Tuesday - Aug. 13, 2024 - Fires cost Chilliwack property owners millions

🌧 High 21C

Good morning!

This weekend, the ER at Mission’s hospital was without a doctor for more than 12 hours. The public may have learned this through a Fraser Health public service announcement that declared that “due to physician staffing challenges a temporary service adaptation” would be in place.

Now, I’ve seen government use a lot of euphemisms over the years, but “temporary service adaptation” might take the cake when it comes to a public agency trying to hide a bad thing in plain sight. Mission’s emergency department couldn’t handle emergencies for more than 12 hours. (The public was told that emergency nurses would be able to provide basic first aid while helping transfer people needing more care to another hospital.) Which isn’t good. But as one commenter noted, these aren’t just public relations issues. The lack of clear language can be a problem for people with limited English who may not fully grasp that their local ER had no doctors on standby.

– Tyler

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

NEWS

Your passenger rail questions, answered

Why don’t we have more passenger service between Vancouver and the Fraser Valley? Why does the West Coast Express start/end its run in Mission? What is the plan with the Interurban line?

Earlier this summer, we asked for your questions about trains in the Fraser Valley and got so many that we had to divide them into three separate stories. In mid-July, we shared our answers to your questions about freight traffic in the valley.

• Today, we answer your questions about the details of passenger rail in the Fraser Valley.

• In a future edition, we will answer your questions about the history of railways in the Fraser Valley. We’ll also share how you can catch a VIA Rail train from your community.

Related

Need to Know

⚠ An alert has been issued about potentially dangerous purple powder drugs in Abbotsford [Abbotsford News]

👞 Chilliwack hikers are climbing a popular local mountain in honour of The Happy Hiker [Chilliwack Progress]

🏥 Langley Township’s mayor says emergency room wait times are unacceptable and he has seen little done to fix them [Aldergrove Star]

🦙 An alpaca farm in Aldergrove is hosting a farmer’s market this weekend [Langley Advance Times] / In 2022, we reported on how alpacas at the farm were given haircuts, en masse [FVC]

✈ Tickets at the Abbotsford International Airshow sold out last weekend [CTV]

🎤 Cat Kid Comic Club The Musical arrives to Chilliwack Cultural Centre on September 22! From the team that brought you Dog Man: The Musical.*

*Sponsored Listing

The Agenda

Chilliwack fire damages near $4 million through first half of 2024

Between April and June of this year, Chilliwack’s firefighters put out 27 building fires, with the damage of those blazes estimated to be in the millions.

Four people were injured in the second-quarter fires, with property damage pegged at more than $2.4 million. In the first three months of 2024, there were 33 large fires that resulted in $1.4 million in losses. (Eight people were injured in those fires.)

Most structure fires in 2024 have been in people’s homes. There were also 29 vehicle fires, and 319 outdoor fires.

Harrison Hot Springs requires FOI fee to be paid by cheque or in person

If you want to make a freedom of information request to the Village of Harrison Hot Springs you don’t just have to get out your wallet, you have to either get out your chequebook or your car keys.

When the British Columbia government instituted $10 fees to make freedom of information requests, a handful of Fraser Valley municipalities quickly followed suit. Harrison Hot Springs was one of them. (As The Current reported in May, the Fraser Valley’s small communities were far more enthusiastic than counterparts in other parts of BC.)

But the barriers to requesting public information in Harrison isn’t just one of cost. As The Current discovered this week, Harrison—unlike almost every other municipality and public agency—doesn’t take payment by credit card online or over the phone. (A staff member said their payment technology doesn’t take credit cards.) That means that if you want to request information, you need to either mail a $10 cheque to the the village office, or bring cash or a debit card in hand. The Current has requested the report into council disfunction, which we wrote about yesterday.

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