Tuesday - March 18, 2025 - Earthquake warnings depend on cell service

🌤 High 11C

Good morning!

Every now and then I’ll walk through the grocery store and remember that I used to be a gnocchi guy. I have also been fried chicken, quesadilla, frozen lunch, and leftover perogy guys, in past lives. I imagine we have all gone through similar culinary (and non-culinary) evolutions over time.

Humans aren’t great at noticing how our lives gradually change. Food is a good proxy for this. Over time, our appetites and diets shift, but we rarely notice when a new go-to meal replaces a previous household staple. And although sometimes we intentionally phase out food for cost or health reasons, I bet most of us have unconsciously dropped an old beloved standby from our rotating cast of means. It can be delightful to come across a grocery store sale that allows you to rediscover why you once loved barbecued chicken thighs or caramelizing mushrooms. I don’t think, however, that I’ll be going back to the Swanson dinners anytime soon.

– Tyler

Keep local journalism alive by supporting The Current. Become a Current Insider member today and help bring local stories to life.

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

Why are Hope youth struggling?

Students in the Fraser-Cascade School District are thinking about suicide at an alarming rate and struggling to access health care like the rest of BC, according to a survey of local kids.

Almost one-third of Grade 7 to 12 students in the district said they seriously considered suicide between 2022 and 2023, according to a report conducted by the McCreary Centre Society. And only 66% of students who needed medical treatment got it in 2023, as opposed to the 82% of youth who did provincially.

The numbers shine a light on a lack of health services in Hope and other low-income areas in the eastern Fraser Valley, and the reliance many youth have on elders and public transit to access specific care in a vast geographical area.

“I don’t think the government sees rural communities as needing a lot of certain things,” said Nikki-Jade Draven, a 25-year-old from Hope who recently underwent a gender transition. “Through this transition, I had to go to Chilliwack because there’s no resources [in Hope].”

• Today, Josh writes about a worrying report on the health of youth in Hope, and what locals say is needed to help kids with their physical and mental health.

Related

Need to Know

🔽 Langley Township is downsizing its plans to allow industrial uses on a strip of Fraser Highway [Langley Advance Times]

🏉 An Abbotsford rugby player has been named to the Abbotsford Sports Hall of Fame [Abbotsford News]

🔥 Mission fire crews extinguished a fire that spread from a parked car into a cedar tree [Mission Record]

🌳 Erosion at Kent’s cemetery has disrupted several headstones, prompting the District of Kent to boost maintenance funding [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]

💰 Langley Mounties say they are trying to find the owner of a ‘sizeable’ amount of lost cash [CTV]

🔎 Langley Mounties are asking for help to find a missing 62-year-old man [Fraser Valley today]

🖼 The grandson (and great-grandson) of Langley’s first mayor met Langley City council at an anniversary celebration [Langley City]

Enjoying our newsletter? Help us make it even better!

Become an Insider member and help keep local journalism and storytelling alive in the Fraser Valley.

SPONSORED BY YOU

Your ad can be here

Advertising in The Current is easier than ever and supports our journalism. Just shoot us an email to learn how you can advertise.

The Agenda

Earthquake warning system active, but relies on cell service

Canada’s new early earthquake warning system is now working in BC, but residents in rural areas may still be unable to receive notice of a large incoming tremor.

The new system uses monitoring equipment to detect an earthquake’s first tremors (P-waves) close to their origin, then sends automated messages to residents further from a quake’s epicentre, warning them to expect strong shaking. The system was used for the first time in February to alert some residents of the 5.1-magnitude quake near Sechelt. Warnings were only sent to locals, given the modest size of the tremor. The same day of the quake, The Current reported that a new earthquake early warning station would be installed at the Chilliwack River Valley Fire Hall.

The system will only alert for “potentially harmful shaking,” Alison Bird of the Geological Survey of Canada told Fraser Valley Regional District politicians during a presentation last week. The alerts are sent out via the same system used for Amber Alerts and severe weather warnings. The alerts are sent to phones, TVs, and radio systems.

Bird said limited cell coverage in some areas means rural residents without cell coverage might only receive the warning if their TVs or radios happen to be on when an alert is sent. Bird said officials are looking for ways to push notifications to such areas. The system doesn’t currently push alerts to the country’s Weatheradio network, which has the ability to turn on devices in the case of the alert. Bird said that’s because that system relies on human operators, who wouldn’t be fast enough to create an earthquake alert fast enough to be useful.

Bird said the organization is exploring other avenues, including investigating how to broadcast alerts through the Internet to computers. (Many places without cell coverage have Internet coverage through land line cables and other means.)

You can see the presentation here.

FVRD endorses ‘Buy Canadian’ approach

The Fraser Valley’s politicians endorsed a call for government staff to buy Canadian goods and services as much as possible, in response to tariff and annexation threats made by US President Donald Trump.

The call for a Canada-first buying approach was first suggested last month by Fraser Valley Regional District Electoral Area C director Patti MacAhonic, who suggested FVRD staff review its procurement policies and suppliers, and consider ways to “buy Canadian.” (We reported on how various local governments were considering buy-local requests in late February.) Last week, MacAhonic’s colleagues at the regional district endorsed a simplified motion, directing staff to pursue a “‘Buy Canadian’ strategy.”

FVRD directors were told that the approach is a broad directive, but won’t result in staff spending time on a project to overhaul or analyze procurement processes.

Directors were told that less than 1% of goods bought by the FVRD comes from the United States.

Kent Mayor Sylvia Pranger noted that the Union of BC Municipalities is also considering the topic and said a unified BC approach is needed.

Share

You can share this newsletter by forwarding it or copy and pasting this link—https://fvcurrent.com/p/march-18-2025/—into a social media post.

🔓️ Become a Current Insider and get full access to this newsletter. Every Tuesday, members get exclusive information on events, food and drink, and local deals.

You’ll also get our weekly behind-the-scenes newsletter and roundup on Saturday. Most of all, your contribution will allow us to keep producing all the great journalism you already know and love.

Catch up

That’s it!

Thanks for reading Fraser Valley Current today ♥️ 

If you found something useful, consider forwarding this newsletter to another local.