One year later and work continues to repair the unprecedented damage caused by an atmospheric river that battered highways linking the Southern Interior with the coast in mid-November 2021.
Huge sections of the Coquihalla, Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon, and Highway 8 were washed away on Nov. 14, 2021 in a torrent of water. There were also slides and washouts on Highway 99 and Highway 12.
Motorists were stranded and some communities were cut off.
It also had a significant impact on the supply chain. Transport trucks were stuck waiting to get through.
“It was definitely an unprecedented challenge,” says Paul Schroeder of Bison Transport as he looks back on what it meant for his business and drivers.
The Coquihalla was closed for weeks, forcing truckers to use the Hope-Princeton highway instead, a much slower, narrower route.
“It was something that none of us had anticipated. It was a game-changer, I will say. It disrupted everything we do and how we do it in a very short period of time,” Schroeder added.
The transportation bottleneck led to shortages on store shelves across the Southern Interior.
A Herculean effort by construction crews had temporary repairs in place on the Coquihalla by mid-December to allow commercial and emergency vehicles through. It reopened to general traffic on Jan. 19 of this year.
However, the work continues on some of the worst-hit stretches of the main route between the Interior and the Lower Mainland. That caused long delays and congestion over the busy summer months and continues to slow traffic in some areas.
“It’s taking patience from a drive standpoint and from our customers standpoint,” says Schroeder. “It is taking longer to travel those routes, although they’ve done a really good job of getting it to the point that it is today.”
Highway 8 finally reopened between Merritt and Spences Bridge last week.
"I think that's another things we definitely want to celebrate today and going forward, is the work that was done on this corridor to get us to the announcement that we were able to make today with our partners is unbelievable," said Rob Fleming, B.C.'s Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure last Wednesday.
He said it's a project that will be studied by engineers and road builders for years and decades to come.
How long it could take to fully rebuild all the impacted highways, and how much it could cost B.C. taxpayers is anyone’s guess.
