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Sunday, October 12, 2008
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Cda Day closure of major Vcr bridges raises questions about disaster planning |
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Written by James Keller, THE CANADIAN PRESS
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Saturday, 05 July 2008 |
Vancouver's Iron Workers Memorial Crossing .THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chuck Stoody
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VANCOUVER - A suicide scare shut down traffic on one of Vancouver's busiest bridges for six hours and traffic accidents played havoc on another, stranding people on either side of Burrard Inlet that winds underneath.
The unfortunate coincidence brought Canada Day traffic to a standstill last week, and raised questions about the flow of people and supplies in the event of a major disaster.
"There are a handful of bridges that are really critical to the infrastructure, and the event that just occurred really highlights that," says Prof. John Clague, an expert in natural hazards at the University of British Columbia.
"In the case of the two north shore bridges (between Vancouver and North Vancouver), if it's a problem on two, you're isolated."
Clague, whose work focuses primarily on earthquakes, says any number of events could shut down a bridge, from a major quake to a shipping accident or deliberate attack.
And the B.C. Lower Mainland's dozens of bridges are essential to the provincial transportation system.
The Canada Day mess prompted outrage from residents and local politicians, some demanding to know why police shut down all six lanes of the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge to deal with the suicidal woman.
The province's transportation minister was among the critics.
The Vancouver Police Department has apologized for the traffic headaches, but insisted they needed to stop traffic to successfully talk the woman to safety.
Normally, traffic would be rerouted to the three-lane Lions Gate Bridge a few kilometres away, but at least two accidents on that span last Tuesday made a bad situation even worse.
The holiday commuter chaos demonstrates how much cities such as Vancouver depend on their infrastructure - and what can happen when they fail, says Elaine Enarson, who teaches disaster and emergency studies at Manitoba's Brandon University.
"If you're overly dependent on one system, you expose yourself in ways that are very predictable," says Enarson.
"We have infrastructure that is not necessarily redundant in the best of times. And when something goes wrong, this is obviously a good wake-up call."
British Columbia is seen as a leader in North America when it comes to disaster planning.
Jim Whyte, director of operations for the Provincial Emergency Program, says his department has a budget of more than $7 million a year and other government departments have their own money to spend.
He said there are options to get people back and forth across the water, such as ferries and ships.
"It's only isolated in the perspective of bridges, but there's still water traffic and there's a lot of planning going on in and around the greater Vancouver area," says Whyte.
John Lindsay, director of the disaster and emergency studies program at Brandon University, said disaster planning is generally underfunded by government.
"Nationally, the money we spend on emergency management is a fraction of what we spend on a lot of other issues," says Lindsay.
"Sometimes getting politicians or civil servants to invest in a bad thing that might not happen isn't as appealing as investing in a good thing that will happen. We undervalue and underfunded emergency management until something happens, and we ask, 'Why weren't we more involved?"'
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 September 2008 )
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