It ought to be interesting come spring if it is this bad now.
I still think a couple well placed sticks of dynomite and the ice jam would be gone...
But that takes nuts (sorry but the only word that works)and I don't think anyone working for the city has any of them.

Our business is on 1st Avenue and we haven't heard anything about an evacuation alert. All we have received or heard about is a notice for "Potential Flooding 2007" which tells us where and how to get sandbags, nothing about evacuating. Maybe it's only being announced by radio? Does anyone have any more information on this?

Does anyone know for a fact whether a few charges of dynamite would do the job? Are there any explosives experts around here that know the physical mass of the ice jam that would need to be cleared and the energy that would be needed to do it? Or, would it simply be a case of "let's blow it to see what would happen?"

I'm not being a smart a__ either, I'm actually curious if a "reasonable" level of explosives could in fact clear that much debris. I say reasonable because at some point, you have to wonder if the amount of explosives required to do the job would be too dangerous or harmful to deploy.

I guess there's always the wildcard of "what happens if too much water or ice gets through at once?" Could that make the situation worse? At this point, I'm not sure if anyone even knows what the potential ramifications could be.

I would also hazard a guess that the City is the last place that would be able to authorize the use of dynamite or have the expertise to do it properly and safely. You'd have to have lots of different people involved. I'm sure the City, the RCMP, DFO, the Ministry of Environment, possibly the military and 15 other government departments would all be impacted by such a decision, justifiably so in most cases.

It sure is an interesting situation.

Well I'd say the comment left by "flytothemoon" sums up how well communication and this situation has been handled.On the PG city website it has "state of emergency" and the info is 2 days old.Let's wait around some more and our downtown revitalization may happen after all.
Hey "realitycheck" still reading the PEP site??

"..Does anyone know for a fact whether a few charges of dynamite would do the job?.."

Yup, I know for a fact that dynamite won't do anything. Bin there and seen it. BC Hydro did an experiment at Peace River in 1976 because so many people were demanding "something be done!" The dynamite was put out in front of the town and when the dynamite went off it was impressive. Of course nothing happened to change the ice or make it go anywhere.

No one stops to think. It's like putting fire crackers in a row boat full of chopped jello.

There are 2 solutions to be considered here. First ,immediate action to blow a channel or channels for the trapped water to escape south. This can be accomplished by strategic placements of explosives to open the said ice jam....probably the riskiest is to drop these from a chopper...however I strongly suggest bringing in Canada's armed forces and Army engineers ...I'm sure these well trained experts could have this situation under control in short order...Solution 2 : there has been a lot of talk of building a dyke system ,that could cost millions of dollars. I stongly recommend lowering the river base. This option could MAKE the city millions instead. In the summer and fall months the river is at its lowest, and gravel extraction would be easy with several contractors lined up to purchase this gravel for all the projects we have on the drawing board. The city alone could have a complete division of equipment stockpiling this gravel for use for years to come. This only makes sense. Comments?

I suspect most if not all of Canada's armed forces and engineers, are in Afganistan, or lined up to go there. We have a pretty thin line of soldiers at the best of times.

The blasting of the ice should have taken place as soon as the ice started to back up. If it had been done then, I suspect it would have had an effect. Now I think it is too late. Hydro's experiment in the Peace River was probably a prime example of to little to late.

Seems to me that in the 40's and 50's gravel was taken from the river to keep the channel clear, however this is no longer done, and with the build-up over the years we now have a major problem.

No doubt we will see some dredging taking place next year, now that we have national coverage of the problem. To do nothing after this fiasco, would (should) end the career of any politician.

We can talk all we want about what we could do to avoid a similar situation in the future, but perhaps the reality NOW is that there is no real solution other than to let nature run its course . . .

I realize that sounds lame, but man alive that is allot of ice to deal with. It's not like we are dealing with a blockage of the Mud River here.