B.C. government underprepared for extreme weather events: report

The province’s lack of preparedness to handle the destructive flooding that impacted B.C. last November was a major factor in the destruction, a report by an independent think tank suggests.

Ben Parfitt is the author of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report that uses the landslide on Highway 99 as an example of the province’s policy shortfall. This weather event left five people dead but was an instance that could have been prevented, Parfitt says.

The CCPA suggests old logging roads that weren’t properly decommissioned exacerbated the flow of water and debris and increased the risk of landslides during the so-called atmospheric river.

“If those roads are deactivated, if the government does what it should do, and invests in ensuring that those roads are put properly back to bed, then we dramatically reduce the likelihood of heavy rains causing landslides,” Parfitt said.

In this report 11 policy recommendations are made by engineers and geoscientists on how the government can better prepare for extreme weather and how to react to such cases.

The 11 recommendations are:

• Incorporating information on wildfires, logging and road-building into the provincial River Forecast Centre’s flood-forecasting models to increase their effectiveness.
• Better incorporation of rain-on-snow data into River Forecast Centre models to enhance early warning of pending floods. (Rain on snow was a significant contributor to the severity of flooding last November in Merritt).
• Doubling River Forecast Centre staff as recommended to government 12 years ago.
• Requiring government to conduct assessments of how logging and logging roads may alter hydrological regimes and elevate flood risks before such activities are permitted.
• Limiting the amount of logging and road-building that may happen in watersheds, especially watersheds near vulnerable communities on floodplains.
• Requiring BC’s Chief Forester to incorporate knowledge of the long-term impacts that logging, logging roads and wildfires have on the hydrology of watersheds into critical “allowable annual cut” decisions, which limit the amount companies may log each year.
• Requiring the provincial government to consider all industrial activities in a watershed and their “cumulative impacts” before new industrial activities can proceed.
• Requiring all proposed logging roads and logging cut blocks to be reviewed and approved by Ministry of Forests officials before developments occur.
• Completing a rapid assessment of the most at-risk logging roads in the province.
• Increasing inspections of aging and vulnerable infrastructure, in particular bridges and culverts that could fail.
• Creating a stand-alone fund from increased levies collected from logging companies and use the funding to pay for watershed restoration activities, including decommissioning logging roads that have been abandoned by the industry and are a looming liability.

“The provincial government needs to listen to what these experts are saying. There are things clearly in the province’s control that could reduce the prospect for devastating floods and provide vulnerable communities with ample warning of troubles that lie ahead,” Parfitt told CityNews.

Parfitt says as climate change continues to become a prevalent issue, policy changes are needed more than ever to prevent mortality and protect infrastructure.

Allan Chapman, a hydrologist who once led BC’s River Forecast Centre says, “the premier’s invocation of climate change and climate change alone “deflects accountability for failures within government.”

Chapman says flood forecasting and emergency planning staff in the provincial government had all the information they needed to issue early warnings to vulnerable communities about the potential for dangerous times ahead.

According to Chapman, the July Mountain, Lytton Creek, and Tremont Creek wildfires amplified the flood risk, which he says should have been anticipated.

“Other major and similar storms appear in the record in October 2003, November 1990 and a few other years. The data lead to the conclusion that although the rainfall on November 14 and 15 was certainly large, it was not unprecedented and should not have been unanticipated” Chapman reported.

Parfitt maintains, “climate change did not cause the catastrophic landslide rather, bad land use practices did.”

– With files from The Canadian Press