British Columbia - Thoughts With You

Ditto everywhere west of Merritt got hit hard and appears to be cutoff from the rest of the country. Thankfully loss of life and injuries have been minimal though massive property damage I suspect. Definitely a few rocky days ahead for everyone in the valleys and surrounding areas. Hopefully some highways will be reopening this weekend. Stay strong guys, things will get better.
 
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This is a disaster is on a much larger and broader scale. Yes, it is very concerning with good hopes for those who are local to the mess. Alberta and BC citizens are going to feel the economic and supply repercussions from many industries soon enough. What a terrible start to the Winter.
 
For those not following or missed the news, here's a few pictures of just how devastating this is. This is a tragedy for BC for sure with repercussions reaching a lot further afield. All railroad and highway traffic and delivery of goods in and out of the southwest has totally ceased. Right now, the only overland routes for supplies to these areas are through the US. Oil pipelines have also been shut down so fill your tanks while you can.

Princeton BC

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Abbotsford

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Merritt
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Chillawack

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Lytton

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Coquihalla Highway

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Incredible damage. Thanks for the pics Eric, they tell a story for certain.
 
Incredible devastation in the FraserValley between Abbotsford & Hope.
also devastation to infrastructure from Squamish to Lillooet.
Merritt & Princeton flooded ..Highway, pipeline & Rail infrastructure has been brought to a standstill in the areas. The Coquihala & Hope-Princton highways are closed.
The Abbotsford farming community has been devastated as well.. the waters coming in from the US have flooded the farming Valley with pumping stations not able to keep up. A decision there has been made to build a LARGE levee immediately! The downside is that some of the farmers will NOT be going home to their games because of this construction. This whole farmland depended on the pumping stations for survival. The large levee will serve the whole community in a much better way. Although at the price of some farms.

a couple of personnel notes.
A friend was trapped on the highway between two landslides.. they were helicoptered out to Agassiz for a stay in a motel. The next day they personally arranged for a pilot friend to charter a plane and pick them up and get them back home to the Coast.

A more serious note a friend that lived in a house on the River just outside of Hope Lost everything.
The River rose so fast he got out just in time to see his house , cars, outbuildings and Everything wash away…! Including his land !! He spent most of the first night in his car with his dog & cat.
Someone then took him in under a proper roof. Such personal devastation. Most of his family and friends cannot get to him to help Directly. he found his truck downstream totally beat-up, his other specialty cars have been located as well after being tossed around.

Everyone is coming together out this way, rescuing cows with sea-doos and other watercraft.
taking in people where they can. Stuck Truckers have had places to stay and get food.
Any construction equipment has been put to use clearing highways and cleaning towns of mud etc.
I just saw on the News that military assistance of men & equipment is coming Edmonton & Quebec.
This is big.
thanx to everyone for the support
 
I have offered assistance to Premier Horgan for 2021/2022 if he so decides it would benefit BC. Everything west of Manitoba has been in rough shape this year as far as climate is concerned. Hopefully things will improve without delay.
 
CBC radio ran a noon hour special a few weeks ago on the mess in BC, especially Abbotsford.
Was interesting to hear a woman talking about how she was on a government panel (1984) reviewing land use in the Abbotsford area. They came up with a recommendation that as the general Abbotsford area was a flood plain that there should be be no building permits issued.
As usual, government stupidity overruled that in favour of all the tax revenue building there would bring in. So here we are almost 40 years later and the Mother Nature has shown that man does not control the weather.
Who gets to pay for it? All the misery and loss suffered by those who built there and then after that we all get to fork over a bit more $$ to clean up, rebuild and more than most likely do it all again in a decade or two.
Anyone have any brains on what to do so that it doesn't happen again?
 
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LE BARON said:
CBC radio ran a noon hour special a few weeks ago on the mess in BC, especially Abbotsford.
Was interesting to hear a woman talking about how she was on a government panel reviewing land use in the Abbotsford area. They came up with a recommendation that as the general Abbotsford area was a flood plain that there should be be no building permits issued.
As usual, government stupidity overruled that in favour of all the tax revenue building there would bring in. So here we are almost 40 years later and the Mother Nature has shown that man does not control the weather.
Who gets to pay for it? All the misery and loss suffered by those who built there and then after that we all get to fork over a bit more $$ to clean up, rebuild and more than most likely do it all again in a decade or two.
Anyone have any brains on what to do so that it doesn't happen again?
Click to expand...
There is a very good article in todays Financial Post on that topic.

Terence Corcoran: A human mistake — Why the B.C. floods are not a climate change issue
 
Totally agree. As a retired engineer who specialized in flood control, mitigation for lost natural storm water retention and storm frequency occurrences, so much of this article is totally familiar. Whether climate change has anything to do with this flood in BC is irrelevant. We have realized for 20 years now that flood frequency statistics have been changing rapidly over the years. What was a 1:100 rated rainfall and flood occurrence is happening more regularly in the last few decades (thus no longer should be classified as a 1:100, and more and more industry experts are realizing this. Through the latter half of my career, which I retired from 5 years ago, storm water management and municipal storm sewers were designed to accommodate a 1:5 frequency. A higher frequency storm than that would then surcharge the system and overland runoff would then occur. Overland accommodation within subdivisions up to the 1:25 frequency were then relied on to flood streets but still protect residential and industrial development. Unfortunately the multitude of flooded yards and basements, and surcharged sanitary sewers made it obvious that this protection level was not adequate. Engineering reports for every new development and for many existing ones that apply for a permit to build a deck, garage, whatever have become a requirement and insurance companies, at least here in Alberta, are paying attention and in numerous cases are refusing to insure, or cancelling overland flood insurance on properties suspect of being in a potential floodplain area. That being said though, there are still development companies determined to build communities on suspect lands that, although required to submit a floodplain study, find ways to either circumvent this process, find a professional who will provide a less damning report for them, or present selective information to government appeal boards that in many cases know little of what they are approving. I will stop short of discussing whether pockets may be getting lined or favors handed out in some instances.

Since this rant is now long enough that many likely won't read this far, lol, I will just say that an extremely large percentage of flood occurrences are positively the result of poor decisions by governments, whether Federal or Municipal and are of no surprise to yours truly and many who work in this industry. I only feel sorry for the average person who doesn't understand how flooding occurs and were issued building permits to build on potential floodplains.

BC flooding is indeed a tragedy but much of it is the result of poor decisions and greed. JMO
 
This house actually survived the flood in Chicoutimi. There is another picture that I can not find that shows the water pouring through the front door.
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Same downpour led to a river in La Baie returning to it's original river bed after it had been "straightened out by the town. They left it as nature wanted it after the rain.
We can do all we want to do to try to bend nature to our liking.
Doesn't work that way.
 
Vettman said:
Ya , Let’s pick that nice flat spot in that valley over there .
Click to expand...
In the Sumas valley of Abbotsford, not only did ’They’ pick the FLAT spot but ’They’ made it first by draining SUMAS Lake . Apparently draining the Lake despite warnings by the Natives that lived there.
Drain the Lake, build a dike, add a pumping station, sell the land.
This was all done in the Thirties looking for new farmland.
Since the Lake was gone the Native people that lived around there no longer had a primary food source and had to be relocated.. but that’s another story.
sad
 
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