Next Week is Another Day


 

“I am not concerned about today’s rain. What I’m concerned about is next week, and what’s coming.”

That's what is on the mind of Henry Braun, mayor of the flooded Fraser Valley city of Abbotsford. Next week. 

The floods that swept the Fraser Valley and left Canada with no road or rail links to the area is already being treated as a "one and done" tragedy. It's now being talked of as a clean-up operation.  Maybe, maybe not.

As I noted yesterday, another week of heavy rains may be on the way beginning next Thursday.

Seven days of rain. 40-50 mm, 10-15, 25-30, under 10, 10-15, 25-35 and 35-45 mm.

The Guardian is now reporting much the same thing:

Communities in western Canada are bracing for more damage as torrential rain is forecasted next week in areas already devastated by heavy flooding.

Remember how we treated the first wave of Covid as a "one and done" problem until the second and the third and the fourth waves arrived?  We sure got that wrong, eh?

Back in the 80s we had problems on the Sea to Sky highway connecting Vancouver to Whistler, B.C.  Massive storms would thunder up Howe Sound transforming mountain creeks into raging torrents that had a tendency to sweep away the wooden bridges and a few unwary vehicles into the deep waters of the sound.  We knew a woman whose son was driving his girlfriend to her home in Squamish on a Sunday evening. They disappeared. Searchers located the bright yellow tailgate panel from his truck.

As Whistler grew into a world class ski resort the province finally was motivated to completely re-engineer that road and its bridges to encourage tourism and stop the dying. Fixes for this sort of thing are neither cheap nor easy and they take time.  Fixing the Fraser Valley and Canada's road and rail links to the coast could be a far bigger undertaking.

Welcome to Disaster Management 101. We've got some learnin' to do.


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