Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) plans to have its rainstorm-battered mainline between Kamloops and Vancouver reopened to grain and other traffic around midday Tuesday.
The company said Monday that out of 30 storm-damaged spots across its Thompson and Cascade subdivisions in southern British Columbia, 20 had seen “significant loss of infrastructure” in need of repair.
CP workers’ “dedication, grit and perseverance in the face of extremely challenging conditions are the reasons we are able to restore our vital rail network in only eight days,” CEO Keith Creel said in a release.
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CP said its repair crews have moved 150,000 cubic yards of earth and rock to rebuild damaged areas and that it deployed “hundreds” of CP employees and contractors to assist.
The next 10 days will be “critical,” Creel added. “As we move from response to recovery to full service resumption, our focus will be on working with customers to get the supply chain back in sync.”
Calgary-based CP said it would “closely co-ordinate with customers and terminals to clear (freight) backlogs as quickly and efficiently as possible,” and that would require “weekend work and flexible schedules” at customer and terminal locations.
The company also said it’s “closely” co-ordinated with the provincial transportation and infrastructure ministry on projects such as reconstruction of grades for railway infrastructure and the Trans Canada Highway at Tank Hill west of Spences Bridge.
“That partnership has fostered the ability to efficiently redirect ministry equipment to other recovery sites to support highway repairs,” CP said.
CP’s Montreal-based rival Canadian National Railway (CN) hasn’t yet offered up information on when its track can again be used to access the Port of Vancouver.
CN had said Friday it expected repair work to continue “at least into next week” and that in the meantime it would be looking at ways to divert export freight to Prince Rupert, another B.C. West Coast port it serves.
Forecasters also warn the “atmospheric river” storm that unloaded precipitation over the region Nov. 14-16, leading to flooding, washouts and landslides and cutting off railways and highways alike, won’t be the last such system in the region in the near future.
Warning preparedness meteorologist Armel Castellan of Environment and Climate Change Canada, speaking Monday on Facebook, said another atmospheric river system, “tapping into subtropical moisture and heat,” is expected to arrive in the region Thursday, followed by another active storm system through the weekend into the following week.
Thursday’s system, he said, is expected to produce “non-negligible” amounts of moisture — such as 40-70 mm of rain in the Fraser Valley and “potentially upwards of 100” mm in the North Shore mountains around Howe Sound — that are “likely to exacerbate the difficulties on the ground currently.”
U.S. forecaster AccuWeather concurred Monday, predicting “another train of storms” through already-hard-hit areas of B.C. and the U.S. Pacific Northwest this week, and that warmer temperatures could also bring mountain snowmelt to those regions. — Glacier FarmMedia Network
