The floodwaters are receding and roads and rail lines are being repaired, but it’s still likely to take weeks for the Port of Vancouver, Canada’s biggest port, to work through its backlog of cargo and vessels after historic rainfall left British Columbia soaked and isolated, according to Bloomberg reports.
Storms dropped enormous volumes of rain on the province in November, forcing evacuations, drowning hundreds of thousands of livestock, and temporarily cutting off Vancouver from the rest of the country by road and rail.
Ever since, the two major freight railways – Canadian National and Canadian Pacific – that carry about two-thirds of the cargo that is transported by land to the Port of Vancouver, have fixed the lines and are working to keep them open. On Dec. 6, CN reported that its train movement had resumed on its Kamloops-to-Vancouver corridor in Western Canada, after another round of heavy rain had caused more delays (GM Dec. 3, p. 1).
They are running again, albeit slowly. The deluge also caused the Trans Mountain Pipeline, the sole oil conduit running from Alberta to the B.C. Coast, to shut down for three weeks. The government imposed emergency fuel rationing on Nov. 19, though that should be lifted soon. A state of emergency remains in the province at least through mid-month.
Data from the Vancouver port’s mobile app show that half of the 88 vessels at port were awaiting berths on Dec. 6, with many anchored on the other side of the Strait of Georgia, along the Vancouver Island Coast.