Communities In Disaster Zones Are Increasingly On Their Own.
Every road connecting Vancouver to the rest of Canada is closed.
There is currently no way to drive from the rest of Canada into the city of Vancouver. If help was coming that way, it wouldn’t be getting there, because every single road into the city has been closed by floods and landslides. As is the railroad, which will make things harder still for the bustling west coast city. At least one person is dead and more are feared so, with tens of thousands displaced or without power after a huge storm deluged the region. Reopening primary traffic arteries may take months.
British Columbia is having a rough year. Unparalleled current floods come fairly hot on the heels of other extreme climate events. The intense heat dome event in June repeatedly broke all time heat records before worsening wildfires that obliterated the town of Lytton overnight. This is in the context of a trend of intensifying wildfire seasons. Just a month ago yet another unprecedented storm hammered the coast, exacerbating risks to fragile ecosystems from a burning container ship carrying toxic chemicals. This week’s drenching will not only devastate farms and communities, but have long lasting impacts on shipping in and out of Canada’s biggest port, yet another fractured link for badly strained supply…
