British Columbia is rolling out the big guns — literally — to control avalanches that are forcing closures on some major roads for the first time in decades as the western Canadian province grapples with a snowier winter than usual.
Last year, the province was rocked by extreme weather events, including a record-breaking heat wave, wildfires and unprecedented rains that washed out highways and cut off Vancouver, its main city and home to Canada’s busiest port, from the rest of the country.
The province, Canada’s third-largest by population, uses bombs thrown from helicopters, remote-triggered explosives and a Howitzer operated by the Canadian military to keep roads safe, but frequent closures for avalanche control are disrupting critical routes to Vancouver.
Photo: Reuters
At the start of this month, the province’s alpine snowpack was 15 percent higher than average, the Weather Network channel said.
Avalanche control missions involve closing sections of highways, while teams use explosives to pre-emptively trigger smaller slides, preventing the snowpack from becoming too deep and unstable.
This winter a section of Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon, 150km northeast of Vancouver, needed avalanche control for the first time in 25 years, the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure said.
Along Highway 99, north of Vancouver, avalanche control and risk-reduction activities are three times the seasonal average, with some slide paths producing avalanches big enough to hit the highway for the first time in more than a decade.
Avalanche control in Allison Pass, further south on Highway 3 and another key route connecting Vancouver to the rest of Canada, has also been above average, the ministry said.
Avalanche control missions involve soldiers from the 1st Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery, which is stationed in Rogers Pass in winter. They use a Howitzer to fire shells packed with 4kg of explosives in the direction of loaded avalanche paths at 17 locations along the highway.
“Our goal is to bring down as much snow as we can and bring the hazard down to a point where it’s safe to open the highway,” said Jim Phillips, acting avalanche operations coordinator for Parks Canada, which runs avalanche control in the national parks.
Phillips said his team also uses heli-bombing and remote-trigger systems to set off detonations, and spends C$600,000 (US$480,400) a year on explosives alone.
“It’s a balancing act. You want to keep traffic moving and minimize closures, but also minimize risk to people using the transportation corridor,” he added.
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