BC Cut Off

News Travels Slowly

Wed Nov 17th    

If you depend on BBC News to keep you up to date, you would be three days behind the events of the last few days that has been breaking, literally, across southern BC.  

Of course if you are a regular reader of this blog, you would have had an early heads up!  

The 'Atmospheric River' that hit BC on Sunday and Monday of this week has caused major disruption, significant flooding, road and rail washouts which has effectively cut southern BC off from the rest of the province and the rest of Canada.  Port Mellon, our nearest weather station recorded close to 200mm of rain.  Sky News, to their great credit picked up the story onMonday.  
Highway 1 - Tank Hill in the 
Fraser Valley

So the 'Yesterday's Chip Paper' prize goes to BBC News!
Sadly one person is known to have lost their life as a result of a landslide on one of the highways and searches continue.  Several thousand people have ben evacuated from homes in Princetown and Merritt - 7000 in Merritt alone.

On Highway 7  - 275 people including 50 children trapped between two mudslides were evacuated by Canadian Forces helicopters on Monday.

The list goes on.  The map below shows the number of incidents being dealt with across southern BC.








River and flood alerts remain in place in much of southern BC.



Even on the Sunshine Coast, which missed the worst of the weather and flooding, roads have been washed out, parks closed and in one area a water main broken when the road was washed away.  Residents in Gibsons are having to boil water for the time being.

The damage to road and rail infrastructure are going to add to the woes of the trucking industry already affected by driver shortages.  The Canadian supply chain issues are not going to be improving any time soon.  More amazing images on the Transport BC Flickr page here.

At a 13.00 press conference today (Wed Nov 17th) a State of Emergency was declared in BC. 

Highway 7 - Nr Seabird Island

Highway 5 - Nr Caroline Milne Rd

Highway 7 - Ruby Creek

The lull after the storm - Hopkins Landing

Moonlight across West Howe Sound


 





Comments

  1. BobNovember 17, 2021 at 12:45 PM

    Must have been some storm looking at the Flickr pictures

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MikeT67MNovember 17, 2021 at 1:09 PM

      It was pretty awesome on the Coast and we didn’t see the worst of it!

      Delete

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