I suspect it will get real messy if the ice takes out the CN bridge... or even bends it a little bit.

It was just a fleeting thought... but, I kinda wondered what we would do when the Nechako ice decided to pile up in the already frozen Fraser.

Whoops....

By the way... it wasn't any fun being on the bridge alone yesterday at 2:00pm ... where where the rest of you ???

:-)

At a much smaller scale, one of the rivers I monitor let loose with a bunch of ice starting yesterday and has changed the path of the flowing water from one side to another, putting itself back in the main channel it left last week. Go figure..

Does this mean the mean machine has to wander off down stream to open up its back door, or will the hot water that has to be cooled down to keep the fish happy do that job

RRrbbtt. I was in my car where it was nice and warm. Must have been after 2pm because the bridge was clear, with a police car gaurding the North side.

If we get a jam on the Fraser at the Bridge then we have a serious problem, the Fraser Water will back up the Nechako and the flooding will start again.

I suspect that the hot water will make no difference whatsoever, especially in this weather. Should generate a lot of mist, so that no one can see whats going on.

The SAD FACT of the whole amphibex machine is that the money the city has spent, (on the contract with the company that owns the machine and is doing the work) they could have bought one for the city, and trained a crew to run.....not only would it have created more jobs in Prince it would have saved a lot of money if it is deemed necessary again in the future! I mean hell why buy one and keep the money in the Prince George economy when we can rent its services, own nothing, and send the revenue generated out of province!

Another thing that is scarily irresponisble is as follows....A well respected and trustworthy source inside the city leadership has said that the city knew the amphibex would not do the job by itself or really make that big of a dent in the jam, but the city went ahead with the project anyway, as a way of making the people of PG feel as though the city was trying to do something about the Problem! Sick!

Thats my Rant!
Thanks!

"A well respected and trustworthy source"

Good for him/her. Those are not the requirements for an expert, btw..

Did anyone else come up with a plan to cut a 5km channel that had water flowing through it?

These machines are used to break up spring ice just prior to break up to prevent ice jams. The machine has no direct line to mother nature about the time of arrival of the next cold spell or how cold that cold spell would become.

It was either do nothing or do something. I would like to have seen someone use dynamite to blast a channel like that.

Also, if one wants to open a channel above where the warm water is going to be released, one will have to run a much longer pipe, with more pumps and more heat loss or more insulation.

For those who believe in dynamite, go read the web page about the ice jams in BC over the last 100 years. The mention of dynamite as another method suggested was limited. In one case diver were almost killed. In most cases it did nothing other than move the stuff a little and within a couple of days everything was back in a jam. In one case it was used to open the final part of an ice dam after a long channel had been dug near shore by standard excavating equipment. That was probably the most successful approach of the bunch.

This is a case that no matter what you do, the whole thing is a gamble. But that is the thing with emergency action. They are unusual situations putting people into crisis management mode which requires action, not talk. All the reports on the shelf behind your desk are not going to work. The best assistance will be experience … which there is little of … and street smarts …. Which there is even less of.

Oh, and then there is the element of risk. The element of risk that the Fraser will jam up as well .... or the element of risk that the ice will not move and will jam up even more and affect places higher up the river ..... and then let go again and affect places lower down .....

As the out of town expert said, there is nothing that can be done other than wait till the weather gets warmer for good.

BTW, the cost of the machine operating is a provincial expense, I believe. The less people bet damaged from the flood, the less the province will have to pay out from their disaster fund.

So, now we are into determining something we cannot determine since we really do not know how the water would have reacted by now without the machine. What is the total cost to the province with the machine. What is the total cost to the province wthout the machine?

Wow Reevus that is very interesting!!!
Very good posts on this article.
The jam on the Fraser how big is it? Seeing as though the machine is here already and warmer weather is knocking at our doors won't it be able to smash through this bit and continue on what it started to do?

Well said Owl. Lot's of "experts" on this site!

Another news relase says its to miworth now.

Hiring the Amphibex, running a pipe to flow warmer water into the river, building up roads, installing Gabion dikes and anything else that has been done, will not be sufficient or the full solution.

So, how about knocking off all the critcism and put forth some ideas how you are going to help all of the people affected by this natural occurance. We are all in this together, why is everyone so critical of what is being done or what is not being done? I suspect none of you are in the position of responsibility to make the decisions anyway. So, how about doing something more productive with your energy?
Chester

Chester-I think the Amphidex IS working. No one can control the weather! Solution? DREDGING! As far as the "respected" city 'higher up' who new it wouldn't work- sounds like one of those who would jump on and off the band wagon. I would hate to see what the result would be today if the amphidex wasn't brought in at all, combined with if River Road was not raised, or if the gabions were not installed. It is almost like some people sit back hoping other's efforts don't work so they can say "what a waste of time and money"!

Like I've said before, this site is full of arm chair quaterbacks who all had a "better way" after the fact. 20/20 vision will be real easy come March or April.

I think this site IMO has had a lot of people that stated the facts as they were, and put forward solutions that may or may not have worked, but the suggestions were all much better then apathy and defeatism (even the peeing off the bridge solution). I don’t think it is anything to scorn… just another opinion to consider.

These decisions effect all of us in some way or another and thus we are all stakeholders in the brainstorming of ideas.

Will anything of substance be learned about what should be done from here on out?

Nooooo.....

Stupid humans, we set outselves up for defeat constantly and then learn nothing from those defeats. Pathetic.

Don't hear anyone, except me, discussing what can be done to prevent this from happening again...ever. Every suggestion here is talking about ice already under the bridge - talk about being behind the curve - instead of examining why it's happening and what moves city leaders can take to eliminate, or greatly minimize, this issue FOREVER. Don't you think that cold winters will happen again with ice jams and flooding close behind? It's not like this is some freak occurance, like it's happening in Florida for instance. How many millions will be spent before we learn that rivers and ice do what they may and cannot be stopped, not through warm water, not through dredging, not through wishful thinking.

Long term thinking is clear: move the people and businesses. Give the flood plain back to the river as much as possible.

Boy, we can't buy a break these days.

"move the people and businesses"...sure, that's realistic ain't it?

I'm sorry...but the long term solution to this situation is lower the river bed...repeat LOWER the river bed. Quit spending Zillions on these dikes and road raising...there's a ton of gravel in these channels tons and tons...we could make repeat make money instead of band aid solutions.....Call in in the experts like Roger Klein ...issue a licence to remove the gravel from the basin from cameron to Goat Island and resolve this problem for years to come

I'm sorry...but the long term solution to this situation is lower the river bed...repeat LOWER the river bed. Quit spending Zillions on these dikes and road raising...there's a ton of gravel in these channels tons and tons...we could make repeat make money instead of band aid solutions.....Call in in the experts like Roger Klein ...issue a licence to remove the gravel from the basin from cameron to Goat Island and resolve this problem for years to come

"move the people and businesses"...sure, that's realistic ain't it?
------------------------------------

Quite realistic. It is so realistic that it is being done in Holland along the Rhine delta. I have not seen much of what is happening in New Orleans, but there is another example of a City which was built too low in parts. Now, with global warming, the amount of rainfall is increasing and higher floods are expeced everywhere. Hydrologists here are saying the 1 in 200 year event will become 1 in 100 or even 1 in 50. The one in 50 year event will become 1 in 25 and one in 10, etc.

http://www.geo.uu.nl/fg/palaeogeography/results/flooding

http://nofdp.bafg.de/servlet/is/13281/?highlight=rhine,&lang=de

Take a close look at the site about the Rhine Delta. You should find some interesting pictures there and information about the dikes which began to be built some 1000 years ago. The pictures with ice jams, dike breaches, seepage under dikes, etc. etc. should become familiar to us by now.

As an aside, I hope that people in helicopters know how to get some good photos at low angle shots so that we can see the problems we are having. I am astonished at how few pictures we actually get to see of what is transpiring. I do not know whether there are no pictures to be had, whether people do not know how to take such pictures, or whether they are not being published, sort of something like not showing the war dead as they come home to the USA.

The cross section at the bottom shows the approach being taken. A combination of a number of things including dredging, widening the base of the dikes that are to stay, removing other dikes and building new ones inland to widen the watercourse at flood time, lowering the lands over which the flood waters will travel, etc.

I am waiting for the study of how our delta area and upriver from that is recommended to be handled. I know one thing for sure, with the soil conditions we have here it is virtually impossible to stop seepage. I think those people who are sitting on low land will eventually have to move if the frequency of flooding, whether from early winter ice jams, which seem to be relatively frequent as we find out, will increase as projected.

The sooner they get moved, the cheaper it will become and the earlier we can deal with the land they sit on.

I can see everyone concerned being moved within 10 years, whether industry or residences. I can see compensation being given by the province and the feds being given to move under the MPB moneys and global warming money in additon to other funding plans.

What I can't see at the moment is what CN will do and all the buildings along first avenue. They may have to wait of another decade or two to see how the initial cahnges and any further weather change will affect them.