The economic damage we suffered in the storm is still being significantly understated. Canada has no trade access to Pacific tidewater for the 1st time since the completion of the railroad. Each day of lost movement results in someone accruing a loss that is not recoverable.
It won’t be noticeable for a few days, but the endless flow of goods East to west grinding to a halt is difficult to overstate with respect to the harm it will cause.
The big one is energy — there’s a 150,000 barrel per day backlog building for every 24hr Trans Mountain’s down.
Ships are floating off Vancouver right now waiting to unload goods to be shipped by rail lines that are severed. The same lines fill them. They won’t be able to load/unload until that flow is restored. Others are on the way & will arrive to find a system brought to a standstill.
Foodstuffs are currently sitting in tractor trailers at the sides of highways stretching south into the United States too, blocked by landslides.
They have an expiry date.
Unshippable goods will pile-up on this side as well, with nowhere to go…
Every green dot on this map (current to now) is a cargo vessel. There’s an endless stream to and from ports beyond.
Vancouver is now isolated. The flow is piling up. If it lasts long enough this blockage will ripple across the world to ports in Asia & beyond.
And because there are lots of replies mentioning Prince Rupert, and whether that port alone can shift on a dime to accommodate trade flows halted further south, the answer is complicated. #bcstorm
Not a lot of movement up there right now…
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