An evacuation order remains in effect for a half-dozen homes in Deep Cove near a retaining wall that was compromised during historic rainfall last weekend.
While the waterfront properties on the 2700 block of Panorama Avenue in North Vancouver are now in a state of relative calm compared to the torrent of water that pummelled the area on Saturday, extensive damage visible from the street echoes the intensity of Saturday’s storm.
A stream of water now trickles over huge chunks of upended asphalt on a steep driveway, with a sinkhole more than a metre wide near the bottom.
Next to the sunken earth is a retaining wall running parallel to the property line that was compromised during the rainstorm.
That piece of affected infrastructure was at the core of a decision to declare a local state of emergency Sunday evening and evacuate six homes on the block, said District of North Vancouver Mayor Mike Little.
As engineering crews assessed pieces of overwhelmed civil infrastructure on Saturday, they came across the retaining wall, which had a torrent of water spilling over and through it.
“What was happening was basically a lot of material in and around and at the base of the retaining wall was being removed by the river,” Little said. “We recommended that people vacate the property on Saturday night, and most did.”
But as the district looked at the situation more closely, and felt the compromised wall could be a threat to the group of homes, the evacuation order was issued around 7 p.m. Sunday.
A challenging time for some evacuated from Deep Cove homes
Of the 18 people evacuated, all of them are uninjured, but it’s been a confusing time for Marjorie Goodman, who has lived at 2780 Panorama Dr. for 50 years.
Her son David Goodman, who lives with her, said he thought they were in the clear after battling to get water out of the house late Saturday evening. That changed when district staff and the mayor knocked on their door on Sunday.
“It was understandable,” he said. “My mom did not want to go.… She’s in her 80s. She doesn’t really know too much about what’s going on.”
Marjorie has dementia and has been staying with her daughter for the time being.
“This is horrible, what she’s going through, and I just have the feeling that it’s going to cause more damage,” David said. “We’re trying to get her home as soon as we can.… I’m just sort of surfing couches right now, figuring out what’s going on.”
Little said there’s no exact timeline yet to lift the evacuation order, but work to secure the retaining wall would likely start Tuesday and Wednesday.
While this group of residences was the hardest hit, Little said hundreds of homes across the district experienced flooding to some degree during rainfall that brought more than 200 millimetres of rainfall in a day and a half.
Little lives near Fire Hall No. 4 on Mt. Seymour Parkway.
“My own basement flooded about a half inch, with water coming back up through the drain under my hot water heater,” he said. “The amount of rain coming down in such a short period of time was so intense that it was coming back up some of the pipes.”
Facing more extreme weather, District of North Van to take another look at infrastructure
Akin to residences in the district, businesses were also affected by the flooding, the worst hit also in Deep Cove.
At the top of Gallant Avenue, a large catch basin for Gallant Creek was clogged with big chunks of woody debris, causing water to gush out onto the street on Saturday. Most of it flowed down the north side of the road, which is lined with a row of businesses.
Some of the shops, like caf/EH and The Seymour Art Gallery, remain closed due to flood damage. Others, including Deep Cove Stage Society and Arms Reach Bistro, have been able to reopen.
With the atmospheric river event featured heavily in weather forecasts leading up to the weekend, Little said the district did work to clear out catch basins and sweep streets clean of smaller debris.
“There was just so much material coming off of the trees and entering into the system as soon as the storm hit, a lot of those spots flooded, failed simply because the amount of debris that was newly coming down,” he said.
But the increased likelihood of extreme weather events like this means the municipality needs to take another look at the infrastructure currently in place, Little said.
“We have just done tens of millions of dollars of work in and around the Gallant Creek storm drain space, and it still failed,” he said. “As we have increasing intensity of weather systems and events like this, it’s really going to challenge our ability to manage it with the infrastructure we have.”
Little expressed his appreciation for all the crews that came out stave off the worst impacts the storm could have had.
“I was also was very impressed with the number of people in our community who volunteered to help out,” he said. “I think this will be a very well-prepared community for future emergencies.”
