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,” he told the NOW, adding administrative services were back on Sunday night.
However, power went down again on Monday, he said, adding, "there are some areas where people are in the dark this morning.”
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 the heavy rains Monday are also affecting 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, he said.
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 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 pipes 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 green bins can handle,” he added.
The city is offering free green waste drop off for Burnaby residents at the Eco Centre on Still Creek Avenue until Sept. 13, according to Gous.
“So they have two weekends to clear out the properties,” he said.
The city parks department was equally busy and will continue to be so for some time, according to Don Hunter, assistant director of parks, recreation and cultural services.
“The storm caused more damage than 2006, and 2006 took us right around three months to clean up,” he said. “This is going to take longer.”
All available city forestry staff were out on Saturday by 1 p.m., and all day on Sunday, according to Hunter, as well as four contract forestry crews on both days – two for the south side of the city and two for the north.
“We’re looking at property damage to houses, vehicles, fences, sheds, everything,” he said, adding inspectors were looking at damage from fallen park and boulevard trees.
Parks department staff confirmed there were 150 fallen trees by Sunday, he said.
The department received 180 calls through the main dispatch line over the weekend, as well as 86 calls and 50 emails on Monday morning, Hunter added.
On Monday, the city had six forestry crews out, assessing tree damage, inspecting trails, and flagging off potential dangerous areas, he said.
A couple of city parks were badly affected by the storm, Hunter added.
“Robert Burnaby Park was hit fairly hard, Fraser Foreshore Park as well,” he said. “Central Park fared fairly well.”
