There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada
kelownanow.com
kelownanow.com
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
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Vancouver,+BC,+Canada/Abbots...
Canada Post is going to be a real mess though. They either fly or truck overland domestically.
I don’t think they do any rail.
The storm that hit which caused the flooding which closed the roads also hit the Vancouver-adjacent parts of the US, so some of those are closed as well.
Lots of produce does come from the Fraser Valley which is impacted, but also North/South links to the USA (ie. we get heaps of produce from California).
I assume there's a fair amount of food that is delivered from the port, as a lot of food packaging warehouses are near the port.
Most trade in Canada is North/South aligned. Tbh the east/west orientation of the country doesn't make a lotta sense lol.
Are the prices in line with what those products would cost in the US (e.g. WA state)? I was under the impression that the prices in BC were lower, so now I'm wondering if the price adjustment to account for local markets is significant or not, or if I misremembered completely.
I don't look too closely at my grocery bill, so I'm probably not the most helpful person to ask.
I assume all the food is cheaper in the USA than Canada.
Much of its out-of-season produce comes from California, but that's the case in WA, as well.
Things like cheese are very expensive in BC, but that's due to Canada's dairy tax situation.
As Paul Krugman wrote, Canada is closer to the US than to itself. (<https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/eh/>)
https://bcmilk.com/notice-to-producers-flood-conditions-and-...
Vancouver's surrounding agricultural areas, lush as they are, will now be almost out of commission for an indefinite length of time.
The other option is turn it into cheese
Three gas stations are out of gas (this was before noon) people are driving down with jerry cans to fill up extra fuel, stores are all bare because people ran to the stores to stock up on food, there was a line to get in the grocery stores. While inside some people were pushing two carts full of groceries to the checkout.
The roads going West are flooded out and the roads to the East are flooded out. There is definitely shortages here because Vancouver has the regional warehouses. There is no resupplies that can come into Chilliwack, and there hasn’t been an announcement on when the roads will clear.
Some areas are told to shelter in place and others are told to evacuate.
Where do truck shipments come into Vancouver from ?
Is it all through the US/CA border ?
Should be possible to head south into Washington State and re-enter Canada at Oroville-Osoyoos.
They’ll definitely have some cleanup somewhere, but that happens after every storm.
I hope the two have some mutual aid agreement to bypass over each others tracks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-track_railway#Direction...
> A similar example exists in the Fraser Canyon in British Columbia, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific each own a single track line - often on either side of the river. The companies have a joint arrangement where they share resources and operate the canyon as a double track line between meeting points near Mission and Ashcroft.[22]
Just like 2 of our 3 big cellular companies (Bell and Telus) sharing a single network.
To be fair, the high regulation that we have in the banking sector insulated us from a lot of the 2008 financial crisis. So it's not all bad.
The big banks spent the early part of the 2000s complaining loudly about being "left out" of the financial boom happening and wanted to internationalize and merge with US banks, and our government said no. America's regular cycle of financial crises and ruin kind of proves that unrestricted competition should not always be the unconditional goal of a given industry.
In terms of rail (and other infrastructure), keep in mind that our country is bigger than the US and we have 10% of the population. A lot of our monopolies/crown-corps exist because if it wasn't for government subsidies/handouts, none would exist at all.
So it's not always a reasonable argument to say there "should" be competition, when it doesn't make financial sense for new entrants to compete. No one would ever fund the startup costs, because it would take decades to make the money back, if you ever did.
That said, our telco sector does absolutely need a shakeup and competition (better rules for CLECs to use ILEC infrastructure etc).
How much does the average Canadian pay per month for their chequing account?
Where they really get you though is in service fees. If you overdraft or do any one of a myriad of options you can get hit with penalty fees. Basically you just have to treat the minimum balance as a hard zero.
Or until you buy something in USD. Foreign exchange fees in Canada are a multiple of what they are south of the border, and Canadian banks ruthlessly protect this business by refusing to bank money service businesses that compete with them.
Canadian banks are the most profitable in the world, and they're really good at making customers think they're not paying that much for the pleasure of feeding the oligopoly.
A lot of it is hidden - Canadian banks charge outrageous sums of money for foreign exchange fees. Credit card interchange fees are reliably a full 1% higher than in the US. e-Transfers are intentionally limited in size so that banks can still make their money on credit card payments etc.
Interac is a bank-owned monopoly, and merchants eat astronomical fees even though it's nominally "free" to send an email money transfer to your plumber.
The more you dig into the Canadian banking ecosystem, the more you realize how powerful it is and how much rent-seeking is really going on.
The amazing part is that they've convinced the average Canadian that this oligopoly is actually good for them. Marketing works!
Anyone working in the financial services space, however, understands that the reality is really much darker than people realize.
What is also true is that Canada has never had anything like the S&L scandal in the 90s or the 2008 US financial crisis where massive swaths of the working class lost much of their savings.
So sure, we have higher fees due to regulatory capture, but I'll take that trade to know that some unregulated finance bros aren't fucking around with my life savings.
Gas is more expensive too. Oh, and wages are stagnant (except for in tech), which is a real problem when inflation hits 5% (as it is now). Productivity growth has been basically non-existent for decades.
Can I connect all of this to the banking oligopoly? No, but it's symptomatic of the larger problem: that Canada is a very difficult country to do business in. Ham-handed government regulation in every part of the economy is a huge drag on economic growth.
Railways are a classic example; two railways rarely directly compete with each other (since even if they connect the two same points they probably do so via wildly different routes) and some level of coordination is needed to avoid scheduling conflicts on competing trains.
Nothing to add to your point about self-sufficiency, my intent was to draw parallels to the comment I was responding to. ("It's [Vancouver] essentially a peninsula, it still has road and rail links to Washington State." <=> "It's [Point Roberts] a peninsula, it still has road links to British Columbia.").
And unlike Vancouver, it can't just get food and animal feed brought in by ship/from the Peace Arch border crossing.
[0] https://www.abbotsford.ca/alerts/evacuation-order-and-alerts...
Chilliwack and Hope might be cut off, though I think it's possible to get there via minor roads/unusual routes. Abbotsford is partly flooded, but areas that aren't should be accessible. Lions Bay/Squamish and Maple Ridge/Mission are fine, as far as I know.
So if a 1-2 hour drive is the limit, then parts of Abbotsford/Chilliwack/Hope are pretty miserable right now, but it should be fairly localised.
On the other hand, you can argue that most of Southern BC is "peripheral" to Vancouver, despite parts being 4-5 or more hours away. Those parts will have more issues, since you start getting into places where the only connections are (were) the highways that flooded and washed out.
[EDIT] see reply - should say 40 million but what the heck, I ruined the joke.
Otherwise, just moving to the country just means you're dependent on infrastructure in different ways. You might be able to grow your own food if you had to, which is an option city people don't really have. That's worth something.
https://www.bcafn.ca/news/fnlc-calls-state-emergency-due-unp...
I understand that someone WFH in their swanky Kits apartments isn't particularly impacted by any of this, but there does exist a BC outside of Vancouver.
According to a podcast I listened to, this pattern might actually be bad because alternating cycles of extreme rain and extreme dryness means more vegetation growth during the wet months which in turn means more fuel to burn during the dry months.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/us/la-nina-california-dro...
For example: https://imgur.com/a/MAqFSHd
Canada is an amazing country scenery wise, but it is also a very thin veneer of civilization on top of a very rugged countryside and it doesn't take much to turn it from workable into unconnected islands overnight. Let's hope that they manage to keep the power running and some way to keep those communities supplied because with winter on the way that can get ugly really quickly.
Canadians are usually pretty self sufficient but without roads I'm not sure how that would work.
Yep. Sudbury to Kenora is some lonely road with a few “no services next 150km” stretches
Lakes and rocks and lakes and rocks and lakes and rocks and trees and rocks and lakes...
Sleeping pills, muscle relaxants, reading the entire Dune series from beginning to end, and waking up finding that you've fallen asleep and snuggled up to the nice old lady sitting next to you.
I grew up driving around the forestry roads and cutlines of the foothills in Alberta with my canoeing parents, but that is far less isolated than northern Ontario. I always find it surprising.
I'd like to live up there somewhere, but my wife isn't game to the idea.
I've been to Vancouver before, but I"m completely ignorant about the supply chain there.
We're talking about a metropolis of 2.5 million people. What's the impact on food supplies, fuel, etc? Very curious. Is it primarily coming up from the US???
FVRD is where the impacts are so far.
I mentioned in another comment that I’m in Chilliwack and gas stations are empty and grocery stores are also empty. Hoarding happened really fast today. The roads for resupply are shut down.
As far as I know, the main hubs are in MVRD, but probably not City of Vancouver proper. Nothing can get passed Abbotsford going East. There are roads past Hope that have also been destroyed (collapsed bridges and two lane roads completely gone). There might be ways to go north and around, but where I am it’s isolated on both sides.
I am visiting this area and am stuck until things are sorted out.
Previous estimates have said there could be 20-30 billion dollars in economic impact if there is a severe flood in the region.
That station is under threat of failure, due to rising floodwaters.
If it fails, that's it. Half the town will be under ten feet of water, that has nowhere to drain. I don't mean 'nowhere to drain until next week' - I mean 'nowhere to drain, period.'
Because the Sumas Prairie, the location with the imminent threat of flooding, was originally a lake. It was drained in the 1920s to claim farm land for the Fraser Valley. This is reversion to the natural state.
https://twitter.com/TranBC/status/1460391772304064517?ref_sr...
For sure it was a major storm with some major impacts, but I think most people in the lower mainland weren't severely impacted.
I'm reading now that there's already some stress due to displacements from the Lytton fire earlier this year, and displacements from Abbotsford, Merritt, etc are not gonna help the situation. I'm still trying to piece together the wider scope of the incident and don't yet have a good sense of what the overall damage looks like (though it increasingly looks like it isn't merely "a few key bridges happened to have flooded, it'll be fine once the water recedes" and it's more like "there are several landslides blocking roads along the route to Calgary and we're gonna be scrambling to staff the clean up efforts in time for winter").
On the one hand, you just need enough room for a truck to pass through, dirt road carved by a tractor as it might be, in order to establish a supply line. On the other hand, given that some communities barely only ever had that in the first place, I imagine many might need to figure out plan B arrangements.
Bridges and huge sections of the most important highways are now rubble floating down rivers with nothing there anymore. This is in some of the most difficult terrain to rebuild in that you could have. People who know what they are talking about are saying we are short highways through the winter.
Here's some chopper footage: https://twitter.com/RobinMonks/status/1460690606410194949
City folks who think this was just some rain are nothing but evidence of how disconnected city people can become from the infrastructure on which they depend.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CWWz8QCP4Mm/?utm_medium=copy_lin...
This is a really funny angle. I would think the city people are keen on how internationally connected they are as a coastal port city. Vancouver also has international access to the US. Vancouver can get goods from Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, San Diego, Alaska, Mexico, China, etc. Highways to the East and North being out won’t change this whatsoever.
Isn’t it the rural folks who live inland who are dependent on port cities and road infrastructure that goes over the passes going to be the most screwed? Which crops/goods are being shipped from central Canada to Vancouver during the winter months?
As to your assertion that highway closures won't change other access, this is nonsense. Take away the highways and you suddenly have WAY more that needs to get in and out the other ways, so the ferries and shipping traffic gets blocked up. I don't understand how anyone can believe "we'll just go the other way" is going to work fine. We don't have extra shipping works, boats, port slots, etc just waiting for twice the load or anything.
This is _already_ the direction these goods are coming in from. These so called idiotic city folk are likely going to be just fine. They might not be able to go to Whistler or whatever to go snowboarding for a year,
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bc-floods-rail-impact-1.625...
A large part of Vancouver's food comes from the Fraser Valley by truck -- through two municipalities that are now under water. The mayor of one of whom is already wondering whether farmers will be killing all their livestock.
It's a fuck of a lot worse than a cancelled snowboarding trip.
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/Pla...
"The rail lines in question are the main arteries in and out of the port. "The mere fact that those trains are stalled means that it's going to back up further because those ships are still underway," Prentice said.
Adel Guitouni, a business professor at the University of Victoria, says the pandemic followed by recent natural disasters have underscored just how fragile global supply chains are.
"It would have a huge impact, and it would be felt not just in B.C. but across the country," he said in an interview. "You start having shortages in places and a lot of accumulation in other places."
Depending on the extent of the damage, he thinks the rail companies will likely have most of their lines back up and running within a week or so, but clearing the global backlog in supply chains will take much longer.
"This will take until probably 2023 to see some kind of getting back to normal," he said"
...but Everything is Fine is an equally strong conclusion.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Surrey,+BC/Vernon,+BC/@48.86...
These highways that are closed due to collapse are built into the side of mountains and require significant engineering testing in order to be deemed safe to rebuild on, not taking into account the amount of engineering that’s required to actually safely and sustainably rebuild them. Suburbs of Vancouver (Abbotsford) are essentially underwater.
It is patently false to say this isn’t an issue for people who are living and staying in Vancouver. Hell, even major highways within Vancouver have been shut down. These are much more temporary shutdowns than the primary highways out of town, but still require respecting in order to repair and restore which limits travel.
any drive conditions in BC can be checked at https://drivebc.ca/ in AB https://511.alberta.ca/#:MyRoutes
Anyone who was seriously motivated to get to the rest of Canada could drive through the US or take a ferry to Vancouver island, drive to Port Hardy, take a ferry to Bella Coola or Prince Rupert and drive to the rest of the country from there. It would take forever and the roads from Bella Coola and Prince Rupert are notorious. Vancouverites say the Coquihalla is the gnarliest road in Canada, and it just shows that they've never seen the rest of their country. The 2 lane, gravel, Heckman Pass on highway 20 is nothing like the paved, seperated 4-6 lanes of the Coq.
I have empathy for those who are going through hell right now but I’m just pointing out that your assessment of “nearly everyone” is way off base.
The news is a bad example because they are clearly going to focus on the places that were hit the hardest. It’s not a very good story to say “everything in X area is absolutely fine”.
There was only two pumps available in all of whatcom county, from what I saw. Even the harbor fright was out of everything.
Btw if you don't have a pit to put a sump pump in, you want a transfer pump that self primes. The prices are insane right now, but generally $60-100 for 300GPH 100VAC. If you're willing to be careful and mitigate damage to dirt from water, you can dig a hole for a 5 gallon bucket and drop a sump pump in it. You might have a wee bit of standing water under your house but it's better than 3" of water.
My house is 6' above grade, and 3' above the pad, so I don't worry much, once when it rained 28" in three days there was 3" of water on the road out front but I didn't need to go anywhere. A couple days later I did a drive about and so many people had their homes flooded near the farmlands.
Stay safe and pay attention to your local authorities about closures and warnings, and don't cross water on the road, especially if you've never seen the road dry. A large flooding can wash away the road, too, so just stay off the roads if you can!
- I vaguely remember some major city in Alaska was said to have no road to the outside world? Google Maps shows a route from Anchorage to Juneau, but it goes through Canada.
For just one story, my wife’s boss was travelling in the interior (drove there). Doesn’t have his passport because he wasn’t planning to leave the country. Is now stranded, trying to decide whether to abandon his car and fly home, so he can get back to the small business he runs, or try to wait it out so he can drive home in god knows how long. Tonnes of people facing impacts like this, or much worse.
If the closure is longer than X (based on work, hotel, etc) then it might be cheaper to fly and also have the car shipped; or even sold if they have extras.
Just wanted to share a personal example of why I strongly disagreed with this comment:
> 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.
Since most stores have distribution centers that can break up replenishment into small increments, grocery stores typically use a method of inventory management that "tops up" inventory levels on a scheduled basis. High demand items might get replenished once a day or more, while some might get replenished on 2, 3, 4 day intervals all the way up to monthly intervals for low demand durable items. Replenishment schedules are staggered on a per-SKU basis, so that the number of trucks per day is roughly constant.
The short story is that delayed trucks might be a tiny annoyance, but a full supply disruption can cause utter chaos in less than a week. If reroutes through the US aren't facilitated, you can expect to see all of the most commonly purchased items in your grocery store out of stock far sooner than you expect.
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...
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!).
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?
However, just like all good things, people decided if a little is good more would be better. This is why we can't have nice things, but it doesn't mean that the thing itself isn't nice.
Just because the webiste in question of this thread is a newsite doesn't mean we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater because it fits this one category.
Then clients say your app is fast and responsive but what they really mean is that we've not built an obese chimera.
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 :)
This site is great!
Not only that, I didn't even have to touch NoScript - it all apparently loaded perfectly. Wow, it'd be nice if much more of the internet was like this!
I remember digicrime.com making fun of it. And they had all these “services” where they exploited browser problems like endless popups etc — they specifically said they don’t do spam because they can just sign you up for tons of spam and let those marketers do the work haha
Anyone remember that? (“it is now unsafe to turn on your computer”)
Love the "Around The Web" section and how it genuinely just wants you to see a video of a cat playing piano [0]. No aggressive ad placement or fake product review schemes. Just an awesome video of a cat they wanted to share.
Edit: And it seems polling system for "How does this story make you feel?" only relies on cookies to prevent duplicate votes... So I sent them 100 votes for "Awesome"
[0] https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-story-351694-25-.htm#3...
How many people will see it? Mmm about this many hands outstretched as big as a salmon
The thing prints money as local businesses funnel all their advertising budgets to it.
No expectation of performance, like buying a newspaper ad lol
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
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/comments/qubkc6/flo...
Dedicated GPS units are faster, more reliable, and easier to keep going in the field than your phone. You’ll never have them display a blank square because you lost LTE and it didn’t buffer that map segment. A lot of them will also record your hikes for overlay onto Google Earth later, which is nice. I personally have a large number of the local hot springs recorded into mine, which is very important when they’re off road and off trail.
I'd actually much rather a smartphone routing algorithm err on the side of caution in this regard.
You can download as many offline maps as you want (the entire US can fit quite easily on modern phones), you get offline pathfinding, and offline maps have elevation contour lines and hill shading. The maps themselves are also much more detailed compared to Google or Apple when it comes to hiking trails.
I can also keep a GPS running longer with less power. My 64st will last an entire day on two NiMH batteries, and it takes less available power to charge. Cell phones do a lot more, but that “more” comes at a cost of energy consumption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas-Sarsat_Pr...
And yes, it's generally a good idea for anybody hiking in areas without cell phone reception - even if it's not particularly far out from populated areas! I live in North Bend, WA, and it feels like almost every year there's at least one hiker lost on one of the popular local trails. Sometimes they get lucky:
https://www.kuow.org/stories/this-hiker-survived-9-days-with...
https://fox11online.com/news/nation-world/you-go-from-hope-t...
And sometimes they don't:
https://livingsnoqualmie.com/search-suspended-russian-hiker-...
https://livingsnoqualmie.com/hiker-still-missing-in-middle-f...
I mentally shudder every time I go hiking there, and see all the people dressed in cotton clothing and wearing street shoes (or even flip flops!) as they head towards the trail from the trailhead parking lot. Maybe there's something about well-maintained trails that promotes a false sense of security? Like, it looks neat and well-travelled, there's plenty of signage, so what could possibly go wrong? And it mostly doesn't - but when it does, it can get real bad real quick.
Just a few days ago a family was rescued after becoming stuck in the Simpson Desert and activating their beacon.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/travel-stories...
Of course, people managed for a very long time without having the ability to call for help or check in and they generally were OK with that. (And calling for help doesn't mean that Superman is going to swoop in and pick you up anyway.) But they're probably a reasonable safety aid if you're somewhere that doesn't have reliable cell service.
That certainly could be true although I suspect a lot of people are also less prepared/careful today because they assume they can just call for help. And then they end up with a dead battery, no cell reception, or conditions are just such that rescue is delayed.
That said, a cell phone probably should be on your "10 things to carry" list these days. And I could certainly be convinced that an inReach-like things should be too if you're regularly off by yourself in areas without a lot of people.
Still, if I was in the habit of going further afield than your typical day hiker, or lived in a remote area, I think a rescue beacon would be a minimum requirement. An inReach gives you rescue functionality and GPS, so it’s kind of a win win.
The rumors of a satellite enabled iPhone might change this calculus again. Time will tell on that one.
For example, our records for recreational skiing stretch back basically 300 years. Mountaineering has been done practically forever, but as a mass hobby it’s also basically 250 or so years old. The idea that you’d do it for fun rather than as a spiritual quest or to catch a lost sheep is a fairly new idea.
Hiking is a bit more debatable. Humans have walked on local trails for practical and recreational purposes forever. Some European trails are clearly very old, so that’s hardly new. But I think the idea of backpacking deep into the woods for fun has exploded in popularity over the past century, and certainly got a huge kick in the pants with the creation of the national park system.
This is consistent with other data I've seen.
Have you heard about Robin Hood? ;D
For most of human history untamed woods and mountains have been dangerous, unordered places. This is where political dissidents, bandits, and runaway slaves have gone specifically because they’re not places that most people wanted to go given the choice. That’s why the legend of Robin Hood had him there rather than in a safe house in London.
There is otherwise no difference; backpacking and hiking are separate activities.
I wish.
9/11 also ended up jamming 911 and emergency responders' networks (their radios were not designed to have thousands of firefighters and police officers and ambulances concentrated in one mass event) so if something were available I'd assume they would commandeer it.
There has been speculation that Apple would build this into their phones, which IMHO would be a killer feature. Imagine having an emergency feature that could be used anywhere on earth. How much would you pay per text? $5 per text message would be an absolute bargain in many of these remote locations.
I'm not sure how... the InReach (and similar products) are a Iridium satellite communication system that requires a bit more heft in the signal (up and down).
When you look at the iridium phones ( https://www.iridium.com/product-type/satellite-phones/ ) those aren't small things (look at the antennas).
Then you've got:
> Enhanced Battery Life Up to (4) hours of talk time, (30) hours of standby
for a non-smart phone.
I'm not sure how Apple would be able to incorporate a "no cell phone tower in sight" system... without also packing on the rest of the iridium system and making a much more bulky device.
Also, while sure it would be nice if something were a no/low-cost add-on to a regular smartphone, the average consumer probably wouldn't pay much extra, much less an incremental subscription fee. And there's something to be said for a rugged, potentially safety-critical, standalone device that's separate from your phone.
On antenna - you can probably build purpose-specific satellites for text messaging that does not require big antenna. Iridium is 485miles high orbit - you can probably have satellites at closer to 150-200 miles elevation
- https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/
The former even inked a partnership with AT&T and Vodafone: https://www.lightreading.com/ossbss/vodafone-atandt-sign-up-...
It looks like they've even successfully tested it: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/29/lynk-demos-global-satellit...
This would likely be a very high-cost option, but it does seem to be possible. The key is that these satellites are much closer to earth than Iridium, I guess.
Goes on a hike and realizes that a lot of BC doesn't have any cell service?
I haven't used mine for an actual emergency, but it did come in handy in Yukon with an irreparable motorcycle tire. I mostly use it as a backcountry text message device to let the spouse know I'm not dead, or just general chat if I have messages left. Regardless, "long hike in a remote area" defines even a lot of day hikes in WA state, let alone the interior of BC. There probably isn't a month that goes by that I don't grab mine for one remote adventure or another.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/natural-resource...
A CB radio doesn't help much with that, but it is just another means of possibly getting contact with others.
Transmitting may require licensing, but listening should be fine.
Just one other point: on an FSR an average person's general sense of traffic "right of way" is generally wrong and can result in some terrible accidents far from help. To wit: the bus crash involving UBC students outside Bamfield.
Those Baofeng radios are VHF/UHF (140MHz/440MHz) FM radios, not "CB". If you had a Baofeng, and your buddy had a CB, there is no good way they would be able to communicate. These radios can operate in a wide range of frequencies with various levels of legality. But yeah in the US and Canada its generally legal to receive a transmission...other than maybe old cellular phones but that's another complicated mess.
Said family member mentioned in the parent thread keeps a handheld radio (I don't know the exact tech specs, sorry) for such occasions. That said, they mostly use it to just listen for any logging trucks calling out checkpoints so they can avoid getting in their way when travelling to their remote campsites.
Coupled with a Garmin inReach w/ backcountry maps installed, it gives us peace of mind in case something goes wrong out in the bush.
They live in Canada, at least those parts of it that makes this a necessity rather than a luxury.
* 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.
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-1.625...
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...
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.
But how much of the goods we consume fall in that category?
The capacity to quickly repair roads exists. Call in a major structural steel engineering firm, and give them free reign and a big cheque.
You'll have a bridge over the swirling rapids in 24 hours.
Of course, government workers will be falling to the ground foaming at the mouth -- but that's just a side-benefit.
Private sector does really well in a lot of spaces, but despite being public infrastructure, most highways and roadworks built in Canada are already built by private sector employees working under contract.
Those public sector employees foaming at the mouth? Those are the ones who are responsible for making sure that the roads, highways and infrastructure are fit for purpose, including safety. But hey, why would we want anyone providing oversight of private corporations right?
You want emergency, purpose built solutions built by a mission oriented team? May I point you in the direction of the Canadian Military Engineers (you know, government workers?).
While Frequency Of Natural Disasters Is Increasing, Related Death Tolls Are Actually Decreasing
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimfoerster/2021/10/01/while-fr...
If you live in a cold climate: go buy an indoor safe propane heater right now, with a supply of propane. Its not that expensive (maybe $100) for the value you will get out of it in the coming years. It can single-handedly be the difference between being able to hunker down in your home, and having to rely on external support that you'll pray is there for you when the time comes. A carbon monoxide detector is also good to pair with it, to be safe. Blankets as well.
Water is easy, though pretty large volume. Food also isn't as hard as it used to be; having a weeks supply of emergency rations is fine, but consider: Soylent, Huel, etc. Their powder form has a published shelf life of a year, its volumetrically dense, nutritionally complete, only requires water to make, and tastes pretty good.
CASH. Some way to start fire. Candles. A couple flashlights. Batteries (the huge ones made for camping are fantastic, though expensive). Two way radios with very long-range are also a fantastic investment; imagine its the winter, power & cell service is down, and a loved one has to try a local store for some supply you forgot.
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
2: https://www.trailtimes.ca/news/cn-freight-train-derails-alon...
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.
Any problem there and you're going to be driving 100's of km on logging roads, unpaved, no facilities (gas, food).
[1] https://www.radionl.com/2021/11/15/cn-cp-trains-out-of-servi...
[2] https://www.abbynews.com/news/immediate-evacuation-order-due...
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.
There seem to be four, one north, two along the river, and one south.
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=standard&lat=49.346598...
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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)
Figuratively. Technically from Whistler you can go north on 99 and then south on 12 and west on 1 and be back at Vancouver.
Plus, that's basically all highways.
But once you get below well-traveled paved roads, you probably want some local knowledge because there's not a lot of mapping data that differentiated between a well-graded, good condition dirt road and a potentially seasonal road that you probably want high clearance 4WD for (and know how to use it).
[1] https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series...
> There's something called the TIGER database. [1] Of course, that needs to be populated and updated somehow and Google probably applies various corrections.
That's for the US though, it wouldn't cover Canada (though Canada probably has an equivalent).
IIRC, Google actually has a fairly large team of cartographers keeping Google Maps up to date. In addition to satellite and aerial photographs, and other maps, Google also has the benefit of Street View cars to give it on-the-ground data plus GPS tracks of customers using Google Maps on their phones.
On OpenStreetMap, there's a layer that shows all the GPS tracks that its users have uploaded, all superimposed on each other (though last I checked it hadn't been updated in some time). It's pretty easy to make out real roads from that data.
This website has some pretty good essays about Google Maps and other mapping services: https://www.justinobeirne.com/.
I have an AWD Subaru, but other than a couple spots the road would have been fine in any FWD sedan.
That's probably not the road you mentioned but nonetheless.
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/Pla...
Aaaand it sounds like we're going into a provincial state of emergency tomorrow.
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.
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.
edit: looked it up: peak of 49.6°C (121°F) June 29 2021, Lytton, BC. That's Death Valley/Saudi Arabia temps, in a place full of trees on a major river, above 50°N.
> 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-mu...
(I once took a ferry from Prince Rupert to Skidegate on the Queen Charlotte islands and back. It was an 800 passenger ferry, temporarily replacing a 300 passenger ferry I think on the same route which was taken out of service for maintenance. The ferry in question was the ill-fated Queen of the North, which ran aground on a different route a few years later and sank.)
I think most passengers don't expect the ship to scrape it's bottom on a rock at full speed. It sunk in the middle of the night, so probably a lot of the passengers were asleep before they had to scramble to the lifeboats. All but two people got off.
Rupert to Skidegate is mostly open sea, but I could imagine navigating some of those narrow fjords could be a little nerve-wracking. I think they have to time their routes to account for the huge tidal changes they get there, which cause some pretty strong currents.
Incidently, the QotN was the only ship in the Canadian ferry fleet that didn't have a double hull. Not sure it would have made a difference in this case.
Big province, but remarkably little actual habitable land.
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.9495363,-122.5413925,8.33z/d...
Vancouver is on the mouth of Fraser River on basically a combination of glacial scouring and sandy infill. The coast immediately adjacent to Vancouver (and indeed, even somewhat inland) is basically your typical fjord system. Thus, Vancouver is surrounded by the west by the Salish Sea, and mountains on all other sides, asides from the sandy coast that stretches south towards Seattle.
Crossing from Vancouver to the Canadian plains requires crossing two main mountain ranges--the Pacific range and the Rocky Mountains. The main river systems here are oriented primarily in a north-south direction, which means they aren't a great help in finding water gaps in the mountains. However, the next major cities to the east in Canada are Edmonton and Calgary, which means any natural highway route is going to want to generally veer north out of Vancouver anyways.
There are basically three crossings of the Continental Divide worth mentioning in lower British Columbia: Highway 16 (the road to Edmonton), Highway 1 (the road to Calgary), and Highway 3 (which hugs the border). In the Pacific Range, these dwindle down to three highways leaving Vancouver itself, Highway 7 and Highway 1 that leave on the north and south banks of the Fraser respectively, and Highway 99 that jumps over to the next fjord north before making its way inland. Somewhat upstream of Vancouver, at Hope, Highway 1 crosses the river and meets up with Highway 7 to continue following the Fraser River due north, while Highway 5 heads vaguely northeast along the Coquihalla, and Highway 3 splits off from Highway 5 shortly thereafter to continue primarily east near the border. Between the two mountain ranges, the connections of roads is rather more complicated, but either way, you're going to filter down to the same bottlenecks when crossing one of the mountains.
And all of those roads I described crossing the Pacific Range? Every single one of them spend substantial portions of its time in a narrow river valley and is currently severed in several places because of washouts. However many roads you want to count it--they are all cut right now.
Highway 1 splits into the #1, the #5 (The Coquihalla), and the #3 after Hope, which is after Abbostsford.
The US is still well connected while Canada has just broken itself in 2.
I suspect some panic buying, but very sobering to see how fragile our food delivery system is.
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
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.
Edit - might be 72 hours. Regardless... I've done a road test once in my life...
So why is Canada's policy such? They REQUIRE proof of vaccination to enter, AND a test? Why?
Edit - and yes I'm hung up on this. I don't want to pay $200+ dollars for a test I don't need. I got Covid in wave 1 before the first lockdown, I've done everything asked of us; masked, locked down, had to shut down multiple businesses, got vaccinated as soon as it was available to me, and they still want to make me take a useless test?
I can't decide what's worse; our mediocre government or the fact any citizens at all support this theatre...
Taking a PCR test every 2 days just to be able to get to/from work is ridiculous. Especially since only one side is requiring it.
You do need a covid19 test (quick antigen test is OK) to fly from Canada to the US.
You do need a PCR covid19 test taken within the past 72 hours to re-enter canada by land or air, per CBSA requirements.
This isn't (generally speaking) a thread about COVID restrictions, but if you want to sound off about that more, feel free, but it shouldn't be a shock that in a) a global pandemic, and b) a series of natural disasters, that no one really gives a fuck about how inconvenient travel has become for non-essential activities.
> that no one really gives a fuck about how inconvenient travel has become for non-essential activities
Plenty of people do. Hence why so many countries (literally the whole EU) are trying to facilitate travel.
Like I said, this isn't a discussion or debate about COVID restrictions, and while it sucks that you might be temporarily inconvenienced in relation to your travel plans, as a person who lives and works in the lower mainland and has several friends and family members who are either homeless or temporarily stranded, temporary travel inconveniences rank somewhere between "oh well", and "could you please not, while we clean up?".
If an unvaccinated person catches COVID from you, it doesn't matter whether or not you (the carrier) were vaccinated... The virus that ravages and possibly kills your subsequent victim is just as dangerous to the unvaccinated.
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...
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.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/service-outa...
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?
Doesn't a large fraction of trans-Canada road traffic transit through the US anyway, because it's faster that way?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV_qemO0oath2Wpt7-8jQ...
Although as my cousin put it, all he saw was "A tree, a rock, a mountain, a river, and a bear."
There were so many people who could not show up.
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
Or just fly. Airports are fine.
Seattle already hit the third-rainiest November in history and we're two weeks in. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/11/15/atmospheri...
So even the ferry ride out would take very long time to get to the next major city.
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.
This, of course, means that supplies of bread, milk and cat litter have vanished amongst rioting.