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Corridor communities connect in disaster

We in Whistler are the lucky ones. It’s a familiar refrain.

We are blessed with a widely successful resort where businesses have flourished, homeowners have invested beyond their wildest dreams and kids have one of the best backyard playgrounds in the world.

It’s a place where you sometimes have to pinch yourself to believe that you live and work here. At least, that’s how I feel sometimes.

Lady luck shined on Whistler again this week, sparing the resort from the disaster that was unfolding on all sides around it.

But even though we weren’t sandbagging our homes, or rowing down our streets, or worrying about milk and diapers and bread, we were in the thick of this flood too.

Our little area of the world looked like something from somewhere deep in the southern states after one of those freaky hurricanes or tornadoes power through a community, leaving a wake of devastation and debris.

It looked like something from a Third World country with shoddy infrastructure, where the roads are just expected to melt away under the force of the natural elements.

It did not look like the majestic Sea to Sky country.

It has been hard to make sense of the whole thing.

One explanation for the heavy rains came from a member of the Squamish Nation who said an opening prayer at a ribbon cutting ceremony I was at last Friday.

He said when it rains like this Mother Nature is cleansing the earth. And when humans do things to hurt the earth, Mother Nature responds in kind letting us know who’s boss.

I think it’s a fitting explanation. How else can we explain the recent natural disasters?

It was the same three months ago when we were worried about, of all things, the lack of rain.

We lived in a heightened state of anticipation in Whistler, waiting for a spark to set our world on fire. We watched the news from the Interior as hundreds were evacuated from their homes and firefighters worked around the clock.

A careless act could set the corridor on fire, putting all of us at risk. Collectively, we prayed for the rain.

But the fires eventually stopped, people started rebuilding and life carried on.

More recently Hurricane Juan hit Halifax, where I lived for fours years during university, a place many old friends still call home.

Families lost power. Phone lines were down for days. Businesses ground to a standstill.

Centuries old trees were ripped up from their roots, devastating the Halifax landscape. Point Pleasant Park and the Public Gardens were decimated.

But soon the wind stopped howling, people returned to work and life carried on.

Mother Nature wasn’t finished yet. Her fury was released again this week when rainfall turned to flooding.

Unlike Halifax and the Interior this time the disaster hit closer to home, right in our own backyard.

Rain turned into a torrential downpour that looked like it would never let up and people scrambled to protect their families and their homes. It all happened so quickly.

In Whistler our lives effectively continued as normal this weekend. We watched movies, went out for dinner and cleaned our homes.

We watched the news and shook out heads at the images.

But we were safe.

It’s true that we can never imagine what it was like to watch the water levels rise near our homes with dread. We can’t fathom the idea of having to abandon our homes, our things, our lives, and just wait for nature to run its course. We have no idea what it’s like to worry about sandbags and food and wondering when it’s all going to end.

But we do know what it’s like to worry about friends and family up and down the road. We know what it’s like to stare at the TV helplessly, wondering what we could do to help.

Cutting off the road to Pemberton and Squamish struck at the heart of Whistler’s workforce. Our dependence on each other, our connection with each other has never been more apparent.

Many Pemberton and Squamish residents who could not make it home this weekend were taken in to Whistler homes where their friends made them dinner and gave them a bed for the night, for as many nights as it took.

The men missing after the Rutherford Creek bridge collapsed were well known Whistler faces. The accidents have rocked the local community, just as surely as they affected the Pemberton community.

The same goes for Squamish. Michael Allen, who knows more about Whistler’s black bears than anyone else, has a home in Paradise Valley. He was evacuated with his family and came close to losing a decade of research stored in a computer.

These three towns are not random settlements separated by miles of highway. In fact, we are one larger community, linked together by more than just road.

When we were in the thick of this storm, before I realized how bad things were for some people, it felt like Whistler was an island unto itself, cut off from the rest of the world and spared the tragedy playing out all around it.

Now I realize that this isn’t a disaster just to hit communities to the north and south of us. This affects us all collectively as a corridor.

So now it’s up to us, we the lucky ones in Whistler, to figure out what more we can do to help our friends and neighbours.

The buzz of the helicopters is fading away, the roads are getting repaired and everyone has food and shelter.

Now that most of the immediate concerns for safety and survival have been met, we can all start to come to terms with what has happened and what we have lost.

And we already know that some people have lost so much.