When Laura De Groot came face to face with a black bear at her front door, she screamed and ran inside.
Then she got busy.
The Port Coquitlam nail technician has taken matters into her own hands since bears started hanging around the Twin Cedars townhome complex where she lives.
She got the city to upgrade her waste cart to the 240-litre size that comes with a bear-resistant lock and she's looking at installing a lockable enclosure for the carts and chaining up her outdoor freezer.
"They've been spotted out here constantly," said De Groot of the bears showing up in her northside PoCo neighbourhood.
The concerns come as PoCo has handed out nine tickets to residents who have put out their garbage too early and for unsecured wildlife attractants, and conservation officers have killed one bruin in the city for getting into garbage.
According to De Groot, bears have only recently started coming around, a situation she blames on increased development up Coast Meridian Road.
One one day on a recent weekend, she thinks she saw five different bruins in the complex.
To be safe, De Groot and some of her neighbours have switched to the larger waste bins with the bear-resistant locks even though they cost more and they have to pay a $110 admin fee.
They're also blowing air horns to scare bears and warn neighbours when the creatures are in their complex.
"Everybody's got them here," she said. "As soon as we hear them, we know to go in."
City spokesman Tom Madigan said people can switch their 120 l bins for the larger carts with bear locks but the carts do cost more.
A lock hasn't yet been found for the smaller 120 l bins but the city is looking for a solution and is hiring an ambassador in the next couple of weeks to assist people in dealing with garbage and water issues, said Madigan, who is the section manager for fleet and solid waste.
The question now is why people are getting carts that don't have locks and why the ambassador is starting so late in the season.
Madigan said the ambassador will start earlier next year because the position has been funded for two years instead of just one, and of the 39,000 carts in PoCo, only 1,800 are the 120 l size that don't have locks.
Madigan hopes to have a solution soon.
"We assess certain challenges and we make operation strategies based on information where we we get them," he said.
But even a locked bin is not enough to keep out a bruin.
De Groot said a bag of vegetable waste was in a bin for just two hours when a bear pulled the bin apart to get at it.
"I was in the back watering and the bin was knocked over, he got all the food out."
De Groot is at her wits' end and she's worried that some of her neighbours haven't yet switched to the more expensive, lockable bins while homes elsewhere in the city with the larger carts got the locks for free.
