Another hospitality hit: B.C. restaurants begin 2022 with extended flooding-related closures
Global News
"I felt so defeated": Several B.C. restaurants say they'll be closed for weeks after pipes froze and burst during the December cold snap - causing devastating floods.
After surviving almost 22 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, several B.C. restaurants are starting the new year with closures that could last weeks – after water pipes froze and burst during the December cold snap.
Inside DD Mau Chinatown, blower fans are blasting and bags of damaged items pile up as the family-owned Vietnamese restaurant awaits the insurance estimate for an unexpected and costly restoration.
“There was just water flowing from every single angle,” said owner Kim Tran.
The day before New Year’s Eve, Tran received a frantic call from staff, who told her the panels in the kitchen’s T-bar ceiling had fallen through – unleashing a torrent.
After fighting to stay open amid COVID-19 restrictions, neighbourhood decline and two recent Omicron-related shutdowns, a frozen pipe had burst in the business upstairs – flooding her entire street-level eatery.
“I felt so defeated,” Tran told Global News.
“The last two years of doing whatever was in my power to keep the business alive, stay afloat – and then that happened.”
Drowning in ankle-deep water, Tran and her staff grabbed brooms and formed an assembly line to sweep the deluge out the front door – before setting up fans and heaters and hoping for the best.