Jam is Still a Danger

Sunday, December 16, 2007 10:31 AM

The river pushed its way into the Lakeland Mills site last night ( photo opinion250 staff)

Prince George, B.C. - “We are not out of the water yet”, that is the consensus of officials as they watch the ice jam on the Nechako River in Prince George which broke the banks early last Monday morning.

(At right, a worker starts cleaning up the yard at Diversified Transportation)

For a while last night, workers were hopeful that a path had been cut into the Fraser by the flow of the river. The water rose about 2 feet in about an hour and then suddenly dropped about four feet below levels noted in the afternoon..

The ice jam had moved further downstream and that had the affect of reducing the water height at businesses and homes upstream of the old Cameron St Bridge.

The river had cut a channel around much of the jam which is now located downstream of the cities boat launch and it now seems that enough water is being diverted around the ice jam to check the increase in the water level upstream.

(at left, gabion dikes hold back the river from spilling on to P.G. Pulpmill road)

In addition, water has been spilling over the banks on the north side of the Nechako and flowing through fields such as the baseball diamonds and then back into the Nechako.

Last night the ice jam opened a seam into the Fraser for a short period of time. That however jammed up overnight and now the most visible water course is the back channel of the Nechako which has cut a path along the western edge of the Fraser.

The ice has not as yet broken loose on the Fraser.

Officials were surveying the site by helicopter fly over at about 9:45 this morning.

(at right, water remains high on River Road, )

The ice jam experts are meeing with City engineers this hour to outline options in dealing with the ice jam.

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Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 10:31 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: woodpecker on December 16 2007 3:40 PM

Hate to say this. Iam afraid it will get much worse before it gets better. Only when the fraser lets go will the problem subside! That may well be spring.
We should have reacted much much quicker!!!

Posted by: YamaDooPolCat on December 16 2007 4:04 PM

Don't be afraid, it's a normal thing for ice and rivers to do, so don't be afraid. Phone the city if you are still afraid as they have councillors standing by.

If we reacted much quicker, we would just have much more time to stare at the ice. Staring at the ice is the most effective way to break the jam, but you shouldn't start to early because it is a long process of staring and you might miss it.

Posted by: whitewater on December 16 2007 5:41 PM

Makes sense the more you look at it, the more it gets looked at. If so called experts look at it, you get a better look at it.....keep looking. Where is this global warming everyone is looking at? Wouldn't it be nice if it was here already?

Posted by: owl on December 16 2007 8:28 PM

HAs anyone ever wondered why they have gun placements along the highways going through some mountain passes so that they start mini avalanches instead of taking a do nothing attitude and allowing snow to accumulate until there is the potential for a larger avalanche?

Does anyone ever wonder how come there are no preventative actions taken to reduce the effects of ice jams would they be allowed to create too large a mass?

Maybe one of these days someone will come up with some silly solution like building a diversion channel from higher up the Nechako River to bypass the confluence and drop the water into the Fraser River.

But hey, why would we do something like that? Let the southern states build their concrete diversion channels for those occasional flash flood situations. We are much hardier people. We ain't afraid to be flooded out in the middle of -20 celsius winters. We're hardy Canucks, not southern whimps .....

;-)

Posted by: owl on December 16 2007 8:51 PM

Wanna talk about what should be done? Read this.

http://144.3.144.33/tech_files/2006%20Ice%20Jam%20Mitigation.pdf

notice slide 46 ....

Traditional Flood Fighting
� Sandbagging
� Jersey barriers
� Diversion channel
� Excavation
� Blasting
� Do nothing

Have we gone to the diversion channel creation yet????? ... excavation? ..... blasting ????

How come these "experts" speak about all that when our "experts" don't. Can we get a third opinion???????

;-)

Posted by: lmorg on December 16 2007 11:15 PM

Whitewater: global warming may actually be a factor leading to this large amount of ice. While some parts of the climate may be warming, other parts of it may actually become cooler in order to balance it out.....mother nature at work to provide an equilibrium.