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Highway reopens early

Most weekend activities went ahead as planned

Crews working around the clock managed to reopen the Sea to Sky Highway at about 10 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 2, more than a day earlier than expected.

The Ministry of Transportation said about 70 per cent of the debris was cleared by late afternoon on Friday, and only some minor scaling of the cliff face was needed before crews could repave the damaged section of the road.

The rockslide occurred just north of the Porteau Cove area at 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 29 closing both lanes of the highway for just under four days in total.

It’s unknown how much the cleanup bill will be, but chief geotechnical engineer Mike Oliver said it was costing the transportation ministry about $1,000 an hour for employees and machinery. Some of the material will be used at various construction sites, while other materials fell into Howe Sound.

The slide closed the main highway to Whistler during much of the August long weekend, but thousands still made the trip to town by water taxi, planes and driving the back route to Lillooet and over the Duffey Lake Road to Pemberton. The Squamish Days Loggers Sports Festival went on as planned, as did the Canadian National BBQ Championships at Dusty’s in Creekside.

And the 21 st annual B.C. Corvette Club Car Show went ahead. Members of the Corvette Club took the alternate route to Whistler, enjoying the road and the views. The driving time was anywhere from six to nine hours from Vancouver, depending on traffic.

“As soon as I heard the highway was closed, I though perhaps the club members wouldn’t want to drive the extra time to get to Whistler,” said organizer Vic Nighscales. “But I did a couple of surveys of the participants, and the vast majority wanted to be there and keep the event going. Whistler is a special destination for us, and this event is something that’s very special to our members because of Whistler. The enthusiasm just knocked me out of my chair. A guy driving a ’62 Corvette made this trip. Some might hesitate to drive through the mountains, but he wanted to be here so he did it.”

 

Squamish emerges from rockslide unscathed

 

By Paul Carlucci

Despite an initial panic, the Porteau Cove rockslide was less a long weekend showstopper and more a temporary sedative for Squamish, with crews clearing the debris sooner than expected, Squamish supply shortages quickly resolved and the town’s annual Loggers Sports event unfolding more or less as planned.

“We think the District (of Squamish) handled it well, and so did the provincial government,” said Acting Mayor Jeff McKenzie. “And the feds were involved, with Ministry of Fisheries letting them push rock out of the way — that really sped things up.”

McKenzie wasn’t the only acting mayor to handle the situation. Councillor Greg Gardner, so far the only declared mayoral candidate in November’s elections, managed Squamish through the first few days of the slide.

“Each independent supplier is trying to handle it as best they can,” said Gardner on the Thursday after the slide. “So there are a number of different access roots for goods and people. One is through Lillooet. In Squamish, we have four charter air companies, two fixed-wing and two helicopters. And there’s a local company that’s set up a water taxi for individuals. Not sure what their capacity is for goods. On the emergency side — health care services — that’s all in order.”

It was, he said, a good trial run for the district’s emergency response team.

Fuel and food supplies, while initially impacted by panicked buyouts, recovered quickly enough, with outlets like Save On Foods and Chevron using the Duffey Lake Road as a supply conduit.

With less traffic from the Lower Mainland, one would expect less demand on fuel and food supplies. But eggs and milk were in short supply the day after the slide.

"People start to horde," said a Chevron employee. "Every little piece of machinery they got, they decide they should fill it up.”

“The grocery stores,” said McKenzie, “some ran out of eggs and bread and meat. But you have to know these guys are on a just-in-time inventory, but they had contingencies in let’s say half a day — the food people, the fuel people and the rest of the business people.”

McKenzie, who owns a locksmith outfit, had delays in some supplies, as did other small business owners he knows of.

“The whole community was a little quieter,” he said, adding that some recreational activities were impacted, including planned golf and baseball tournaments.

But, he said, while some downtown businesses were slow, highway-based endeavours fared better, a phenomenon that could have been caused by Whistler, Pemberton and Squamish residents headed to the 51 st Annual Squamish Days Logger Sports Festival.

Festival organizers issued a press bulletin Thursday morning in which they vowed to carry on as planned. Sunday was the event’s big day, and turnout was decent, with most of the bleachers full and cars parked on the side of the road all the way down Loggers Lane and onto Finch Drive.

“We had a lot of discussion about what should happen (with the festival),” said McKenzie. “When I got word at 4:55 that the highway was open, I called (organizer) Bryan (Couture), and they let out a big cheer when they told heir organizing committee. They were really happy that Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton came out and helped when the road was closed.”

The slide wasn’t without psychological implications. Some raised the spectre of a similar event during the Olympics, while others enjoyed the tranquility once common to life in Squamish.

“It was an interesting thing for our citizens to go through,” McKenzie said. “At the (Loggers) games yesterday, one guy said, ‘Wow. This is just like Squamish when I grew up 30 years ago.’ And then someone else was saying, ‘This is a catastrophe, and we need to get back to daily life.’”

With so much traffic directed over the Duffey Lake Road, attention was focused on the crumbling state of various highway stretches thereon. B.C. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon Friday announced $12 million in improvements between Pemberton and Lillooet, with $7.1 for paving and $5.2 for a two-lane concrete bridge to replace a timber bridge spanning Cayoosh Creek.