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Deadly floods sever rail links to Vancouver's port

China Daily | Updated: 2021-11-18 00:00
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MERRITT, Canada-Floods and landslides that have killed at least one person have cut all rail access to Canada's largest port in the city of Vancouver, said a spokesman for the port on Tuesday.

Two days of torrential rain across the Pacific province of British Columbia touched off major flooding and shut rail routes operated by Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway, Canada's two biggest rail companies. "All rail service coming to and from the Port of Vancouver is halted because of flooding in the British Columbia interior," port spokesman Matti Polychronis said.

At least one person was killed when a mudslide swept cars off Highway 99 near Pemberton, some 160 kilometers to the northeast of Vancouver.

Two people are missing and officials said search and rescue crews are combing through the rubble.

Vancouver's port moves C$550 million ($440 million) worth of cargo a day, ranging from automobiles to essential commodities.

The floods temporarily shut down much of the movement for wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world's biggest grain exporters, during a busy time for trains to haul grain to the port following the harvest.

Drought has sharply reduced the size of Canada's crops this year, meaning a rail disruption of a few days may not create significant backlog, said a grain industry source to Reuters.

Pipelines hampered

The floods have also hampered pipelines. Enbridge, Canada's largest natural gas pipeline company, shut a segment of a British Columbia natural gas pipeline as a precaution.

Storms also forced the closure of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which carries up to 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta province to the Pacific coast.

Directly to the south of British Columbia, heavy rain forced evacuations and cut off electricity for more than 150,000 households in the US state of Washington on Monday.

The United States' National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning on Tuesday for Mount Vernon in Washington, "due to the potential for a levee failure".

Officials in the small city of Sumas in Washington near the Canada border called the flood damage there devastating. Officials said on Facebook on Tuesday that hundreds of people had been evacuated and estimated that 75 percent of homes had water damage.

The soaking reminded people of western Washington's record-severe flooding in November 1990 when two people died and there were more than 2,000 evacuations, officials said.

"These families and businesses need our prayers and support as we start the process of cleanup and rebuilding over the next few days," stated the Facebook post.

Agencies Via Xinhua

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