B.C. deluge shows why cities struggle to keep up with extreme rain

Heavy rain isn't unusual for the community of Deep Cove in North Vancouver, but when Ashifa Saferali saw an e-bike floating down the middle of the street she knew this storm was something different.

Heavy rain isn't unusual for the community of Deep Cove in North Vancouver, but when Ashifa Saferali saw an e-bike floating down the middle of the street she knew this storm was something different.

Saferali is the owner of Honey Doughnuts and Goodies, a fixture in the community where she has lived and worked for almost three decades.

She's been through flash floods in the area before, but nothing like the torrent on Oct. 19, the day of B.C.'s provincial election.

“There is a creek up the road from us and I don’t know if that creek was backed up with leaves or debris, but it was coming down really fast, and within an hour, the flow of the water was just gushing down the hill and going straight down,” said Saferali, “It was pretty crazy.”

By the time it was over, 350 millimetres of rain had fallen in North Vancouver, turning streets into rivers that plowed through waterfront homes, piling up boulders and gravel, and triggering a local state of emergency. The district told residents in six homes along the waterfront that they needed to evacuate.

The deluge is an example of how municipal infrastructure is struggling to keep up with demands of a fast-changing climate, as the frequency of extreme events escalates, and their severity worsens.

Engineers who once looked back at history to plan safeguards instead must look into the future, said Shahria Alam, a professor of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus.