LEWISTON – Concrete barriers and a bright orange snow fence will continue to mark the spot where a vehicle driven by a 66-year-old Pierce Street woman slid across Canal Street into the icy canal water last week.

Repairs to the steel fence designed to block the canal near the Bates Mill Enterprise Complex need to wait on warmer weather, according to Public Works Director Paul Boudreau.

“We need to set new posts in the ground and we need to put them together,” Boudreau said. “Besides, these are not things we normally have in stock. We need to get those supplies in before we can do it. So, that work will wait for warmer weather.”

Police say Jeannine Morin was traveling down Ash Street on Friday morning toward the Canal Street intersection. Her car continued across Canal Street and through the metal fence and crashed into the canal. She survived there for three hours, partially submerged in water, before she was spotted by a man plowing parking lots at the Bates Mill Complex.

Morin later died at Central Maine Medical Center.

Robert Soucy of 373 Pinewoods Road, addressing a Lewiston City Council meeting Tuesday night, said her death could have been prevented. The canal was blocked by a guardrail until about 14 years ago. That’s when the city installed the metal fence, and Soucy said he has warned city officials since then that it was dangerous.

“A thin metal fence is no replacement for a guard rail,” he said.

Police Chief Bill Welch said the accident remains under investigation.

“Weather was a factor, at least in the investigation,” he said. “By the time we arrived, much of the evidence of the accident itself was gone. We had no skid marks to look at, and that’s made it harder to determine just what happened.”

Police are waiting for the autopsy report on Morin to determine if there was a medical cause for the accident. But the city is taking a second look the wrought iron fence.

“It might be that a more solid portion would have stopped her car,” Welch said. “It could also be that we could have had a brick wall there and it still would have resulted in a fatality.”