B.C. state of emergency 2021

[johngould21]

True story. I've lived in Burnaby for almost 45 years. Today, I noticed my neighbours driveway was flooded as I attempted to put their yard waste container and recycling box back into their carport. As I was taking the box back, I spoke with the Bby employee who picked up the box. I showed him the driveway/carport area and he suggested I call the City. Stating that they will assist some private residences if there is a huge issue. So I did. Not 45 minutes later my doorbell rang, it was the City and they were already at work at the neighbours home.

Two employees worked on the sump for about an hour, and got the water level down so the owners (who by now had arrived home from work) could get into their home. They actually loaned the sump pump to use overnight, and as of now, things are going fine, and the water level is holding so they can at least get into their home. 

Thank a City employee, they do go above and beyond. When I hear of all the one shoveling while others stand around and watch, this isn't what I witnessed today.

[Tortorella's Rant]

Looks like the worst is over.

[Russ]

23 minutes ago, Tortorella's Rant said:

Looks like the worst is over.

 

 

I just spent the last 5 hours helping a guy pump out his basement where his parents live because the water tables are so high right now.  Its gonna take a while to get the water table down to a level where the ground will drain properly

[PhillipBlunt]

17 minutes ago, Russ said:

 

 

I just spent the last 5 hours helping a guy pump out his basement where his parents live because the water tables are so high right now.  Its gonna take a while to get the water table down to a level where the ground will drain properly

Well done. The world could use more folks like you. 

[johngould21]

17 minutes ago, Russ said:

 

 

I just spent the last 5 hours helping a guy pump out his basement where his parents live because the water tables are so high right now.  Its gonna take a while to get the water table down to a level where the ground will drain properly

We live on "higher" ground, and we can't believe how saturated our property is. I haven't been to Burnaby Lake since Monday, but I can imagine the water is pouring into it, and will be for awhile.

[Russ]

8 hours ago, johngould21 said:

We live on "higher" ground, and we can't believe how saturated our property is. I haven't been to Burnaby Lake since Monday, but I can imagine the water is pouring into it, and will be for awhile.

Our ground and streets just isn't made to take this amount of water. I heard the last 2 weeks have been 3x the average of all of November. That's a lot of water, even if you live in higher ground and sloped ground that waters just not draining unfortunately. 

 

8 hours ago, PhillipBlunt said:

Well done. The world could use more folks like you. 

It was a nice 4am wakeup when I checked Facebook group for the floods and someone was pleading for help because they had no clue what to do about the water going into their parents yard. Took us about 3 hours to get it down where they could start cleaning the basement with a shop vac and then we just kept moving the pump back and forth to the 2 "drains" and pumping it into the road. Unfortunately the water table is so Damn high he's been going back and forth all day. 

 

I ended up heading out to the Chilliwack sand bagging area for the rest of the day, just got home. It was crazy how many guys were driving trucks and trailers around, grabbing pallets of sand and delivering it to people around town as they called in desperate. I bet I saw 200+ pallets go out for deliveries today. 

 

Met a ton of nice people there to! Wicked group of volunteer people to work with too try and help others. Probably head down again tomorrow and see how many pallets are there in the morning and probably put in a few more hours. 

[BabychStache]

Thank you for sharing the stories and pictures.
 

Is there a good place to donate where the funds are most needed locally? I’d like to send some support west from Alberta. We love our neighbors. 

[RUPERTKBD]

59 minutes ago, BabychStache said:

Thank you for sharing the stories and pictures.
 

Is there a good place to donate where the funds are most needed locally? I’d like to send some support west from Alberta. We love our neighbors. 

https://donate.redcross.ca/page/94172/donate/1?locale=en-CA

 

Appreciate the gesture, B.....

[Sean Monahan]

1 hour ago, BabychStache said:

Thank you for sharing the stories and pictures.
 

Is there a good place to donate where the funds are most needed locally? I’d like to send some support west from Alberta. We love our neighbors. 

That wasn’t the impression I got when I was in Edmonton in October 

[BabychStache]

8 minutes ago, Sean Monahan said:

That wasn’t the impression I got when I was in Edmonton in October 

Ha! Sorry about Edmonton. We all have our shady relatives. 

 

Medicine Hat (Trevor Lindens home town) loves BC. 

33 minutes ago, RUPERTKBD said:

https://donate.redcross.ca/page/94172/donate/1?locale=en-CA

 

Appreciate the gesture, B.....

Modest donation made. 

[Russ]

22 hours ago, BabychStache said:

Ha! Sorry about Edmonton. We all have our shady relatives. 

 

Medicine Hat (Trevor Lindens home town) loves BC. 

Modest donation made. 

Appreciate it.  Tons of people are going to be going through hell for the next few months just attempting to get their homes back to working state.  A lot of these were basement suites so tenants are really screwed now.

[Coda]

Maybe there should be stricter laws in place preventing residential building in areas that are expected to be flooded semi-regularly.  Of course the question is where do you draw the line.  

[Alflives]

7 minutes ago, Coda said:

Maybe there should be stricter laws in place preventing residential building in areas that are expected to be flooded semi-regularly.  Of course the question is where do you draw the line.  

The old lake bottom and flood plain of Sumas prairie is fabulous farmland.  The houses and buildings on the farms need to be all built (raised to) above flood level.  It is mostly farms out there.  The big issue is Richmond.  It’s almost all on flood plain, and that’s a lot of residential housing.  

[Coda]

3 minutes ago, Alflives said:

The old lake bottom and flood plain of Sumas prairie is fabulous farmland.  The houses and buildings on the farms need to be all built (raised to) above flood level.  It is mostly farms out there.  The big issue is Richmond.  It’s almost all on flood plain, and that’s a lot of residential housing.  

Yes, Richmond and the rest of the Fraser Delta will be completely @#$%ed when the big earthquake arrives.  The land will experience liquefaction, the dikes will break, and the entire area will turn into a bog.  These floods in 2021 should be used as a serious wakeup call for longterm planning in the Lower Mainland.  

[ronthecivil]

On 12/4/2021 at 2:45 PM, Coda said:

Yes, Richmond and the rest of the Fraser Delta will be completely @#$%ed when the big earthquake arrives.  The land will experience liquefaction, the dikes will break, and the entire area will turn into a bog.  These floods in 2021 should be used as a serious wakeup call for longterm planning in the Lower Mainland.  

Are the dykes sturdy? Is anyone checking this? Or are they just another item of deferred maintenance? Being penny wise and pound foolish on infrastructure is coming home to roost. 

 

Double digit billions now. Don't be shocked if it get in the neighborhood of 100 billion by the end of the day. Expect repairs to last for years, many years. So long you will think of it as a new normal.. If you think driving on highways in the summer with construction delays was annoying and expensive before, just wait. If you think expenditures at city hall were high and that your property taxes were high, just wait. If you thought provincial debt was high before, just wait.

 

None of this matters who you elect. This is just to get things they way they were. Expect the big number if you want to upgrade to make things "climate resilient".

 

You can't just natures take it's course. People are changing natural conditions, they need to manage what's out there. That means bring back the old practice of the indigenous peoples to light the forest on fire in the spring and fall to protect our towns. It means clearing creeks of debris so that debris torrents don't form where they are in proximity to critical infrastructure. It means years inspection of culverts and dykes that are at risk, and immediate repair and upgrades based on the inspection noted. It means large inspection and maintenance crews and never ending construction. That will cost a good amount of money and be annoying, but this is what you do after everything is fixed. That's how you stop this kind of thing happening again.

 

BC has been driving their car and only putting gas in the tank and doing no maintenance at all. Now the engine is seized. When they left vandals lit it on fire. It then was pushed into the river, creating an environmental issue. And we have no insurance. That's an ok analogy for how bad it is.

[ronthecivil]

On 12/4/2021 at 2:37 PM, Alflives said:

The old lake bottom and flood plain of Sumas prairie is fabulous farmland.  The houses and buildings on the farms need to be all built (raised to) above flood level.  It is mostly farms out there.  The big issue is Richmond.  It’s almost all on flood plain, and that’s a lot of residential housing.  

The biggest pump station in western Canada is required 24/7 to keep that open. As well as a long dyke that wasn't as well maintained. Do we need another pump station? A new dyke along the border to stop the Nutsack from overflowing? What's the capital cost of all this? What's the ongoing cost of all this? How does it balance with the money generated? Are the people making the money paying these costs?

 

Is anyone doing a business case on this? On anything?

 

Pew pew! It's still the wild west out here!

[PhillipBlunt]

15 minutes ago, ronthecivil said:

Are the dykes sturdy? Is anyone checking this? Or are they just another item of deferred maintenance? Being penny wise and pound foolish on infrastructure is coming home to roost. 

 

Double digit billions now. Don't be shocked if it get in the neighborhood of 100 billion by the end of the day. Expect repairs to last for years, many years. So long you will think of it as a new normal.. If you think driving on highways in the summer with construction delays was annoying and expensive before, just wait. If you think expenditures at city hall were high and that your property taxes were high, just wait. If you thought provincial debt was high before, just wait.

 

None of this matters who you elect. This is just to get things they way they were. Expect the big number if you want to upgrade to make things "climate resilient".

 

You can't just natures take it's course. People are changing natural conditions, they need to manage what's out there. That means bring back the old practice of the indigenous peoples to light the forest on fire in the spring and fall to protect our towns. It means clearing creeks of debris so that debris torrents don't form where they are in proximity to critical infrastructure. It means years inspection of culverts and dykes that are at risk, and immediate repair and upgrades based on the inspection noted. It means large inspection and maintenance crews and never ending construction. That will cost a good amount of money and be annoying, but this is what you do after everything is fixed. That's how you stop this kind of thing happening again.

 

BC has been driving their car and only putting gas in the tank and doing no maintenance at all. Now the engine is seized. When they left vandals lit it on fire. It then was pushed into the river, creating an environmental issue. And we have no insurance. That's an ok analogy for how bad it is.

I've felt this way for a while. It seems as though BC's been run by inept and underqualified morons at essentially every level for far too long. Probably one of the most poorly run provinces in the country.

[4petesake]

2 hours ago, ronthecivil said:

The biggest pump station in western Canada is required 24/7 to keep that open. As well as a long dyke that wasn't as well maintained. Do we need another pump station? A new dyke along the border to stop the Nutsack from overflowing? What's the capital cost of all this? What's the ongoing cost of all this? How does it balance with the money generated? Are the people making the money paying these costs?

 

Is anyone doing a business case on this? On anything?

 

Pew pew! It's still the wild west out here!

A good piece about this on the Fifth Estate, worth the watch for those who have the time.

 

 

[ronthecivil]

23 hours ago, 4petesake said:

A good piece about this on the Fifth Estate, worth the watch for those who have the time.

 

 

Some key points in here. The cost to fix just the dyke in Abottsford was estimated at 400 million dollars. That's one dyke. They are ALL in need of upgrade. Do the math on that one. And that's the lower mainland dyke situation. Pretty sure at a minimum Merrit and Princeton need some flood protection works, as does every BC town that's next to a major BC river, aka the vast majority of them. 

 

When they asked Horgan "you got the report four years ago, how much of it have you already upgraded" isn't really fair. He should have told the truth. The truth is that if they tried to get elected on a platform that included upgrading all our infrastructure to be climate resilient and even if it cost say 80 Billion dollars, because it needs to get done, and is actually the cheapest option, well, they would have never been elected. Perhaps now it could happen, but even now, it's still not likely. And any political party that tried that would get booted out of government in an instant. The tried and true political strategy is to defer maintenace and "save" money!

[4petesake]

1 minute ago, ronthecivil said:

Some key points in here. The cost to fix just the dyke in Abottsford was estimated at 400 million dollars. That's one dyke. They are ALL in need of upgrade. Do the math on that one. And that's the lower mainland dyke situation. Pretty sure at a minimum Merrit and Princeton need some flood protection works, as does every BC town that's next to a major BC river, aka the vast majority of them. 

 

When they asked Horgan "you got the report four years ago, how much of it have you already upgraded" isn't really fair. He should have told the truth. The truth is that if they tried to get elected on a platform that included upgrading all our infrastructure to be climate resilient and even if it cost say 80 Billion dollars, because it needs to get done, and is actually the cheapest option, well, they would have never been elected. Perhaps now it could happen, but even now, it's still not likely. And any political party that tried that would get booted out of government in an instant. The tried and true political strategy is to defer maintenace and "save" money!

Agreed. This kind of spending always gets kicked down the road and in this case as in most cases, the costs of doing nothing are staggering. And all these upgrades still need to happen. As pointed out in the piece the price tags on these projects far outstrip the ability of municipal and provincial governments to pay for by themselves.