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Feature - Flirting with natural disasters

The Sea to Sky corridor has all kinds of hazards. Are we doing enough to prevent a disaster?
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As the freezing raging waters of Rutherford Creek rose over Casey Burnette’s head he had little time to reflect on how his car was on the highway one minute and in the water the next.

All he knew was that he had to stay calm, and get out of the car. And he had to find his brother Jamie and friend Ed Elliot who were in the car with him when it plunged into the water.

Burnette made it to shore and clung to a stump for hours that cold foggy October 18 morning, until he could get to the highway and flag down a driver for help.

His brother and Elliot never made it out of the creek.

"It is always going through my mind driving down that road," said Burnette this week as he reflected on living in an area subject to all manner of natural hazards including the type of debris flow which washed out the Rutherford Creek Bridge last year.

"You can’t really predict what is going to happen next so there is a lot of respect for that road there now, especially for myself anyway."

At the time Casey said: "Immediately when I hit the water I was in a spin cycle.

"Upside down, all around. I didn’t know what was up, didn’t know where I was going, it was dark.

"I was fortunate. I took five or six breaths. I didn’t know if I was above the water or below, but I got enough air to carry myself to shore."

He recalled how his brother had told him not to panic and to take several deep breaths before heading out of the car to the surface of the river.

Despite enduring this disaster Burnette said he loves living in Sea to Sky country.

"It is a risk but I like living here," he said.

"I love the mountains. I can’t beat it."

Two other young men also lost their lives that night as their car drove into Rutherford Creek, and in the days following more than 1,200 people were forced to flee their homes in Pemberton and Squamish as rivers rose and their muddy debris-strewn waters filled basements and washed away cars.

For research scientist Bob Turner of Geological Survey of Canada there is nothing like a disaster to make people pay attention to the world around them.

"It is human nature that we learn best from disasters," said Turner speaking in Whistler recently week about the natural hazards of the Sea to Sky corridor.

"They capture our attention, we pay attention, and we respond and I think because we are so close to the last disaster at Rutherford Creek and the Pemberton and Squamish flooding that we are paying attention, at least for a while right now."

The risk of disaster in the corridor is being taken so seriously by the federal government that it has just started mapping all the hazards and plans to assess their risk and make recommendations to keep travellers and residents safe in Sea to Sky country.

It is the mandate of GSC, part of Natural Resources Canada, to decrease losses from natural hazards and to enhance disaster response preparedness. And with 10 per cent of all landslide-related deaths occurring along the Sea to Sky Highway historically, GSC considers mapping of the area a high priority.

"The (highway) is a major transportation and energy lifeline which is at high risk," said Andrée Blais-Stevens, who is compiling the hazard map for GSC.

Indeed the corridor won out over the Trans Canada highway from Hope to Vancouver as the site of the mapping project because of safety concerns said Blais-Stevens.

"Because of lack of funds we decided to concentrate on the area which had statistically greater death toll related to landslides and other hazards so we decided to go with the Sea to Sky corridor," she said.

The map will be complete by March 2005. Other scientists will then assess the risk associated with each hazard and make a series of recommendations.

It will then be up to provincial and local governments to act on the recommendations or not.

Part of the catalyst for the mapping is the tremendous pressure for growth in the corridor said Blais-Stevens. And while the decision to do the mapping was made before Vancouver and Whistler won the 2010 Winter Olympic Games there is no doubt the event has added another level of pressure to make sure the corridor is as safe to travel in as possible.

Last year Pemberton was the fastest growing community in Canada. Squamish is booming, hundreds of new homes are set to be put in at Britannia Beach and the area surrounding Furry Creek is slated for huge development in the future.

"(The corridor) is going to be a lot more populated in the future," said John Clague, the Shrum Chair of Science at Simon Fraser University and the co-author, with Turner, of Vancouver, City on the Edge.

"There is going to be a lot more infrastructure along there, that’s my feeling. Vancouver didn’t exist 150 years ago and look at it now.

"… So you have to be a little bit careful about where you put people and take some precautions as best you can and provide safe highways and infrastructure that allows them to be there.

"As I see it, there are two reasons we should care. First, we must understand these hazards to minimize the risk to people who, at present, travel and live in the Sea to Sky corridor.

"Second, future growth in the corridor should be accommodated with a full understanding of these hazards so that economic losses from natural disasters, which are inevitable, are minimized.

"At the end of the day, we taxpayers foot the bill for the losses."

While most of the area up and down the corridor is just fine to develop there are several serious hazards which must be taken into account if communities are to be kept safe.

Turner and Clague point to rock falls, landslides, flooding and debris flows as some of the more common hazards.

But long-term planning must also take into account how an earthquake – and we are overdue for a big one – would affect the corridor and what would happen if one the region’s three volcanoes erupted as Mount St. Helen’s did in 1980-81. Mount Meager, northwest of Pemberton is considered "potentially active" and the surrounding area is known as the landslide capital of Canada.

"I don’t want to be alarmist but it is prudent to be reminded with what can happen," said Turner adding that by understanding what has happened in the past planners can prepare for the future.

There are many lessons to draw from.

Britannia remains the site of B.C.’s worst natural disaster. On March 22, 1915 a landslide claimed the lives of 56 men, women and children who were living in a makeshift mining camp at the bottom of a steep slope.

The mining company, shocked by what happened, moved the residences down onto the flat land at the bottom of the slope – the site of today’s shopping area.

But six years later disaster stuck again as a blocked culvert above the camp caused the creek to pond then burst its confines sending a torrent of water toward the town and killing 37 people.

Britannia wasn’t the only town affected. Squamish and Coquitlam experienced extensive flooding at the same time as a storm front pounded the area.

But, said Turner, lessons were learned – the most important of which is universal to the corridor: flat land will flood.

Of course, you don’t need to tell the people of Squamish of Pemberton that as hundreds of them were evacuated last October when the worst floods in over a decade took their toll.

But most dikes held and both towns remain vigilant of the risk.

"We are fully aware of the hazards," said Michael Rosen, planning consultant to the Village of Pemberton.

For that reason the focus for Pemberton is to have new development built on higher ground around the town. Where development is going to happen on the flood plain hazard studies are a must.

It’s the same story for Squamish.

And it is likely that as climate change plays a role floodplains strategy will grow in importance.

"The natural system is changing," said Turner.

"It is not constant.

"Climate change is working against us and the best estimate, through expert opinion on the impact on southeast British Columbia regarding winter floods, is that we will have more because with the warming temperatures we just have the potential for more intense and frequent rainfall events."

And towns throughout B.C. are facing a new challenge when it comes to dealing with hazards.

In January the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection removed itself from the approval process for new developments in hazard zones and downloaded that responsibility to municipal governments.

The move was in response to requests by some municipalities, which wanted to remove the government from decision-making as it was too cumbersome a process. Union Of B.C. Municipalities President Frank Leonard said discussions are on-going with the government.

"We were consulted and we did express concerns around the capacity for smaller communities to be able to review these applications," he said from Saanich.

"They wouldn't have the expertise, and they would have to ask a developer to go and retain an engineer. But even then, once the engineering report is presented, would they be able to make a judgment based on the report?

"So we have expressed concerns about that and that of course that leads into the liability issue."

Leonard said discussions are continuing.

"It is on their radar that this file isn't closed and our UBCM staff and our environment committee are passing these concerns along and hoping they can find a way to address them."

For Squamish that means the district is now working on formulating its own policies on the issue.

But it is just impossible financially for such a small town to have a full time geotechnical engineer on staff to assess proposals.

"We are still making the case to the provincial government that they need to provide more resources to us and technical specialists and funding to us to do this ground work," said Mick Gottardi, director of community development for Squamish.

"So far a program hasn’t emerged yet for that.

"Am I hopeful (this will happen)? Well hopeful, yes, optimistic, no."

At press time no one was available from WLAP to comment on this downloading.

However, Bob Bugslag, who heads up the province’s emergency response program said: "The ministries that deliver those services sat back and reviewed their core workload and decided in their service plan what could and could not be delivered in the restructured environment.

" … They have made some decisions and time will tell whether those decisions are good ones and whether they should be supported in the future."

He said large hazards are dealt with on a site by site basis. No one ministry is responsible for monitoring them and the understanding is that if any group notices a hazard that is of concern word will be passed to the appropriate government office.

"We use an integrated response model so we are always sharing he information around hazards," he said.

Part of the challenge of dealing with all these hazards is that people haven’t lived for very long in the corridor so there is little historic data to draw on in helping to determine the risk of certain hazards.

"I think the take-home message here is that we should remain cautious and we should expect to be surprised because we just haven’t lived here long enough to know all the things that mountains can do," said Turner.

That is why it is so important to study the past because with many of these natural hazards if they have happened once they are likely to happen again.

The Barrier in the Garibaldi area is a good example of how the history of a major hazard shapes policy on land use.

We know from scientific and geotechnical work that the last big landslide off the barrier down Rubble Creek happened in 1855-56.

It sent 25 million cubic metres of material hurtling down the creek at 70 kilometres an hour. That’s enough debris to bury the town of Whistler.

"That will happen again and that will have impacts on the highway as it will certainly block it," said Turner predicting landslides probably happen there about every 1,500 years.

It will also impact Daisy Lake Dam and send gravel and sand downstream in the Cheakamus River, which could cause the water levels to rise and threaten Squamish, he said.

For this reason in 1980 the provincial government designated the Rubble Creek area along Highway 99 as being too hazardous for human habitation and spent $17 million to buy out property owners in the former settlement of Garibaldi.

There is no evidence to suggest that landslides from the Barrier will cause Garibaldi Lake to spill out.

Closer to Squamish, the ragged unstable slope of Mount Garibaldi has also experienced recurrent landslides. They have produced a huge debris fan at the mouth of the Cheekeye River just north of Brackendale. The possibility of a large landslide places limits on how far the community can expand into the fan.

Whistler is dealing with its own landslide threat in the form of the Fitzsimmons landslip. There has been several years of debate about what kind of risk it poses to the resort and whether assessing it is a provincial or municipal responsibility.

But this month the provincial government decided to undertake a review of all the studies of the Fitzsimmons landslip and do its own.

It will hire an engineering firm next month and hopes to have a report complete this summer.

The hazard is 2.5 kilometres up the Fitzsimmons on Whistler Mountain. The concern is that all or part of the 100 million cubic metres of earth and foliage could release, fall in the creek, and temporarily block it. As pressure mounted the temporary dam would fail and the water and debris would come barrelling down the creek into the day skier parking lots and the local bus loop.

Up and down Sea to Sky country you can see efforts to learn from the lessons of nature.

Up to $20 million has been spent on debris dams and spillways along the Howe Sound portion of the highway. And there is constant work on rock scaling too.

The work is the direct result of the deaths which occurred along the highway in Howe Sound in the 1980s, and a growing realization that if you build a road into the side of a steep slope and overflowing and debris-filled creeks try to cross it Mother Nature is going to move anything you put in her way, including houses, bridges and roads.

In October of 1981 a debris flow swept down M Creek and took out the trestle bridge around midnight on a dark, stormy, wet night. A car was on the bridge when it collapsed and more went over the edge before the alarm was called around 12:30 a.m. Altogether nine people died.

In February 1983 a slurry of mud, boulders and logs flowed down Alberta Creek in Lions Bay during an intense rain storm. Snowmelt added to the disaster.

The debris flow grew in size as it moved down the channel and was probably about 10,000 cubic metres when it reached Lions Bay.

"The first surge of the flow, carrying tree trunks and boulders the size of cars and sounding like a locomotive swept through the community and into Howe Sound," state Turner and Clague in their book Vancouver, City on the Edge.

"It had a peak velocity of 9 m per second or 32 km per hour, roughly the same speed at which a world sprinter runs. Five surges later a swath of destruction had been cut through the community."

Several homes were damaged and two teenage boys were killed.

At that time there was little understanding of debris flows. Today steps have been taken throughout Howe Sound to address the issue. Another $18 million will be spent as part of the highway upgrade to improve safety.

But more needs to be done said Squamish engineer Frank Baumann, whose company has worked extensively in the corridor.

"We can’t even begin to think about risk management until we know where all the hazardous areas are," said Baumann, a walking encyclopedia on the hazards of Sea to Sky country.

"…From a technical point of view, to identify those areas that are hazardous is easy and to manage the risk is easy to do too. So we have the tools and we definitely have the ability to minimize these disasters we just have to be a little bit more proactive."

He is hopeful that the mapping being done by GSC will go a long way to addressing some of the hazards.

"Surprisingly enough, and people don’t know this, we know of about half a dozen big landslides," said Baumann.

"There are a couple very large ones between Whistler and Pemberton that people drive by and don’t even notice."

And like night following day if a landslide has happened once in an area it is likely to happen again.

He points to other hazards as well, such as the crack along the face of Mount Currie.

"We know that a portion of that face is slowly moving," said Baumann.

"What we don’t know is whether that whole face of Mount Currie could collapse in one fell swoop and that is exactly the kind of thing that we need to spend some money on, but instead we are doing the old ostrich in the sand trick."

Baumann said it is unlikely the debris from the collapse would make it to the village of Pemberton but it would definitely send golfers on the local course running for their carts.

"This is a very frustrating situation where we absolutely know of the existence of a big huge crack," said Baumann.

"We are talking about a crack a kilometre long across the face of the mountain. So we know we have a big section of Mount Currie that is unstable, and we know that it is slowly moving, but we have never done a true engineering study to answer two questions: Could this whole thing release and if it does release how far out would it go?

"That question is a particularly important one because we do have a lot of development in the area."

More development up and down Sea to Sky country also means more people on Highway 99.

The road remains the lifeline of the region and the only way in and out in a reasonable driving time.

That’s why when the subject of earthquakes comes up it sends shivers up and down everyone who relies on the road for supplies and commuting – and that’s just about everyone.

If an earthquake were to happen it’s likely that every loose rock would crumble to the ground.

"If we were ever to experience a large earthquake in this region then it probably would cause landslides down on the Sea to Sky Highway," said Clague.

"You could get a strong earthquake right in the corridor but the more likely scenario is to have one more distant but still strong enough to trigger some landslides along the highway.

"Areas at risk are going to be the portions of the highway boardered by steep slopes so the stretch between Horseshoe Bay and Britannia would be an area of high concern because even without earthquakes we get rock falls along that part of the highway.

"Another stretch would the area south of Brandywine Falls.

"The issues here though is that you are not dealing with just one landslide. An earthquake would likely trigger a whole bunch of landslides so it would just take longer to get things back in operation."

A strong earthquake could also trigger landslides in areas that have already experienced similar events in the past.

One of the most landslide prone areas in Sea to Sky country is the terrain around Mount Meager northwest of Pemberton.

Indeed, the area is known as the landslide capital of Canada.

It’s not surprise that it has so many landslides said Turner.

"You might call volcanoes poorly built mountains," he said.

"They are notoriously weak and fail much more frequently with landslides and debris flows than the rest of the rock that makes up most of the rest of our coast range.

"So the most frequent landslide areas in the Sea to Sky are related to the three volcanoes, Garibaldi, Cayley and Meager.

"If you went to Interfor and asked them which bridge they had to replace most frequently they would tell you it is Mud Creek and that is a creek that flows off of Mt. Cayley."

Mount Meager erupted about 2,400 years ago. While it is very unlikely an eruption will occur communities downstream of these volcanoes must take them into consideration when developing said Turner.

"The good thing about eruptions is that they provide a lot of lead time," he said.

Eruptions would likely produce an ash cloud that would travel as far as Alberta and it’s likely that debris and lava flows could dam nearby rivers. Historically that is what happened at Mount Meager. Research also shows that the dam eventually burst catastrophically and sent pooled water rushing down towards Pemberton.

"The thing about water is that a flood is a flood and it will travel on down and impact the water down to the end of the river, which is past Pemberton," said Turner.

It’s hard to keep all these dangers lurking in the mountains in mind as you drive the Sea to Sky highway and enjoy its breathtaking vistas.

After all it is the pristine beauty, recreation, and inescapable solitude of a peak like Black Tusk which has brought us all here.

And while the majority of the land is safe to live on "our" hazards must be part of the community building which stretches into the future.

"We can’t stop natural events but you can stop them from being disasters," said Baumann.

"That is the key thing and it is what civilized nations do."



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