Neither Snow Nor Rain, But This Is Too Much Mail Service Stops While Tree Hangs On Wolf Lodge Power Line

Some residents of the Wolf Lodge area are peeved at the postman.

“From what I gather, the carrier just refused to come up the road,” resident Thom Pace said. “I had the little flag sitting up on the mail box since Tuesday, but come Saturday I decided it wasn’t doing any good.”

“We’ve called the post office every day,” said another resident, Meta Stone.

Mail service ceased to a couple of dozen residents of Alder Creek Road when last week’s ice storm hit North Idaho. A substitute driver dropped off a week’s worth of mail Monday, but until a fallen tree suspended by power lines is removed from the road, deliveries will remain spotty at best. Most likely, a route supervisor said, they won’t come at all.

Neighbors are steamed because they say everyone else - snowplowers, newspaper deliverers, themselves - braves the passage every day.

“It’s a good thing that it’s not pay time,” said Stone, who receives Social Security. “I’d hate to have my income running around some place.”

Mail delivery to the area will return when the dangling tree is hauled away, said U.S. Postal Service route manager Wayne Morrison. It’s too dangerous to drive under now, he said.

“If he got trapped behind a tree, he’d have no recourse to get out,” Morrison said of the carrier. Or if it fell on top of the mailman, things would be worse, Morrison said.

The carrier who regularly drives the route told Morrison about the tree, so Morrison told him to stay clear of it. Morrison said anyone not receiving mail can call the post office and have it held there until they can come pick it up.

Stone got her bagful of mail Monday because, she said, a substitute driver was on duty.

“Maybe it’s a policy of the post office, I don’t know,” Stone said. “But I thought their policy was they got through, no matter what.”

“I figure, whatever that saying is, either rain or snow or whatever,” Pace agreed.

To cope with the correspondence cutoff, Pace has been driving into Coeur d’Alene to pick up his mail. Another resident, Vince Dunn, said United Parcel Service hasn’t delivered his packages, either.

“Yeah, I can see a little bit of the danger there,” Pace said of the threatening tree, “(but) I figure if I can get up the road … somebody else can.”

, DataTimes