B.C. government under fire over lack of storm danger messaging

Vancouver -

The leader of the B.C. Green Party has called out the provincial government, saying more should have been done to sound the alarm and alert British Columbians to the serious danger posed by the weekend storm.

In question period Tuesday, Sonia Furstenau pointed out that communities just south of the border in Washington State arranged for sandbags for areas expected to be hit hard by the storm, but the approach in B.C. seemed less proactive and more reactionary.

“These weather events are more extreme, they’re more serious, and they have the capacity to create more harm and damage than weather events in the past,” Furstenau said in an interview with CTV News.

One person has died after being trapped in a mudslide, at least two others are missing, and hundreds spent the night stranded in their vehicles on impassable highways.

On Tuesday, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth advised against non-essential travel to affected areas of the province, but Furstenau wants to know why that message wasn’t pushed heading into the weekend when forecasters predicted southern B.C. would take a direct hit from an atmospheric river delivering a month’s worth of rain in a period of hours.

“I think it would have been really good to tell people on Saturday: Don’t travel unless you absolutely need to,” she said. “This is a rainstorm unlike anything we’ve see in a long, long time, and we should all focus on staying safe and staying off the roads.”

Farnworth said he plans to brief cabinet on the situation Wednesday, and an overhaul of the Emergency Protection Act is underway, but he denied the province came up short when it came to warning people about the potential impacts of the storm.

“DriveBC was outlining weather conditions on a regular basis in terms of the state of condition on our highways and closures,” he said. “There was significant warning in terms of weather and the rain that was coming that was out on the media and on the weather networks. All of that was taking place."

Crews continue to search for vehicles and people possibly missing and still trapped in areas washed out by slides.

In the meantime, all routes out of the lower mainland and into the interior of the province remain closed because of impassable debris, or significant damage to highways.