The District of 樱桃视频has a message for residents hoping to avoid flooded basement: Check your ditches.
A district staff member discovered a large piece of debris blocking a critical culvert on Fourth Ave. late Tuesday (Jan. 9) evening, leading district chief administrative officer Kim Anema to repeat the municipality's objections to certain flooded downtown residents' finger-pointing.
"We've made statements earlier that Skye Development was not responsible for the flooding, and this reinforces those statements," said Anema.
It took just one piece of debris to cause the havoc that last week led to high profile media coverage and angry accusations from Fourth and Fifth Avenue residents who blamed Skye Development's coverage of natural drainage lands for their flooded basements.
A number of downtown residents also applied for compensation from the Provincial Emergency Program to fix their damaged homes.
Manager of technical services Rick Boulier was still at work pumping water out of downtown ditches at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday when he noticed something at the bottom of a Fourth Ave. trench. He used a nearby two-by-four board to pry it out and discovered it to be a large wicker basket wrapped in a green garbage bag.
The debris blocked a critical culvert located off a Fourth Avenue laneway, causing water to rush toward downtown streets and the adjacent Skye development site. The district contends that the blocked drainage along with torrential rains and high tides were to blame for the flooding.
"This changes the perspective completely and gives the community some better information in terms of what happened," said Anema.
Staff assumes the basket inadvertently became lodged into the culvert during high winds, leading Anema to suggest that residents themselves could avert problems on their streets by inspecting ditches that appear to be overflowing. "When we have storms, take the time to walk out to the front of your house and just have a look and see whether or not there are some blockages," said Anema.
The district clears all of the municipality's ditches twice a year, but doesn't have the staff to continuously inspect culverts, said Anema.
The same problem occurred in the Garibaldi Highlands in November when a blocked culvert created backed up pressure during heavy rains and flooded homes on Kintyre Drive that had never been flooded before.
