tomorrow. Once word gets out that a place has salt, everybody gets in and before you know it, it’s gone.”

This Home Hardware on Fennell Avenue in Hamilton got a large shipment of salt in on Tuesday. But half of it is already spoken for.

Lennox says: “I don’t think it’s going to be long before it’s all gone, we’ll be placing an order again very soon. Especially if it gets cold again.”

This Canadian Tire store at Fennell and Upper Gage had 3 skids of salt this afternoon, and this customer stocked up: “A week ago after the storm I went to 5 stores and couldn’t find any salt, so I waited until the weather changed and I knew I’d get salt.”

There is plenty of salt in this public works yard, but that wasn’t the case after the ice storm.

Mike Christian is with the City of Hamilton: “Absolutely, it left us a bit short. But we weren’t expected to get hit back to back to back with three major events in a one month period.”

There is a lot of bulk salt to go around, the shortage has only affected the bagged product. The best tip for shoppers is call ahead, just to make sure the store you’re going to has some in stock. And Hamilton Builders Supply called and Ferrell’s Builders Supply emailed CHCH to say said they have salt at all of their locations.