Unprecedented repairs are needed on British Columbia roads as winter approaches

Repairing British Columbia roads ravaged by heavy rain and flooding will be complicated by the scale of the damage, terrain and the upcoming winter, construction experts say.

“The size, scope and number of sites is unprecedented,” said Joe Wrobel, president of JPW Road and Bridge, a highway construction company based in the northern Okanagan area of ​​BC.

Despite the scale of the damage, Wrobel, whose company is not directly involved in flood-related repairs, said there are processes for emergency repairs, adding that the British Columbia government has already drawn up lists of available contractors and equipment. .

Before work can begin, geotechnical assessments will need to be conducted, Wrobel said in an interview Wednesday. Protecting lives will be the first priority, followed by protecting infrastructure and restoring safe travel, he added.

Brenda McCabe, president of the Canadian Civil Engineering Society and emeritus professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, said officials must first ensure that repairs can be made safely. “We have to make sure that the remaining slopes are stable, that crews can get in there safely,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

In areas where roads have been razed, engineers and officials will have to decide whether to rebuild damaged infrastructure or use new designs, decisions she says will likely be made on a case-by-case basis.

“Our design parameters are evolving with our better understanding of how the climate is changing and the impacts that will have on climate events,” he said.

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All major routes between the Lower Continent and the Interior have been cut off by landslides, floods or landslides following record rains in southern British Columbia between Saturday and Monday.

The length of the repairs will depend on the damage, said Ahmad Rteil, a professor of structural engineering at the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia.

In places where entire sections of the highway have been bulldozed, assessing the damage and soil stability could take more than two weeks, he said in an interview Wednesday.

“You have to re-evaluate the whole situation in terms of the soil, stabilize the soil, and then once you understand it, you start to build the new road, the new bridge,” Rteil said.

Winter, and freezing weather, will make repairs difficult, he added.

“As the temperature now starts to drop below zero and it starts to freeze, then it becomes very difficult to work with that top layer of soil,” he said, adding that it will also make it difficult to transport heavy equipment up the mountain passes.

Rteil said he is concerned that events like this will become more common in the future. He said wildfires and high temperatures in British Columbia earlier this summer killed trees and increased the risk of landslides. “When the vegetation on that slope disappears, the slope becomes unstable,” he said.

Repairing roads where debris has fallen from above will likely be relatively straightforward, while elsewhere, temporary bridges and detours may be necessary while major work is being done, Wrobel said. Areas where roads have been flooded and the water table has risen will likely be the most difficult, he added.

Wrobel, a former president of the Canadian Building Association, said the number of repairs required will add to the complexity, and said provincial officials will have to decide which projects have the highest priority. He said highway builders across the country are ready to get the job done.

Throughout his career of more than 40 years, he has seen projects where the damage was as severe as the individual sites in British Columbia are experiencing this week. “But I’ve never seen them all at the same time,” he said.

This Canadian Press report was first published on November 18, 2021.

This story was produced with financial assistance from Facebook and the Canadian Press News Fellowship.