The cost of the damage from last month’s windstorm is still being tallied but there are some indications the bad weather could be bad news for municipalities’ bottom lines.
The city of Coquitlam estimates the damage at approximately $250,000, with another $80,000 in staff overtime costs. Kathleen Vincent, the city’s manager of corporate communications, said some of the money will be recovered from the province through its emergency response program.
The bulk of the expense came from clearing trees from roads and sidewalks; as well, 16 streetlights and one traffic signal had to be replaced.
Staff spent the day monitoring and maintaining fuel levels in generators at several pump stations, and swapping out batteries at traffic signals until power was restored. They were also busy checking drainage intakes to make sure they were clear.
Port Moody has an even higher bill thanks to a broken sewer line caused by a fallen tree over Melrose Creek ravine. That is expected to set taxpayers back $500,000, while another $30,000 was spent clearing roads of damaged trees.
City crews found the sewer break at the height of the Aug. 29 windstorm and worked through the night to put in a diversion with the help of a contractor.
“We are still calculating the exact costs of our storm response but estimates are approximately $530,000,” said Neal Carley, PoMo’s general manager of engineering and parks services, noting work is needed to stabilize the slope near the Melrose ravine.
School District 43 is still tallying up the costs the storm, which occurred about a week before the new school year began.
Ivano Cecchini, the district’s assistant secretary for facilities and planning, said seven to 10 workers, including managers, supervisors, security runners, carpenters and electricians, dealt with alarms set off by failing power systems, rescued a principal at his school whose car was blocked by downed trees and secured areas hit by falling debris.
As many as 35 trees came down on SD43 property and 75 feet of fence was blown over at the maintenance yard and had to be repaired.
“We really appreciate the effort that the crews made to make sure everything was up and running and make sure everything was working and safe,” he said. “They went way beyond the call of duty.”
One crucial job was keeping the board office generator working during the power outage to enable staff to switch over an email system, planned work that required the servers to be turned on. The generator had to be filled with diesel three times that weekend to keep computers running, Cecchini said.
“It was very critical with our computer systems with the battery time; we were just upgrading our email system and we had only half an hour of battery life. [If the power was cut], we could experience some severe computer issues.,” he added.
Most of the costs of the cleanup are in overtime time for workers, Cecchini said, and shouldn’t be difficult to fit into the budget.
The city of Port Coquitlam is still calculating the cost of damage and tree removal.
