Thousands of airline passengers stranded. Roads impassable because of snow. Power failures by the dozen.
The last two weeks have been a winter nightmare for Vancouver — huge dumps of snow followed by rain, heavy slush and flooding. All over the city, people are griping about the toll storm after storm has taken on their holiday season.
They’re also asking another question: What if this happens during the 2010 Winter Olympics?
PHOTO: AP
Vancouver airport, transit and city officials say they’re using the storms as a learning opportunity.
With 400,000 passengers passing through Vancouver in the last week on 5,000 flights, the volume of traffic is near what it will be during the games, said Don Ehrenholz, vice president of operations for Vancouver International Airport.
He promises improvement by the time the Games start.
“In our planning for 2010, we are planning that there will be a snowstorm of a fairly large magnitude at the worst possible time — either at the very first couple of days or the very last day or two, which is one of the more difficult times for getting people out on time,” Ehrenholz said.
The city’s transit system will be different in 2010, with more buses and a new subway line that won’t be affected by weather because most of it runs underground, said Ken Hardie, a spokesman for TransLink, which handles public transit in British Colombia’s Lower Mainland.
The SkyTrain elevated rail system has been shut down in conditions far less severe than those in Vancouver over the past week.
“I understand that the type of weather that we’ve had over the past week or so is a one-in-10-year event,” he said. “Let’s hope we’ve gotten it out of our system for another 10 years.”
Events will be divided between the area in and around Vancouver.
The communities are connected by Highway 99, also known as the Sea-to-Sky highway — a winding route with plenty of steep hills.
Before the Beijing Olympics last summer, Chinese authorities were so afraid of rain disrupting the opening ceremony they experimented with cloud seeding.
Al Wallace is regional director of Meteorological Services Canada, which is providing weather services for the 2010 Olympics.
He said a weather-control project is not in the works for 2010, mostly because it hasn’t been proved to actually work.
Vancouver’s Olympic organizing committee acknowledges that while it has command over virtually every aspect of the Games, the weather is one thing it simply can’t control — even if it is one of the most critical elements of staging a successful Winter Olympics.
“It could either work with you or really work against you,” said Tim Gayda, vice president of sport for the organizing committee. “Right from the get-go, we’ve always planned to deal with the worst.”
But planning can go only so far. Gayda said his team has its own approach, on top of meticulous planning.
“We just pray,” he said.
Four-time NBA all-star DeMarcus Cousins arrived in Taiwan with his family early yesterday to finish his renewed contract with the Taiwan Beer Leopards in the T1 League. Cousins initially played a four-game contract with the Leopards in January. On March 18, the Taoyuan-based team announced that Cousins had renewed his contract. “Hi what’s up Leopard fans, I’m back. I’m excited to be back and can’t wait to join the team,” Cousins said in a video posted on the Leopard’s Facebook page. “Most of all, can’t wait to see you guys, the fans, next weekend. So make sure you come out and support the Beer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was