BURST
The province spent $2.25 million in 2009 and 2011 to buy two properties because they posed a landslide risk to Chilliwack Lake Road, Postmedia has learned.
The revelation does not sit well with current residents on the same road whose homes have been valued at $2 and classified as unsafe to live in because of extreme landslide risk.
Just two months after record-breaking rains pummelled Chilliwack and the Chilliwack River Valley in the second week of January 2009, the B.C. Transportation Finance Authority purchased a six-hectare property at 46931 Chilliwack Lake Road for $1.252 million, according to B.C. Land Title records.
The second purchase for a portion of the adjacent property was made on July 5, 2011 for $1 million.
Both properties, which had been hit by slides of mud and woody debris, are now empty and overgrown with vegetation.
In 2021, two properties five kilometres to the east on Chilliwack Lake Road were also hammered by record-breaking rains, causing a major increase in landslide risk and a significant, near-term likelihood of a slide burying the road under several metres of debris, according to a geo-hazard report produced for the Fraser Valley Regional District.
In a written statement, the B.C. Ministry of Transportation said those two properties were not considered for a buyout “because there was no immediate threat to the roadway which would necessitate this purchase.”
“(That’s) baffling to me,” said Chris Rampersad, one of the owners of the two properties, who was ordered to evacuate in 2021.
The ministry said the two properties purchased in 2009 and 2011 had a berm built on them to “provide sufficient protection to Chilliwack Lake Road if a future event occurred.”
“Both properties were deemed necessary to contain the new berm and to maintain control over the slide area,” the ministry said in an email sent by public affairs officer Murray Sinclair.
Rampersad said the government’s logic is confusing, noting the landslide risk to his property and his neighbour’s also poses a risk to Chilliwack Lake Road.
Rampersad and five other Chilliwack River Valley homeowners have been refused financial help from the province after their homes were classified as unsafe to live in following the heavy rains from an atmospheric river in November 2021 that caused billions in damage in B.C. and killed five people. Atmospheric rivers are long plumes of air dense with water carried across the Pacific Ocean from tropical storms, which are expected to increase in frequency and severity because of climate change, according to scientists.
The province has said no financial assistance was available to the six property owners because their homes were not actually damaged.
Rampersad no longer lives in the home, where a small landslide stopped five metres from the back of his house in 2021, but is still paying a mortgage.
He said there has recently been more movement on the hillside behind his property. Every time there is rain, he wonders if it will trigger a large slide.
“No one will tell me how I am supposed to protect the public from disaster when I have been explicitly told not to attempt any mitigative measures on my own,” he said.
A report prepared by Statlu Environmental Consulting in December 2021 for the Fraser Valley Regional District noted heavy rains had increased the likelihood of a major slide by 20 times for Rampersad and his neighbour’s properties. The report said it was not a matter of if but when a major slide would take place, pegging the probability at 65 to 89 per cent in the next 10 years.
The report estimated the slide would be about 100 metres wide and would destroy all structures at the properties, killing anyone inside before running across Chilliwack Lake Road, completely blocking it under several metres of debris. The road provides access to homes to the east, the Ford Mountain jail, Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park and a number of other recreation sites. It is also a school bus route.
A 2022 regional district report from Cordilleran Geoscience also found an unacceptable risk for debris flow and catastrophic slides on the two properties and several others.
In 2023, a report from Thurber Engineering prepared for the province said there was nothing observed that would suggest the risk to Rampersad’s property could be less than outlined in the two regional district reports.
The record-breaking rains that hammered the Chilliwack area in January 2009 — also from an atmospheric river — caused slides and debris flows along two streams in the steep slopes behind the 46931 Chilliwack River Rd. home. Mud and woody debris spewed from the slopes for several days and eventually swamped the house, reaching two to three metres high at the house, according to a Golder Associates report commissioned by the regional district.
A district emergency official told The Chilliwack Times when a surge of mud came spilling out of the hills toward the home: “Our people literally ran for their lives.”
The Golder “emergency” geotechnical hazard assessment produced at the end of January 2009 concluded the home remained at high risk from future debris flows and an evacuation order should remain in place.
The report said that it was “likely” that some form of mitigation will be required to protect Chilliwack Lake Road from future debris flow.
The B.C. Ministry of Transportation said its decision to purchase the properties after the 2009 mudslides relied on the “technical advice” in the regional district’s Golder report and field observations from local ministry and road maintenance staff.
Golder Associates noted the report had limitations, was preliminary in nature, intended for the sole purpose of providing geo-technical advice to the regional district, and was not intended to satisfy the requirements from the 2006 Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. guidelines for landslide assessments.
Patti MacAhonic, an elected director for the regional district that represents the Chilliwack River Valley, who has been trying to assist the six property owners, said the regional district had a recent meeting with the Ministry of Transportation in an effort to get the province to provide details on how they determine safety risks to public roads, when they will buy out properties with slide risks, and what other mitigation strategies they use.
She said the ministry responded this week, outlining it does not have a dedicated landslide risk assessment program but it does review studies and reports from other agencies such as regional districts, municipalities and other ministries when it is relevant to its infrastructure.
The ministry told MacAhonic that landslide risks affecting private property typically fall under the jurisdiction of local governments.