BC Storm

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc...h/51704183872/


The shots of highway 8 about 15 pictures down are crazy. I wonder what they even do there...

Hwy 8 will be interesting. I know nothing about this region but that looks like a pretty remote road that has zero towns between the two terminus'. On paper it looks like a waste of time to rebuild but there are farms and a handful of people living along it and you can't just cut them off either. maybe BC downgrades this one to the equivalent of a Secondary highway in Alberta?

[The Fisher Account]

I know people have lost their homes and livelihoods, but my Amazon package has been stuck in Richmond for over a week and well.. life is just not fair.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by The Fisher Account

I know people have lost their homes and livelihoods, but my Amazon package has been stuck in Richmond for over a week and well.. life is just not fair.

Oh man, glad I'm not the only one. I have received four wheels and three winter tires from an online seller, but the fourth winter tire is stuck in Richmond and has been since the storm (I ordered them the Friday before the storm). I can't get my car set up until it's here. Why did I wait so late on the winters? I usually store this car over the winter, but decided last minute to make it a winter machine. Now I'm just in a holding pattern, but at least the roads are fine in Calgary. Don't want to head to the mountains on these summer tires, though.

Poor me.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by The Fisher Account

I know people have lost their homes and livelihoods, but my Amazon package has been stuck in Richmond for over a week and well.. life is just not fair.

Haha, ya. I had a package arrive from China on the 14th at Richmond. Waiting...waiting! No biggie, it will get here when it gets here.

[cKy]

Oddly enough everything i've been ordering has arrived super quick.

Staples order - 2 days
Amazon - next day.

I assume it's because they have stock in Richmond warehouses and can actually ship it West (I'm in Victoria)

[DoubleK]

Was watching CBC news today and they were saying that Highway 1 is not expected to be opened until mid-January.

Wonder what that means for the Coq, from what I've seen the damage was worse there.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Was watching CBC news today and they were saying that Highway 1 is not expected to be opened until mid-January.

Wonder what that means for the Coq, from what I've seen the damage was worse there.

News articles are saying Coq will be “open for commercial traffic” in late January. That likely means on temporary 1 lane slow roads with slow speed limit.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

News articles are saying Coq will be “open for commercial traffic” in late January. That likely means on temporary 1 lane slow roads with slow speed limit.

Yeah, the word I got is that it could be up to 1 year for it to be fully open again.

It's not the end of the world. I'm old enough to remember the times before the Coquihalla even existed. In fact, I think I was one of the first to ride my dinosaur on it. (Not really, I was a kid at the time)

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc...h/51704183872/


The shots of highway 8 about 15 pictures down are crazy. I wonder what they even do there...

It’s incredibly frustrating looking at it. Of course one day the river was going to eat into that. That’s what rivers do. We never seem to learn.

[monkeyman]

The amount of destruction is absolutely ridiculous.
Im amazed how quickly they had people on the ground and how quickly they were able to start the repairs.
Awesome job.

[blender]

Originally Posted by monkeyman

The amount of destruction is absolutely ridiculous.
Im amazed how quickly they had people on the ground and how quickly they were able to start the repairs.
Awesome job.

This 100%
It is all too easy to sit back and complain about things but when the #### goes down we tend to do a damn good job in this country. Both at a government and at a public level.

My daughter was competing in a figure skating event today and the venue was doubling as an emergency relief center with lots of evacuees from Merritt there. There was a real sense of community and a general good vibe about the place.

It was the same with the fires this summer. The wildfire crews worked day and night, and people teamed up to help save each other's properties.

I also recall the same type of thing in Fort Mac a few years ago. Makes me proud.

[dammage79]

Rounds 2 and 3 are going to be very interesting. How much rebuild progress will be washed away this weekend.

Hoping the Malahat doesn't go down again. But we will see.

[Stampede2TheCup]

I moved from Calgary to the lower mainland a few years ago and this is just hard to watch. On the good side, both me and my family are safe and sound and will likely stay that way. On the other hand, this is just really hard to watch. I’ve driven through that whole Sumas farm area countless times as a scenic route because it’s near me. I have acquaintances there but nobody really close. One is a winery now ironically named Ripples. Also, the Harrison/Agassiz is my favourite area for camping and other outdoor activities. When my partner and I had days off we went that way about 4 times about week or so before the mayhem hit and the two mudslides trapped the 100 cars on highway 7 there.

And also, a bit of a rant… The first time I went through the Sumas prairie and read about the history of Sumas lake and that current pump stationed, I immediately facepalmed and said “Are you freaking kidding me?” I told my partner “ Its almost guaranteed Sumas lake will be back bigger than ever within the next 20 years.” The second facepalm was when the floods happened and I read all about the major flood planning all levels of government were already working on, yet they left that crucial Barrowtown pump station sitting there vulnerable to this year’s flood levels. It’s the equivalent of the Oilers trading Leon for defensive or goaltending help. I can’t think of a more crucial piece of infrastructure for this flood. Thank goodness they were able to keep it up and running or the trouble would have been large magnitudes worse there. It seems those meetings were about as effective as Trump’s covid meetings.

When will governments learn that risk goes away when you identify it AND act on it appropriately. It doesn’t go away when you ignore it or have a zillion meetings but fail to act. That’s just gambling and pretending to acknowledge the risk. The definition of insanity should be expanded to include always doing the same thing and never expecting different results. Then the definition would contain two opposite statements and make more sense than the standard knuckle-dragger “definition of insanity”.

Here’s an article I ran across today. The more you learn about the Sumas prairie, the more you just have to scratch your head. It was considered a feat of engineering 100 years ago. Mother Nature tends try to reclaim her territory every so often, but politicians only think 1-4 years ahead, always trying to kick the can down the road. Governments are by default as ineffectual as Ron Swanson would tell you.

A human mistake — Why the B.C. floods are not a climate change issue

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Oh man, glad I'm not the only one. I have received four wheels and three winter tires from an online seller, but the fourth winter tire is stuck in Richmond and has been since the storm (I ordered them the Friday before the storm). I can't get my car set up until it's here. Why did I wait so late on the winters? I usually store this car over the winter, but decided last minute to make it a winter machine. Now I'm just in a holding pattern, but at least the roads are fine in Calgary. Don't want to head to the mountains on these summer tires, though.

Poor me.

LOL

I don’t really know you, but I’ve been lurking here a while. One of the most disturbingly intelligent and focused guy I ever knew grew up willow park adjacent and has climbed his way to a Lake Bonavista lakefront property. His friendship was a casualty of my divorce and I miss him so much.

Anyways it’s apparent you can afford a G-D tire at retail. A wulmurt schlep or cost#### could do it.

But oddly out of all the obtuse crap you spew in your boredom, this bothered me zero.

It made me realize how nice it must have been to live in a time when things took forever to get done.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Compensate the landowners and don’t bother dewatering. Adaptation kinda means going where livelihoods aren’t at risk if it’s avoidable.

[Stampede2TheCup]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

Compensate the landowners and don’t bother dewatering. Adaptation kinda means going where livelihoods aren’t at risk if it’s avoidable.

I’d enjoy it as a lake personally. However, its literally some of Canada’s best farmland. The property values to compensate would be huge and the production value would be lost from the country’s economy. I really don’t know enough to make a judgment on what’s best. I’d just consider updating and maintaining updating the infrastructure properly before writing the whole place off just yet. Otherwise, you’ll also have to throw away the city of Richmond with the Vancouver airport once the sea levels rise another foot or two.

B.C. has been warned for years of potential for key Sumas dike to fail

“In fact, a consultant's report found that most of the sample of dikes surveyed in the Lower Mainland were vulnerable to failure.”

[Stampede2TheCup]

The volunteers that took part in this are amazing. But to me, this is a total embarrassment that this critical piece of infrastructure needed to be sandbagged by volunteers overnight. For those who don’t know, that pump house drains the old lake area constantly and with the dikes is all that’s stopping the area from becoming a lake under normal (non-flood) circumstances. The flood levels that happened would have been MUCH worse if this pump house had gone under.

Sandbag volunteers rally to save key Abbotsford, B.C., pump house

[Minnie]

This guy & organization are amazing.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

Hwy 8 will be interesting. I know nothing about this region but that looks like a pretty remote road that has zero towns between the two terminus'. On paper it looks like a waste of time to rebuild but there are farms and a handful of people living along it and you can't just cut them off either. maybe BC downgrades this one to the equivalent of a Secondary highway in Alberta?

Until Hope-Princeton opened in 1949, this was a critical stretch that connected Vancouver to AB border...though I think you could put your car on a train ferry from Revy to Lake Louise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...mbia_Highway_8

the route followed Kingsway and Yale Road from Vancouver to Hope, then turned north to Spences Bridge.[4] The route then turned southeast and passed through Merritt and Princeton along present-day Highway 8 and Highway 5A before travelling east along present-day Crowsnest Highway (Highway 3) towards Osoyoos, the Kootenays, and the Alberta border.

https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/ser...itish-Columbia

[J epworth]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

Until Hope-Princeton opened in 1949, this was a critical stretch that connected Vancouver to AB border...though I think you could put your car on a train ferry from Revy to Lake Louise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...mbia_Highway_8




https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/ser...itish-Columbia

Wow that map is so cool, got me on a rabbit hole on looking at each route, I guess only 3 years later a proper road opened between revelstoke and golden over Rogers pass, but I never knew that before that there was a train ferry. Crazy. Also the fact that you could only get to anywhere west of kooteney lake on highway 3 via ferry until 1964 was also something I didn’t realize, man makes you think about those old Trail Smoke Eater teams somehow becoming best teams in Canada when they were so isolated even more impressive.