It must be human nature to continually underestimate and deny the potential and power of water to change things - I know I do it and I've seen quite a bit of flood damage in my years on the coast. At the beginning of this flood event I made a post about this flood creating new features and people looking back in time wondering when and how that happened. I'd like to show you one of those - it's a debris torrent that came out of a small rather unremarkable gulley that runs from valley bottom to 5-6000 feet up the mountain side on the west side of the Talchako River just north of the Gyllenspetz Creek. All this material was deposited in a 24-36 hour period in what appears to be rather orderly and symmetrical pattern. The forestry road underneath it is now under 15-20 metres of new rock and gravel over a 150 metre stretch.
Thank you to all the bellacoolablog.com readers who post comments, it's nice to know people are reading the posts and finding something of interest. And thanks to the poster who alerted me to the website who used my banner photo of Mt Nusatsum without crediting my website - I contacted the gentlemen and he apologized and put a nice "Image Courtesy of www.bellacoolablog.com" underneath it. On a side note you might be interested in the article he wrote and the links he provides - it's about the ground breaking energy project BC Hydro has installed in Bella Coola to produce hydrogen from surplus hydro electricity to reduce the dependency on diesel fuel for power generation in peak demands - essentially a way of storing excess energy for future use.
Some answers/responses to recent comments:
The Bella Coola town site - received almost no direct flood damage. Some homes very close to the river on the west side of town were flooded because of the high tide/flood combination unfortunately and the east of the Nuxalk reserve was hit and will require protective structures to stop further encroachment which they already had a plan in the works for. High water surrounded the Song House on the north side of the Nuxalk reserve near the river as well.
Highway 20 - The Hill. I haven't been up there to see it first hand, I've seen a few photos, talked to the road people and some pilots and the hill per se fared surprisingly well. A couple little of debris flow/rock slides landed on the road, a small washout near Heckman pass and then the rest was intact - a big relief.
Documentation of the Flood - I'm working on putting a chronology of the actual event together for my records, I've done that for floods since the early 90's. The publication, Rainstorm and Flood Damage: Northwest British Columbia 1891-1991 is an excellent book that chronologies 100 years of floods in the area from Bella Coola to Prince Rupert and should be a must read if you are thinking of relocating here or you are a resident and need some information on floods. Since the book was published in the 1991 I figured I would keep some notes from then on so eventually someone could update it. I'll capture whatever stories I hear around town as well. I did a post last November on some recent flood history as well.
And finally - where ever you are - a Happy Thanksgiving! While we couldn't travel anywhere by road this year we enjoyed a nice turkey dinner and my hunting partners (nephew and son) phoned to tell me about the happy moose hunting experience they had and the nice moose they got without me - I hope they invite me next year now that they know how to do it without me....Grizzly
Caterpillar wearing plaid
16 hours ago
Everyday we look forward to reading the weather news from Bella Coola, and all the other events that occur. Thanks for being there and letting us know what is going on. keep it up
ReplyDeletegrizz, im glad they gave you credit for the picture! i happened to be reading about the interesting alt energy projects when i saw the familiar picture.
ReplyDeletehope everyone makes out well with the latest rains. let me know how i can give you my email privately for future contact.
You can leave your email address in a comment. I won't publish it. Grizzly
ReplyDelete