Flood damage cuts off all rail access to Canada’s largest port, Vancouver

Two days of torrential rains in British Columbia caused major flooding and closed rail routes operated by Canadian Pacific Rail and Canadian National Railway, by far the two largest rail companies in the country.

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MERRITT – The port of Vancouver, Canada’s largest, said Tuesday that all rail access had been cut off by floods and landslides further east, a development that could affect shipments of grain, coal and potash.

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Two days of torrential rains in British Columbia caused major flooding and closed rail routes operated by Canadian Pacific Rail and Canadian National Railway, by far the two largest rail companies in the country.

“All rail service to and from the Port of Vancouver is stopped due to flooding in the interior of British Columbia,” said port spokesman Matti Polychronis.

The floods have also closed numerous highways, including all major routes to Vancouver, he said.

The Port of Vancouver moves $ 550 million worth of goods each day, ranging from automobiles and finished containerized goods to basic goods.

The floods temporarily disrupted much of the movement of wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world’s largest grain exporters.

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Del Dosdall, senior export manager at grain handler Parrish & Heimbecker, said he expected some rail service could be up and running by the weekend, though another industry source said he expected the shutdown to last for the past few weeks.

Some areas of British Columbia received 200mm of rain on Sunday, the amount that typically falls in a month.

The storms also forced the closure of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which carries crude from Alberta to the Pacific coast. The line has a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day.

(Written by David Ljunggren; additional reporting by Nia Williams in Calgary, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; edited by Ed Osmond, Jonathan Oatis, and Aurora Ellis)