Heavy downpour in Vancouver leaves behind flooding, stranded drivers

Vancouver is drying out after heavy rain turned some city streets into ponds on Sunday night as the downpour overwhelmed leaf-clogged drains and catch basins.

Deep puddles rose above the curb, flowed across sidewalks and splashed up against street-level businesses in some areas, including the False Creek, Yaletown, Kitsilano and south Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Meteorologist Russ Lacate said about 25 millimetres of rain swamped the city in less than two hours.

Vancouver’s manager of engineering services, Jerry Dobrovolny confirmed basements were flooded and some cars were damaged when water rose above the floor boards of parked vehicles.

Flooding also affected the lower levels of the Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility, which uses waste thermal energy from sewage to provide space heating and hot water to Southeast False Creek buildings, he said. The facility was still able to provide heat to the neighbourhood.

Dobrovolny said extreme weather events are hitting Vancouver more frequently and the city is responding.

“We are also broadening some of the way we design our systems,” he said he said at a news conference at City Hall.

“It looks like green infrastructure, which is different techniques to allow the ground to absorb more of the water so that we are not taking all of the rain water and just putting it into pipes,” he said.

Rain was not the only problem to beset B.C. drivers Sunday as traffic was snarled for several hours on the Coquihalla Highway between Hope and Merritt after a crash during an unexpectedly heavy snowfall.

As much as 20 centimetres blanketed the route and difficulties were compounded because lights advising truckers to use chains were not activated at the start of the mountainous highway, meaning the rigs had to chain-up along much steeper sections.