Three days after an atmospheric river dumped buckets of rain on West Vancouver, the clean-up continues.
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, West Vancouver got upwards of 292 millimetres of precipitation over the course of the weekend, 134.6 mm of which came down on Saturday alone.
West Vancouver Fire and Rescue Chief Gord Howard said it appeared about three dozen homes had sustained severe water damage and crews were kept extremely busy after two creeks in Dundarave jumped their banks and the storm water system became overwhelmed.
“The system is only designed for so much water, and we had much more water coming in a short period of time,” he said.
Howard said numerous people left their homes with the help of rescuers.
“We had some people self-evacuate. We assisted some people out of their homes for their safety. There were some tactical evacuations,” he said. “Crews placed a ladder across an area of water and helped carry people out of their house.”
North Shore Emergency Management opened an emergency reception centre at the Mickey McDougal Recreation Centre for those who would be out of their homes for the night with nowhere else to go. One family of four from West Vancouver reported there on Saturday, according to the municipality and others have since checked in.
On Tuesday morning, Howard said district engineering were still out assessing the storm’s impacts.
“There is damaged infrastructure. We’re looking to get a really accurate picture on the extent of that and what steps we need to take to remediate it,” he said.
The business community in Dundarave is now reckoning with some of the worst damage.
Because of its low-lying elevation, businesses on the 2400 block of Bellevue Avenue were particularly hard hit, said Maureen O’Brien, executive director at Ambleside Dundarave Business Improvement Association.
“It’s been a mess. It really has,” she said. “The water got in there probably three feet or more…. We’ve got probably a dozen businesses that are going to have to find new homes for the next six or so months until the renovations can get done.”
O’Brien said she was struck by how the community came together in the emergency with volunteers stepping up to place sandbags.
“There was one guy who was out there trying to divert water, and someone said, ‘oh, what business do you own?’ He said ‘I don’t. I came to buy dog food at Bosley’s, and I saw this happening so I’m just here to help,’” she said. “Our tagline is ‘It takes a village to make a village,’ and it really showed in spades.”
The cost of the remediation work should be covered by insurance, O’Brien said, adding that more needs to be done to prevent similar damage in the future. As contractors hired by the BIA have been cleaning up, they’ve been pulling scores of tree roots out of the sewer system, she noted.
“What I’d like to see come from it is the district to be more proactive than reactive. And I think it would be a wise thing for them to do a sewer blitz,” she said. “This would have flooded anyways, because there was so much rain in such a short time, but it wouldn’t have been as bad if the sewers were working properly.”
Anticipating heavy rains, the district brought in extra staff to work overnight and ensure culverts, sewer intakes and catch basins were clear, but Howard said, when rainfall hits the volumes seen on Saturday, there is simply no way of safely keeping up.
Thanks are owed to crews across the North Shore who stepped up in difficult conditions to stave off the worst possible outcomes, Howard said.
“When you see the volume of water coming down and bringing with it debris, it can be quite dangerous, and we need to be keeping crews safe,” he said. “We empathize with the citizens who are impacted. Our job is to minimize those impacts and protect life and property. It is frustrating when we can’t save everybody’s property, but I hope people recognize that this could have been a lot worse.”
