Burnaby Now September 2 2015

Page 1

NEWS 3

NEWS 5

Refinery loses power

SALUTING LABOUR UNIONS 21

Firefighters do double duty A message from labour prez FOR THE BEST LOCAL

COVERAGE WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 2 2015

LOCAL NEWS – LOCAL MATTERS

There’s more at Burnabynow.com

GO TO PAGE 30

ROOTS UP

Neighbours stop to snap a pic of a large tree that fell down on Cascade Street, between Erin and 16th avenues. For more photos of the damage and debris left behind from the weekend’s storm, visit www. burnabynow.com. PHOTO JENNIFER GAUTHIER

City crews tackle storm aftermath Storm caused more damage than one in 2006, and it took city three months to clean up from that one Janaya Fuller-Evans

jfuller-evans@burnabynow.com

City Hall went dark during this weekend’s storm, along with much of Burnaby, according to the city’s director of engineering, Leon Gous. City staff had to contend with the power outage, with backup generators providing power for high priority areas such as police dispatch and phone lines, while city crews were clearing up the mess left behind by high winds and drought-damaged trees.

“Any of the important public-facing services were up and running really quickly,” Gous told the NOW, adding administrative services were back on Sunday night. However, power went down again on Monday, he said, adding, “So there are some areas where people are in the dark this morning (Monday).” Meanwhile, city crews were out dealing with fallen trees and storm debris full-time from Saturday at noon until 11 p.m., and again on Sunday, he said. There were 25 roads blocked by fallen

trees over the weekend, he added, and all of those have been cleared. “They’re now dealing with curb-to-curb cleanup,” Gous said, adding Monday’s heavy rains also affected the work. “We’re obviously trying to make sure as well, that we’re managing the rain storm on top of what came down,” he said. City crews are checking catch basins to make sure leaves and branches aren’t blocking them, as well as making sure filter bags are removed at construction sites. Over the weekend, three water pump stations were also affected by the power outage, with two up and running on backup power pretty quickly, according to Gous. “There was, I think, one small area that

golfburnaby.ca

had about 75 homes that had no water for a very short period, but we then got a backup system up and running, retesting the water and re-chlorinated it,” he said. “So we did that, cleaned out the water and got those up and running.” That was in the Capitol Hill area, he added. As crews are clearing city streets, Gous had suggestions for residents regarding clearing their properties. Large branches should be piled on the curb, for road crews to pick up, he said. “Anything that does fit in the green bins, we obviously recommend people do that, but we suspect there’ll be far more than the Continued on page 8

Just Play!


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.