We’ve been busy with getting everything set for the holidays. That pretty much means shopping. I’ve been taking care of a few various projects in between, but we ventured out to Stanley Park today with Rebecca’s dad. I went running yesterday, and the park was in pretty bad shape.
Last Thursday night, I woke up around 3AM to the sounds of wind. Massive amounts of wind. You could hear various pieces of debris rolling around outside, so I got up to peak out the windows. They are saying that we experienced hurricane force winds in the category two range, but it didn’t take me very long to make sure that everything was okay in the apartment and gather flashlights in the event that we lost power. Rebecca, on the other hand, slept all the way through it.
Luckily, we didn’t lose power in our end of the city. Other folks were not so fortunate, and I got a message from DaveO that tells me that North Vancouver experienced some outages. Word from Surrey said that some folks took a hit as well. Trees are damaged all over downtown through.
About running the park yesterday, it was a mess. I had to tiptoe around a lot of fallen foliage, some much larger in various spots. Heading back in today, I was sure to bring the camera along(see them on Flickr here). It looked like a war zone in some spots.
VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980) – It looks like a crime scene.
And the trees are the victims.
Crews are asking the public to stay out of a battered Stanley Park.
Yellow caution ribbon is strung across pathways littered with branches and tree-trunks.
A trades foreman with the park board, Gary Gilder, says the wind damaged trees are a real danger.“……and a lot of trees in the bus hung up…..against other trees….that have not quite fallen over so it’s…I would say stay out of the park until the end of the weekend”
The park itself will be closed for the weekend. That includes the seawall, the Vancouver Aquarium and bright nights Christmas attraction.[cknw]
Yeah, I guess you could say that the park was closed, but we got ourselves inside and checked out the damage. However, I wouldn’t recommend it at all. Trails are cut off all over the place, not to mention that the seawall was blocked off at the point where you can take Beaver Creek trail up to Beaver Lake. And what trails you can find access to are bound to be blocked off at some point. You get past one tree to only find another.
When I went running through yesterday, there was no automobile traffic whatsoever. Getting around Brockton Point, I couldn’t even run on the bike path. They’re doing some reno to the lighthouse area, so all Seawall traffic is forced onto the upper route around the backside. Just beyond that, you could see that they worked a path through the fallen trees and branches for authorized vehicles to get into the area, but it was a tight squeeze. I actually passed a variety of people walking on the road in the opposite direction who, like me, didn’t know that the park was officially closed.
It’s really sad to see. I fear that it’s going to be a long time before anyone can safely or completely venture through the entire park. It’s a great place to go running or wandering through. I hope to see things restored as soon as possible. For only living here as short as I have, I’ve really come to love that park. It won’t be the same, but I’ll be anxious to see it back again.
Ahhh…I see you got some pictures of the eternal flame that was a part of your trivia quiz!
You’ll be surprised how quickly they can harvest all the fallen timber…Portland has had the same issues with windstorms in the past and they clean things up pretty quickly.
The clean up is really going to take a while here. It’s a mess, not to mention the amount of trees lost and how long it will take to get them all back. It’s really sad to see all the damage.
everyone is getting so upset about stanley park, when in reality this is a good thing to happen to a second growth forest, every 100 years or so a forest needs to suffer a substantial loss so it can benifit from the fallen trees. even though its no longer alive, the fallen trees become nurse logs for flourishing species of new folliage. so while it looks devestating to us from the outside, the forest is actually still quite healthy and reparing itself on its own.
lindsay