Seawall damaged, Stanley Park closed as king tides, westerly winds pummel B.C.'s south coast
CBC
The Stanley Park seawall is damaged and closed to the public after king tides and extreme wind pummeled B.C.'s South Coast on Friday.
King tide is a colloquial term for the highest tides, which happen due to extra gravitational forces on Earth's oceans produced by specific alignments of the sun and the moon.
The City of West Vancouver has also closed the seawalk and Ambleside Park, which was partially flooded because of the extreme wet conditions.
The Vancouver Park Board said in a statement on Friday that the seawall will remain closed between Sunset Beach and the Lions Gate Bridge as staff focus on clearing debris.
Earlier in the day, the park board closed Stanley Park and the seawall to the public because of the hazards presented by the king tide.
English Bay Beach in Vancouver's West End was also flooded, with waves over a metre high spotted crashing ashore. At Jericho Beach, the pier was partially destroyed on Thursday, leaving lumber piled haphazardly on the sand.
The town of Qualicum Beach on the east coast of Vancouver Island, also posted a statement calling its waterfront "hazardous," saying its seawall has been partially damaged and asking the public to avoid the area.
Angela Danyluk, a senior sustainability specialist at the City of Vancouver, said the king tide occurred around 10 a.m. on Friday, along with a storm surge and strong westerly winds with gusts of up to 50 kilometres per hour.
Danyluk said king tides can happen throughout the year, but are most likely to occur in the months of December, January, and February because the earth, moon, and sun are perfectly aligned to reinforce their gravitational pull.
"They're predictable — we know when they're coming. It's just that when they come at this time of year there's often a storm surge event and rain, and in our case this week, snow."
"In Kitsilano, we saw very large waves breaking onto the beach, breaking into Kitsilano pool and in the ocean I could see very large logs and so Jericho Pier looked like more of a debris trap today than an actual pier that you can fish from."
Throughout the day on Friday, B.C. Hydro scrambled to restore power to thousands of customers left in the dark thanks to the powerful winds. More than 20,000 customers woke up in the dark Friday morning, primarily on the Lower Mainland, the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.