Chilliwack man creates ‘Navigating the Fraser Valley for Dummies’ for B.C. flood highway closures

Mike Slavin has found a way to keep himself very busy during the B.C. floods.

As a retired bus driver, Slavin knows a thing or two about the roads, but despite no longer being behind the wheel of the bus, he still wants to ensure people get to their destination.

In recent weeks, the Chilliwack resident has taken it upon himself to navigate the information freeway when it comes to the constantly changing road closures.

There are websites already doing that like Drive BC, and even CityNews’ traffic updates (every 10 minutes on the 1s) but he says the Fraser Valley community seemed to still be lost.

“Everybody is asking what’s open, what’s not open as far as roads and you’re getting 27 to 50 different answers…so I decided I was going to make it simple for people to find out which roads are open,” he said.

That’s why he started creating maps called “Navigating the Fraser Valley for Dummies,” and posting them to Facebook.

“When we started to get cut off from the rest of the province and Canada, that’s when I wanted to do something. And that’s when I started this,” he said.

Related Articles: 

• Highway 99 closing between Pemberton and Lillooet Tuesday afternoon

• B.C. reopens Highways 3 and 99 to essential travel after weekend storm

The response has been overwhelmingly positive, primarily because the questions are fairly simple and Slavin has been able to answer many questions residents need answered. For example: If I live in Abbotsford, can you get to Chilliwack? From Hope, which routes can you take? If you aren’t travelling for essential reasons, how far can you go through the Valley?

Since Nov. 14, answering those questions has become a sometimes hourly update, and Slavin says it is a lot of work to stay on top of it all.

For more than two weeks, he has been waking up each morning, sometimes before dawn, to cruise the province’s traffic updates.

“There’s some days when I’m up at 4:30 a.m., quarter to five. I drove a bus for 40 years, I had to get up at that hour to drive my bus,” he said about his morning routine. After he gets his coffee he starts his day by updating his map.

“It is a lot of time on the computer but I don’t mind, especially in these times that we are going through, people need to get places. I wanted to do what I can to help out,” he said.

He then takes those details and inputs them into a computer graphic design program, which he taught himself to use as a hobby.

On top of the constant updating, he has his own challenges with the storms.

“Yesterday morning went downstairs to get a Christmas decoration out of the basement and I had an inch and half of water in my basement. So I spent most of yesterday getting that out and drying it up,” he said.

To read his updates, he suggests following the Fraser Valley Road Report Facebook group.

Although he has been enjoying the thanks and comments from his growing number of fans, he doesn’t think he will maintain this pace beyond the next few weeks.

“The maps were done for this period of time right now, I don’t expect to keep doing these unless there are unprecedented circumstances,” he said.