Harrison politicians flip flop on evacuation route

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Aside from a gnarly forest service road to the north, there’s only one way into—and out of—Harrison Hot Springs. That’s a major potential problem for a community of several thousand people that can triple in size during the summer.

For two decades, local officials have talked about creating a back-up evacuation route. And finally, three years ago, Harrison Hot Springs and Kent agreed on a potential emergency exit through Sasquatch Provincial Park.

But the future of that exit took a sudden (and seemingly temporary) twist this month when a local Harrison Hot Springs resident nearly convinced local politicians to pull the plug on the plan.

On June 5, the quest for a back-up evacuation route out of Harrison Hot Springs and surrounding areas hit a new obstacle: a local resident named John Coles and a 30-page report he independently wrote.

For more than two decades, the creation of a back-up emergency route has been a “priority,” according to a 2020 Harrison staff report. (One might question the length of time an unconstructed road can remain a “priority” without losing the right to be defined as such, but we’ll leave that question for later.)

Currently, only one paved road connects Harrison Hot Springs to the rest of the Fraser Valley. That leaves residents and thousands of tourists possibly facing a clogged line of traffic if they are ever ordered to leave because of a wildfire or other potential disaster.

The threat is even more real for residents who live on Rockwell Drive on the east side of the lake. Those residents, whose homes are actually located within the District of Kent, have seen their only access road closed because of flooding, landslides, and fire—most recently in 2021. The hundreds of people at Sasquatch Provincial Park are similarly at risk of having their exit route blocked.

Because of the tangle of borders and the close ties between the Village of Harrison Hot Springs and the District of Kent, the two municipalities operate a joint emergency management program to plan for, and respond to, emergencies. Three years ago, that program—and consultants it hired—decided that the most practical secondary evacuation route would run northeast through Sasquatch Provincial Park, then down what is now a forestry road to Highway 7.

Connecting the park access road to the forestry road would require creating a new 170-metre-long stretch of road along what was once a railway service grade. Some blasting, along with a new bridge would be needed. Consultants suggested that the entire route could be built for less than $1 million—including the cost of a bridge. The route would be gated and used only in the case of an emergency.

Two other possible routes were dismissed as unfeasible and potentially dangerous. A route that would take drivers north on Harrison East Forest Service Road toward Boston Bar is prone to rockslides, frequently closed in winter due to heavy snow, and 127km long. A shorter route on Slollicum Forest Service Road was deemed inadequate because of the high elevation, the need to reinstate stream crossings, and the four-by-four nature of the road in many locations.

In 2020, both councils voted to support the completion of the Sasquatch evacuation route.

The two communities had pitched the plan to the province, which must temporarily change rules governing park activity to allow for the completion of the emergency route. They also began consulting with several local First Nations to obtain their consent. By early 2023, the concept was waiting for the green light from just one of those First Nations; the others had signaled their approval. The hope was that First Nation approval would then secure the province’s co-operation.

“They want to see everyone on board so that nobody says ‘We didn’t want that’,” council was told recently.

But in early June, half of Harrison Hot Springs’ council said they didn’t want that.

Two weeks prior, resident John Coles had appeared before Harrison council with a 30-page report calling for Harrison Hot Springs to reject the plan. Coles suggested the route wouldn’t be effective because of fire behaviour, and that efforts would be better spent on reducing the likelihood of fires in the first place, or increasing the resiliency of those who may need to wait out an emergency.

“I don’t believe we, the people of the province, should damage a provincial park just to keep someone comfortable,” he wrote. A more pragmatic plan would see the creation of a second south-bound route toward Kent. That would allow for a quicker evacuation from a forest fire north of town.

Coles had made similar arguments to a previous council but had not received much support. But this time, Harrison Hot Springs’s council seemed ready to do an about face.

At a council meeting two weeks after Coles’ presentation, Harrison Mayor Ed Wood asked his colleagues to vote to officially reject an evacuation route through the park. Wood’s motion was backed by Coun. Allan Jackson, but failed due to opposition from Couns. Michie Vidal and Leo Facio (only four members were present in the wake of Coun. John Buckley’s resignation).

Vidal and Facio had both been on the Harrison council that unanimously voted to support the route three years ago. But while voting not to outright reject the route, it still signaled a lack of consensus. Vidal herself hardly gave the route an expression of support. Instead, she said the matter was better dealt with by writing a letter to the joint emergency planning program “expressing perhaps some concerns on that evacuation route.”

Clearly everyone wasn’t on board.

An about-about-face

And then everyone was, seemingly.

At a meeting a week later, it took about half-an-hour for Harrison and Kent’s emergency chiefs to seemingly resurrect Harrison council’s unanimous support.

On June 12, Ryan Chiarot, the manager of the joint emergency program, and Kent fire chief Gerald Basten spoke about the plans at a committee of the whole meeting (basically a less-formal council meeting).

As a municipality, Harrison Hot Springs had endorsed the route three years prior, but Wood told the pair that he was hoping the village could “finally make a decision on this,” saying the issue seemed to have been “going in circles” for 20 years.

“Someone’s got to make up their mind which way we’re going to go.”

And he said the route through the provincial park wasn’t the right way.

“From what I can see from the report from John Coles is … that looks like the direction we should not be going,” Wood said.

Wood then asked Chiarot and Basten to explain why the alternative routes were unsuitable. He also asked whether evacuations by boat or helicopter from some locations might be possible.

Chiarot told Wood the two alternative routes were impractical and likely dangerous.

One, he said, “is basically an ATV route at best,” neither would be suitable for most vehicles, and both were through heavy terrain that would pose logistical and safety problems—especially if any single vehicle encountered troubles. Marine and helicopter rescues also weren’t practical because of a lack of staging locations, capacity challenges, and logistical issues, Chiarot said. Evacuating thousands of people by boat down the Harrison River, for example, would require large numbers of boat operators with experience safely navigating that waterway.

Chiarot also said a report would be coming to Harrison outlining a response to Coles’ document.

Although Woods said he had other meetings scheduled on the issue, by the end of the presentation, council seemed back on board.

“Rather than going through another whole process of looking at and consultation for an alternate route, I think the best course of action is to continue on in the direction that we’re going,” Vidal said. She didn’t indicate that such a letter would be used to express concerns about the route, as was suggested two weeks prior..

And Woods, instead of kiboshing the plan for an alternate emergency route, asked Chiarot what could be done to hasten the creation of a new backup route out of the village.

“How can we help? How can we speed this up?”

He was told, simply, that Harrison needs to state that it wants to see the Sasquatch park route become a reality.

“Advocation for the route,” Chiarot said. “The more councils and the more First Nations we have on board that approve of the route for the safety and security of both residents of the District of Kent and Harrison Hot Springs and people who use and play on the Forest Service Road, the better.”

Jackson suggested that council try to connect directly with the province to press for the creation of a second route. He suggested the province might be particularly amenable, given recent difficulties on Vancouver Island, where a wildfire closed Highway 4, the only easily passable route in and out of Tofino.

The meeting concluded with council voting unanimously to try to meet with the appropriate provincial minister and to provide them with a “specific plan” for an emergency route. A week after voting to reject the only agreed-upon plan for an evacuation report, Jackson stressed the “need to get something down now, rather than it getting pushed down the road.”

“It’s 17 years, we’ve been pushing this down the road.”