31 ms·

There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

• jleyank 5y ago
  Port Roberts commandos strike. Canada should investigate which Intelligence organs were funding their efforts... This, of course, means that supplies of bread, milk and cat litter have vanished amongst rioting.
  • jleyank 5y ago
    I admire the sense of geography and humour shown here. Yet people prattle on about politics. Hackers smiled when I was young.
  • swader999 5y ago
    Three days is all it takes for the cat litter to deplete. Then civilization's thin veneer crumbles.
• blocked_again 5y ago
  (deleted)
  • asdfsd234234444 5y ago
    lol, salty
• Kye 5y ago
  Possibly useless comparison with a similar infrastructure failure: a section of I-85 on the way between the Atlanta perimeter and where a lot of people commute from caught on fire and collapsed. It took a little over a month to repair. That's with other worse but usable alternate routes, so maybe it'll go faster here.
  • jrace 5y ago
    Except we are starting the winter season here, which will cause serious havoc with rebuild efforts.
• mrfusion 5y ago
  TLDR: flooding
• 99_00 5y ago
  Will this be a significant impact to most people living in Vancouver? All land freight can come from the US. COVID doesn't affect this. International freight will come through port. Agricultural communities just outside of greater Vancouver are cut off from each other. Canada restricts milk products and eggs, so I expect these will run out. What else do people in Vancouver relay on from the Fraser Valley? Toilet paper?
• btilly 5y ago
  It looks like rail lines are also cut off. This is kind of a big deal for shipping. Approximately $200 billion goods/year travel through Vancouver, including millions of (metric) tonnes of grain bound for Asia, and imports of Chinese goods bound for the rest of Canada. Most of that traffic now needs to find another route until repairs are made.
  • Symbiote 5y ago
    Are all of them cut off? There seem to be four, one north, two along the river, and one south. https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=standard&lat=49.34659884833293&lon=-115.323486328125&zoom=6 https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=standard&lat=49.346598...
    • btilly 5y ago
      From https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bc-floods-rail-impact-1.6250554 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bc-floods-rail-impact-1.625... it looks like some lines are out and others remain to be inspected once things clear up. So maybe all, maybe not all, but enough to be a big problem. A dairy farmer in Abbotsford is quoted as having only 5 days of feed. Consider the economic damage if farmers have to kill livestock, and can't even get them to a meat packing facility to recoup any part of their losses.
    • deanCommie 5y ago
      Two are cut - the washout is on the eastern-most line heading to Kamloops about halfway up from Chilliwack. That's the most direct rail line to the rest of Canada. Going through the US and via Spokane is quite a detour. Also not all rail lines are created equal. The northern-orientated line that heads to Prince George can't carry the same capacity.
• tehsauce 5y ago
  Unless you drive your car onto a ferry!
• spullara 5y ago
  The title of the article is inaccurate and clickbait. You can drive to the rest of Canada by going through the US, as is stated in the article.
  • seryoiupfurds 5y ago
    If you had to go through Mexico to get out of San Diego it would still be a really big deal, and would be commonly described as "cut off from the rest of the US."
• tablespoon 5y ago
  > The only way to drive between the coast and the rest of Canada at this time is through the United States. Doesn't a large fraction of trans-Canada road traffic transit through the US anyway, because it's faster that way?
  • pomian 5y ago
    Haha! That part of the highway is about 2500 miles, to the east.
  • jrace 5y ago
    Only when you are going far east, but almost never going from Vancouver to other parts of BC and Alberta.
• nikanj 5y ago
  The majority of, well, everything in Canada comes from China (as with all countries). And it all arrives via port of Vancouver. Christmas shopping is going to be interesting this year, unless they get the freight moving asap.
• sys_64738 5y ago
  As we say in Maine, you can’t get there from here.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jcroll 5y ago
  .
  • imadethis 5y ago
    Yes, this is addressed in the article. Highway 99 was closed this morning.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • bikesandcode 5y ago
    For that route, ultimately you'd need to take Highway 99 through Lillooet, which is closed between there and Pemberton. Or cut down to Highway 1 in the Fraser Canyon. Which is closed. As you noted, the two more convenient routes, highways 3 and 5 are closed as well. And that's it for Canadian land routes into Vancouver. There just aren't any additional routes through the mountains.
• hourislate 5y ago
  [flagged]
• huhtenberg 5y ago
  You can still go around, through the US.
  • Mikeb85 5y ago
    Not without a Covid test, no matter your vaccination status...
    • helloworld11 5y ago
      [flagged]
      • macinjosh 5y ago
        You are 100% correct. Our leaders have no incentive to treat this crisis in a calm, reasonable way and that has led to vastly over-reaching interventions in people's lives no matter how well meaning the intentions are.
      • tdeck 5y ago
        [flagged]
      • jjgreen 5y ago
        Take off your shoes and put on this mask, has a nice symmetry don't you think?
    • ironmagma 5y ago
      And you can’t drive without a driving test.
      • Mikeb85 5y ago
        Terrible analogy. You're not required to take a road test every 48 hours to continue driving. Edit - might be 72 hours. Regardless... I've done a road test once in my life...
        • 5y ago
• Dedime 5y ago
  I surprised you didn't link Kelowna's finest newspaper, Castanet: https://www.castanet.net/news/BC/351544/Mudslides-close-all-practical-routes-between-Lower-Mainland-and-Southern-Interior https://www.castanet.net/news/BC/351544/Mudslides-close-all-... I love them because their reporting is terrible and the site itself is straight out of the 90's. They used to run polls that were easy to manipulate, according to a ex-coworker of mine. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Nonetheless, everybody in Kelowna acts like Castanet is the one true source of information...
  • dleslie 5y ago
    Castanet is gloriously imperfect. I hope they never change and never fade away. It's exactly what it looks like: a hodge-podged effort by some local folks with little experience and ability among them, besides an earnest desire to report local news with a local perspective, that has stood the test of time (it launched in 2000!).
    • mattmanser 5y ago
      So, an outsider's perspective: 1. It loads super quick 2. The list of articles is clear and easy to scan 3. There aren't a shit ton of adverts 4. There are no bloody popups, cookie notices, donate banners, etc. 5. The entire page doesn't load, me start reading then suddenly completely greyed out with an overlay because of badly implemented 4 6. No auto-playing videos that are impossible to find to stop If this is 90s web design that's "a train wreck in slow motion" and "gloriously imperfect", can we all go back to the 90s please?
      • mr_sturd 5y ago
        To add to this, it appears to work perfectly without lifting any of my NoScript restrictions.
      • tailspin2019 5y ago
        Is this a perspective on Castanet? Because there is literally at least one super distracting animated GIF ad in view 100% of the time while I scroll that page (which, on my iPhone, is not exactly easily readable due to lack of responsiveness). On the OP article I see zero ads but I think that’s possibly my PiHole kicking in (which notable fails to block any of the presumably locally hosted adds on Castanet). I agree with some of your other points but let’s not go to far :)
• hammock 5y ago
  I misinterpreted the headline the mean that the city was continuously surrounded by roads, e.g. a wild animal trying to reach the city could not without crossing a road somewhere.
  • SkittyDog 5y ago
    That's literally true of every regular city block, so it woukd seem a strange headline. I don't know what timezone you're in, but maybe you need a cup of coffee?
    • maybeOneDay 5y ago
      Not OP but a city block isn't an entire city. If you read their comment again without prejudice you may be able to understand what they meant, even if it does require a little imagination.
      • leafmeal 5y ago
        Maybe I'm missing something, but if a city is composed of city blocks and by induction then a whole city is surrounded by roads.
        • xvedejas 5y ago
          Plenty of cities have greenways that lead into parks considered "part of" the city. Such parkland might not feel like the inner city, indeed ideally it has minimal street intrusion, but still can be part of the fabric of good city living.
        • Kranar 5y ago
          When a premise leads to a false conclusion, you should reconsider your premise.
        • maybeOneDay 5y ago
          I think the sentence is best read as "a wild animal could not reach the city without crossing a road that is not considered part of vancouver proper". Seems clear that that's the intended meaning
• frosted-flakes 5y ago
  Related: https://globalnews.ca/news/2445052/bridge-closure-blocks-trans-canada-highway-in-northern-ontario/ https://globalnews.ca/news/2445052/bridge-closure-blocks-tra... In January 2016, the cable-stayed bridge over the Nipigon River in northern Ontario that is the only road link between eastern and western Canada was closed when it began to buckle at an expansion joint.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    There are quite a few single-points-of-failure on the road from Halifax to Vancouver, each of which would cause at least a few 100 to maybe even more than 1000 km detours through country that really isn't ready to deal with any kind of extra traffic. Especially North of Sault ste. Marie all the way to Thunder bay and between Vancouver and Calgary. Any problem there and you're going to be driving 100's of km on logging roads, unpaved, no facilities (gas, food).
• actually_a_dog 5y ago
  As of a few seconds ago, this is the best route Google Maps can find to go from Vancouver to Kelowna: https://archive.md/we9X5 https://archive.md/we9X5 You have to go pretty far into the US on this route. Edit: Incidentally, asking for directions from Vancouver to Edmonton currently causes Google Maps to fail and give you a route that's closed: https://archive.md/7lLu4 https://archive.md/7lLu4
  • jeffbee 5y ago
    This does not seem dramatically longer than the route one often has to take in California to go around the Sierra Nevada when it can't be crossed.
  • TMWNN 5y ago
    Back to the historical norm! Until the Trans-Canada Highway, automobiles from BC had to enter the US to travel to eastern Canada. (<https://np.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/3rsv0k/til_that_until_the_transcanada_highway/ https://np.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/3rsv0k/til_that_unti...>)
    • myohmy 5y ago
      Yeah we used to take the rail. Which is currently washed out. Which technically means BC can secede from confederation.
  • foofoo55 5y ago
    One could also take the ferry to Vancouver Island, drive north to Port Hardy, take another ferry to Prince Rupert, then drive on a highway that isn't actually washed out. Or just fly. Airports are fine.
    • brewdad 5y ago
      I think the issue is less to do with commuters or people who would like to get to Calgary and more the fact that trucks won't be able to move in and out of the city for a while. A messy supply chain just got messier.
• ttul 5y ago
  The other day, I was in Whistler and tried to use Google Maps to route back to Vancouver. It wanted me to take logging roads through the back country.. roads that are actually deactivated and impossible to traverse unless you have a trail bike perhaps. That’s Canada for you…
  • Jagerbizzle 5y ago
    I've had similar things happen to me before because I somehow managed to toggle the "avoid highways" setting without realizing it.
    • mynameisvlad 5y ago
      Bingo. There is literally one way to get from Vancouver to Whistler: the Sea to Sky/99. And it’s a highway. There are no other links, which is why even when you choose “avoid highways”, you still get put on the 99 between Squamish and Whistler, since that’s literally the only road that connects the two. You get put on some alternative backroads between Squamish and Vancouver, which are horrible to use (it was the only option at times while the 99 was being upgraded for the Olympics)
      • vl 5y ago
        > Bingo. There is literally one way to get from Vancouver to Whistler: the Sea to Sky/99. Figuratively. Technically from Whistler you can go north on 99 and then south on 12 and west on 1 and be back at Vancouver.
        • mynameisvlad 5y ago
          I mean, sure, it's over 3 times longer. Even if you were going from Lillooet to Vancouver, no map is going to give you 12->1 as the route, it'll tell you to take 99 down. Plus, that's basically all highways.
  • klyrs 5y ago
    I'd say "that's Google for you" but really it's whatever variant of Dijkstra's algorithm they (and other map services) use. If somebody puts the roads on a map, there will be network conditions that suggest they might be useful... whether or not they actually exist in a usable condition.
• ortusdux 5y ago
  Forks WA is currently completely inaccessible by car. Extensive flooding everywhere. All highways and roads are closed. Connecting forest service roads have washed out.
  • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    I5 around Bellingham was cut off yesterday night, and all the highways that ran parallel to it have issues. Right now, south bound lanes open only. So you can escape Vancouver, but you can't get back in.
    • jjulius 5y ago
      >So you can escape Vancouver, but you can't get back in. Yes you can. >WSDOT said detours would happen on the northbound side at exit 242, with drivers getting back on at North Lake Samish Drive. https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/i-5-near-bellingham-closed-overnight-due-flooding-landslides/EMMQL2B4ANGTXHQJTRY33DF6KE/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/i-5-near-bellingham-closed-...
      • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Oh, that's better then.
  • qmarchi 5y ago
    Yeah, my fiancee's grandparents sent us pictures of the there camp being completely flooded.
    • ortusdux 5y ago
      Forks is famous or its rain, but yesterday was the worst in recent memory. Several rivers hit record flood levels. It's pretty rough. A friend got stuck out there around 9AM yesterday. He is use to closures and taking forest road detours, but we checked with DOT and DNR and all routes were closed. We tried to set him up with a hotel, but most in Forks were flooded by noon. I've seen videos of people boating down main street. A friend has a AirBNB out there and the one grocery store in town is on high ground, so luckily my stuck friend had a comfortable night. We found a trail out, so he parked his company truck at the head and is hiking the 4 miles out. Another friend should be picking him up in a few minutes. If their grandparents need any help, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
• wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  People really overestimate how resilient infrastructure is to natural disasters, and such disasters will become more common as the earth warms.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    Canada is a special case: small population, huge area to cover. The infrastructure budget in Canada per square kilometer is very low.
    • earleybird 5y ago
      With BC there's a substantial geography component. When a highway washes out it's often 100s of km detour. In contrast, for substantial portions of Alberta, a highway washout often means just a jump over to the next township road . . . which are about every mile (cuz those were the units of measure at the time they were laid out).
      • jacquesm 5y ago
        Yes, there are quite a number of choke points that are unavoidable in BC. Alberta is pretty much flat with some mild elevation changes and lots of parallel roads. In BC it is the opposite, the z-axis dominates everything.
        • soperj 5y ago
          ... there is the Rockies in Alberta, plus the badlands.
          • jacquesm 5y ago
            Fair enough, I had the more populated parts of Alberta in mind but there is plenty of it that is elevated. Even so, it doesn't dominate the road network to the degree that it does in BC, where you are either in Vancouver or clinging to the side of a mountain (or a glacier).
  • 5y ago
• rubylark 5y ago
  A different article[1] I read with a similar headline has this claim: > To leave the Lower Mainland of BC, you would have to use Highway 99, Highway 1, or the Coquihalla. I'm not at all familiar with the area. Are there really only 3 roads between Vancouver and the rest of Canada without going through Washington? That seems like such a low number. [1] https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/highway-closures-flooding-mudslides-bc https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/highway-closures-flooding-mu...
  • deanCommie 5y ago
    It's actually worse than that - it's only Highway 1 and Highway 99 Highway 1 splits into the #1, the #5 (The Coquihalla), and the #3 after Hope, which is after Abbostsford. https://www.google.com/maps/@49.4275117,-121.4567432,10.54z https://www.google.com/maps/@49.4275117,-121.4567432,10.54z
  • ghaff 5y ago
    Vancouver is essentially surrounded by a combination of water, mountains, and the United States (with more mountains). In general, there aren't a lot of routes through mountain ranges.
  • foofoo55 5y ago
    Yes. Vancouver sits in a little triangle of land in the south-west (bottom-left?) corner of Canada, completely surrounded by mountains to the north and east. We heavily rely on the highway south through the state of Washington.
    • dn3500 5y ago
      Could you take the ferry to Prince Rupert and get out that way?
      • cf100clunk 5y ago
        BC Ferries has umpteen travel advisories due to high seas during this weather event, so don't count on their schedule: https://www.bcferries.com/ https://www.bcferries.com/
• beebs93 5y ago
  One of my family members has been stuck just east of Hope, British Columbia[1] for almost two days now. There is currently no cell service, but luckily they have a Garmin inReach so we can communicate via its SMS feature. For anybody with friends/family in the area, the BC subreddit megathread[2] on this is a good starting place to get information on evacuations, power outage status, road closures, official relevant Twitter accounts, etc. 1: https://goo.gl/maps/CXcNEUmAx8gpF5CTA https://goo.gl/maps/CXcNEUmAx8gpF5CTA 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/comments/qubkc6/floodingrain_megathread/ https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/comments/qubkc6/flo...
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    The Reddit thread seems to be largely given over to speculation about the complete collapse of society globally which is, in my opinion, getting just a little bit carried away and anyway not really informative.
    • beebs93 5y ago
      Yeah, I noticed that a bit, too. I originally meant the megathread post itself. I try not to read too many comments in such threads on Reddit; regardless of the topic ;)
    • deanCommie 5y ago
      I mean yes, but when your province experiences over a 4 month period: * Record heat wave * Record forest fires * Record rainfall * Tornadoes for the first time in history * And now record flooding It's hard not to feel a little apocalyptic. Especially while most of the people in charge and seemingly 60% of the voters still want to hand-wave these away as one-offs, and unusual, ignoring the trend or the density of unusual/record event.
      • emodendroket 5y ago
        I think things can get a lot worse without portending "Mad Max"-style scenarios.
  • 5y ago
• foofoo55 5y ago
  Railways to the east are also washed out. [1] And the farm country in the cities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack to the east of Vancouver, which supplies most of the local dairy & poultry, is now either completely flooded or cut off. [2] [1] https://www.radionl.com/2021/11/15/cn-cp-trains-out-of-service-through-fraser-canyon-due-to-mudslides/ https://www.radionl.com/2021/11/15/cn-cp-trains-out-of-servi... [2] https://www.abbynews.com/news/immediate-evacuation-order-due-to-landslide-for-sumas-prairie-in-abbotsford/ https://www.abbynews.com/news/immediate-evacuation-order-due...
  • cf100clunk 5y ago
    Princeton and Merritt are likewise in very dire circumstances.
• twoheadedboy 5y ago
  This reminds me of that one south park episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W1tWRMoiAI&t=152s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W1tWRMoiAI&t=152s
• meken 5y ago
  Anyone else reminded of The Dark Knight Rises?
  • ygjb 5y ago
    Less The Dark Knight because there are fewer bad guys with squeaky voices running around, and more like this... https://imgur.com/gallery/U5up5RT https://imgur.com/gallery/U5up5RT
• cf100clunk 5y ago
  Mobile services in southern British Columbia have generally been steady on the Telus network through all the atmospheric river activity but Bell has been having problems: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/service-outage-bc-storm-1.6249986 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/service-outa...
• anonymousisme 5y ago
  The ferries are still running.
  • cf100clunk 5y ago
    But there are multiple BC Ferries travel advisories in effect.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    They'll be maxed out capacity wise almost immediately, compared to a working four lane road ferries have extremely small capacity. But better something than nothing.
  • jrace 5y ago
    So you can either go to an island (few hour trip) or to the north (many hours) And then once there another half day to get down to the interior, which when the roads were open was just a 4-5hr trip. So even the ferry ride out would take very long time to get to the next major city.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  If the US routes get destroyed, we would have to airdrop food soon.
  • theandrewbailey 5y ago
    Vancouver has a port. Getting a barge there strikes me as a better solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Vancouver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Vancouver
    • jhgb 5y ago
      Coincidentally, just the other day I was reminded of the Berlin Airlift, but indeed shipping seems preferable.
• baybal2 5y ago
  Wow, I lived in Canada for almost 6 years, and never knew that Canada spends so little on roads.
  • bobthepanda 5y ago
    To put this in context, the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia are being hammered with extremely heavy rain. Roads are being washed out or struck with landslides. Seattle already hit the third-rainiest November in history and we're two weeks in. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/11/15/atmospheric-river-seattle-vancouver-flooding/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/11/15/atmospheri...
• dave_aiello 5y ago
  Lower Mainland Secessionists-- this is your moment!
• lhorie 5y ago
  For just a bit of context/anecdata, I'm talking to my brother who lives in Vancouver and he wasn't even aware this was a problem. The road closure[0] on hwy 1 near Abbotsford/Chilliwack is a good one hour drive away from Vancouver core[1]. So while it sounds noteworthy for an entire city be technically flooded in, unless you were driving to the boonies, you're probably not actually impacted in any meaningful way. He also mentioned the weather cleared since yesterday, so floods should start to subside. You can follow the updates here[2] [0] https://www.drivebc.ca/mobile/pub/events/id/DBC-35180.html https://www.drivebc.ca/mobile/pub/events/id/DBC-35180.html [1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Vancouver,+BC,+Canada/Abbotsford,+BC,+Canada/@49.1594109,-122.9930211,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x548673f143a94fb3:0xbb9196ea9b81f38b!2m2!1d-123.1207375!2d49.2827291!1m5!1m1!1s0x548435c6706ab783:0x50135152a7b0560!2m2!1d-122.3044697!2d49.0504377!3e0 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Vancouver,+BC,+Canada/Abbots... [2] https://www.drivebc.ca/#listView https://www.drivebc.ca/#listView
  • zaptheimpaler 5y ago
    I live in Vancouver and had no idea until a friend in another country saw the news and asked me about it. Not to say people elsewhere in BC weren’t impacted (one town had to evacuate) but the media is not painting an accurate picture.
    • lhorie 5y ago
      Yeah, the evacuation order in Abbotsford[0] seems like the real news to me. [0] https://www.abbotsford.ca/alerts/evacuation-order-and-alerts-issued-localized-areas https://www.abbotsford.ca/alerts/evacuation-order-and-alerts...
      • soperj 5y ago
        Merritt seemed big as well.
    • cf100clunk 5y ago
      Perhaps the picture being painted by the media is not being accurately assimilated by you? This is real, and magnitude of the circumstances is dire.
• austincheney 5y ago
  It seems November is a hard month of rain in certain areas. When I was in Kuwait in 2018 they had a record flood on November 4th greater than anything in the modern history going back to the late 18th century when they civilized the area. Then on the 14th there was a flood that was 3x greater than the one on the 4th. I was also reading that this week southern Egypt is having an extreme problem with flooding that killed 3 soldiers. There are a bunch of videos on YouTube about it: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kuwait+november+14+2018 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kuwait+november...
• theandrewbailey 5y ago
  I watched a video series of a road trip from Victoria to somewhere in Yukon.[0] After getting to the mainland and past the Vancouver metro area, the quality of roads is striking. The further north they went, the more nothing they saw. [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV_qemO0oath2Wpt7-8jQMT2yChOf9mjs https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV_qemO0oath2Wpt7-8jQ...
  • myohmy 5y ago
    I've driven that trip many, many times. Its a wonderful drive if you like peace and quiet. Although as my cousin put it, all he saw was "A tree, a rock, a mountain, a river, and a bear."
• hinkley 5y ago
  Did Vancouver have a share in the drought that hit parts of the PNW last summer? I wonder if the dry/wet cycle has contributed to the instabilities.
  • myohmy 5y ago
    I wonder this too. Vancouver Island was hit by a drought this summer and the (not unusual) torrent caused "water to flow where it has never flowed before" according to the road engineers.
    • hinkley 5y ago
      Soil biology does some weird thing to soils in the boundaries. Fungally dominated soils have a greatly increased mineral and water availability due to the meddling of the fungi in soil chemistry. But if you dry out fungi enough, they become hydrophobic, like sphagnum does, and this can increase the likelihood of flash flooding. In a forest environment, the fungi increase canopy, and the canopy mechanically slows the water. Except in deciduous forests in the winter, there is no canopy, only mostly-bare branches. Although typically BC and northern Washington seem to be overpopulated with conifers so that may not apply in this case.
• Scoundreller 5y ago
  I think this event is going to lead to Canada dropping or reducing its PCR test requirement for (re-)entry into Canada. The US is still well connected while Canada has just broken itself in 2.
  • myohmy 5y ago
    Nah, that won't happen. International affairs are handled by Ottawa, which is 4000 km away and completely unaffected by this crisis.
    • arduinomancer 5y ago
      Really? https://twitter.com/peterjontheair/status/1460717356548689920 https://twitter.com/peterjontheair/status/146071735654868992...
      • Scoundreller 5y ago
        That's a CBSA region making its own decision to use their discretion and ignore enforcement.
• dreamcompiler 5y ago
  I'd expect this to be a bigger problem for Edmonton and Calgary than for Vancouver. The former cities now have no road access to the port of Vancouver.
  • swader999 5y ago
    Those cities are largely supplied via north south routes from USA.
• boborhythm 5y ago
  Interestingly, there is a railroad line that goes north from Vancouver, through Whistler and Pemberton, but takes a different route than Highway 99 to get to Lillooet[1]. The highway (aka The Duffey, as it passes Duffey Lake) gains and then loses something like 1000m of elevation, whereas the railroad line is much flatter and travels along Gates Lake, Anderson Lake, and Seton Lake. There are dirt/gravel roads there too, but I'm not sure if they are used in the winter. The railroad route is not used much these days, partly because of all the trains that fell into the lake due to how windy (edit: that's windy as in lots of turns, not windy as in lots of air blowing over it) the track is (e.g. [2]). 1: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/50.5405/-122.6157 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/50.5405/-122.6157 2: https://www.trailtimes.ca/news/cn-freight-train-derails-along-southern-b-c-lake/ https://www.trailtimes.ca/news/cn-freight-train-derails-alon...
  • lepton 5y ago
    "tortuous" is the word you're wanting there. :)
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • schoen 5y ago
      Not to be confused with "tortious" or "torturous" (even though all three etymologically refer to twisting!).
  • tra3 5y ago
    The Hurley and the Highline roads typically become snowmobile only. I saw on Facebook somewhere that there was a slide on highline and that a truck/trailer RV combo jackknifed in the middle.
  • pomian 5y ago
    Some of that was closed due to huge forest fire, which also caused land slides.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• plow-tycoon 5y ago
  This happens in the prairies from time to time. Last year I got stuck in a Blizzard on my way to Winnipeg. All highways in the southern province shut down for a bit. We got stuck in a gully in the car until a snowplow came and saved us.
• joemi 5y ago
  I wonder if this will affect filming in any serious way. Might be too early to tell, but can anyone knowledgeable of the Vancouver film industry comment?
  • soultrees 5y ago
    Probably not to be honest. Even Covid just made the industry bigger. Only issue is that crafty might be a bit bare ;)
• iainctduncan 5y ago
  It is disappointing to see some people thinking this is not a big deal. Please don't spread that kind of misinformation. We had multiple highways closed over southern BC, many roads down, power outages, municipalities evacuated, and tons of homes flooded in towns and cities all over southern BC. This is affecting a hell of a lot more than whether we can get to the rest of the country by road. There is almost no one who is not impacted. I'm on Vancouver Island and houses are having their basements flood, conking out heaters. Meritt is evacuated. The Malahat highway was closed. Ferries were cancelled. Various roads are GONE. Like - the asphalt is now in a river. Folks are getting airlifted out of highways by military copters. This is unprecedented bad shit here - don't minimize it.
  • gjs278 5y ago
    it’ll be fine
  • time_to_smile 5y ago
    HN has long declared itself an "Everything is Fine" zone. While you are here it is important to remember that "Everything is Fine". Suggesting that things might not be fine is a good pathway to being flagged or at least downvoted. Since everything is fine, the only motivation you would have for suggesting it's not, is to create trouble for political reasons, which is clearly against HN guidelines. It's pretty clear that Everything is Fine because most of us have invested our lives on future prosperity. We're working hard on tough problems because tomorrow will be far brighter than today. The funding our companies receive is based on the promise of future economic growth. If it were some how the case that everything was not fine (and again, to be crystal clear, Everything is Fine), then many people here would be thrown into a very uncomfortable emotional place, since it would call into question nearly all of our assumptions about the world that give us meaning. But of course we are comfortable, because Everything is Fine. Are their problems? Of course! Otherwise we wouldn't need startups and we wouldn't need VC funding. If you see a problem the answer is simple: why not find the solution and pitch it in the next YC round? All problems are just opportunities for startup disruption, waiting to be solved. They're exciting! So don't worry too much, and most importantly, remember that Everything is Fine.
• iainctduncan 5y ago
  Here's an article that gives people a better sense of how severe this is. I have lived in Southern BC for 40 years and cannot remember there ever being so many simultaneously affected areas from rain. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-floods-tuesday-update-1.6250367 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-floods-tu... And one on the supply chain effects: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bc-floods-rail-impact-1.6250554 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bc-floods-rail-impact-1.625... Some folks in Vancouver are saying they are unaffected... well what you really mean is you haven't noticed yet. There will absolutely be ripple effects. Even in Victoria we had a general "do not drive" advisory yesterday, and good luck getting a plumber if you need one this week. I know city folks who have worked for the BC government in emergency management and are now stocking up on essentials...
  • cf100clunk 5y ago
    Also the Black Press and Glacier Media chains of local BC papers (i.e. Burnaby Now, Chilliwack Progress, Tri-Cities News, etc.) are carrying a great deal of coverage of the impact on their local areas. The people saying that they are unaffected are entitled to be as content as they like... for today.
  • iainctduncan 5y ago
    here is another of footage of road damage. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/coquihalla-trans-canada-highway-damage-1.6250235 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/coquihalla-t... I think many people reading this don't realize that there are road closures ... and then these. It's not "you shouldn't drive today" and we have some flaggers chewing gum, it's "100s of meters of road no longer exist" kind of damage. Do that in enough places at the same time and it will be months before roads are back to normal. Enough time for severe supply shortages in many places.
• swader999 5y ago
  Albertans: lets take their land while we can!
• iainctduncan 5y ago
  Some chopper footage of just how bad the road damage is. This is not getting fixed in a long damn time. https://twitter.com/RobinMonks/status/1460690606410194949 https://twitter.com/RobinMonks/status/1460690606410194949
• InTheArena 5y ago
  Quick! Invade and size Vancouver while no one is paying attention.
• kazinator 5y ago
  I think if you put up a stop signs next to the obstructions and wash outs, Vancouver drivers then just sail right through them like they are nothing.
• toss1 5y ago
  That first pic is wild - it looks like the bridge survived, and the flood washed away the embankment supporting the road way past the edge.
• jrace 5y ago
  I live inthe interior, about 5hrs from Vancouver, and we are only cut off from Vancouver and Calgary...but our grocery stores are now out\very low on vegetable and dairy. I suspect some panic buying, but very sobering to see how fragile our food delivery system is.
  • wheelinsupial 5y ago
    Well, according to a press conference with the mayor of Abbotsford on Nov 16th at 9 pm pst [1], 50% of poultry, dairy, and eggs consumed in BC come from the Sumas Prairie region. This is an area that has just been ordered to evacuate and further flooding poses significant risk to life. Looks like the supply of the food is going to be pretty harmed if the flooding continues. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FM1xwaqtnpg&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FM1xwaqtnpg&feature=youtu.be
• iainctduncan 5y ago
  Well if one ever needed evidence that too many programmers like to think they know the answers before understanding the problem, this thread provides it. :-/
• standeven 5y ago
  There are many smaller communities that are cut off due to floods and mudslides too. For example, I live in Chilliwack, about 90km East of Vancouver, and we’re completely cut off from anywhere else - the three highways entering the city are all closed. All rail lines are damaged or flooded. Hope, a bit further to the East, is another community that is completely cut off. It’s full of stranded travellers right now. Once people realized we were cut off, the hoarding mentality took hold; most gas stations are out of gas and grocery stores are emptying. Hopefully the supply chain bounces back quickly.
• iainctduncan 5y ago
  To folks saying "Vancouver will be fine, everything comes in on boats", here is an info sheet from the city of Vancouver detailing exactly where the food comes from. As you can see, meat, grain, and dairy will be heavily affected if trucks can't get from the Fraser Valley on east into town. http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/PlanningPublications/FoodFlowinMVExecSummary.pdf http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/Pla... Aaaand it sounds like we're going into a provincial state of emergency tomorrow.
  • DevoAKA 5y ago
    Where are you reading about the state of emergency?
    • iainctduncan 5y ago
      https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wyntk-bc-floods-nov-17-1.6251839 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wyntk-bc-flo...
  • iainctduncan 5y ago
    declared.
• King-Aaron 5y ago
  In that image in the article, what's the blue substrate layer that can be seen in the broken bridge?
• lavp 5y ago
  I'm studying in the University of British Columbia and for some odd reason they did not make my classes asynchronous. There were so many people who could not show up.
• ragazzina 5y ago
  It's time to update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_that_are_inaccessible_by_road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_that_are_inacce...