Proposed motion calls for extreme weather planning in Burnaby community plan

A proposed motion heading to Burnaby city council this week is looking to better prepare the city for extreme weather events like floods and wildfires.

Coun. Alison Gu is one of five councillors behind the motion, which is looking to update the city’s Official Community Plan (OCP). Gu says the OCP is an important document that acts as a blueprint for the city’s future housing, transportation, and industrial areas for the next 25 years.

“We have been in an engagement process for about two-and-a-half years now and it’s hopefully going to wrap up in this next year,” said Gu.

The motion claims the risk of natural hazards, such as wildfires and floods, are substantially increased due to climate change, which leads to heavier rainfall in the winter and drier summers.
Councillors are looking to add a “climate adaptation lens” to the plan to mitigate the local risk.

The motion also claims the wildfire risk for communities like Burnaby Mountain and UniverCity has increased substantially. Gu says we need to be able to protect ourselves and plan for hazards, especially with a high-volume petrochemical facility at the base of Burnaby Mountain.

“The risk of a petrochemical fire triggering a forest fire or vice versa becomes a risk that we need to be able to plan for,” said Gu. “Sometimes we have to build up in a place that might have an increased risk of a hazard, so how can we build in a way that we are still protecting people?”

Last October, Metro Vancouver was hit by an atmospheric river that upended cars in Burnaby and flooded intersections. During the storm, Gu says a condo building’s basement that housed electrical equipment flooded. If extreme weather was taken into account, she says they could design buildings differently.

“Putting electrical at the top of an apartment building rather than in the basement. How can we build parking lots so that water flows through it and plan for it, rather than making it so water actually can’t escape out of the parking lot because we don’t expect water to enter? Those are some of the pieces.”

The damage that can come from these extreme weather events can also impact people’s properties and livelihoods, according to Gu.

Stateside, devastating wildfire in Los Angeles have brought the dangers of extreme weather events into the spotlight. Since the fires broke out, more than 12,000 structures have been damaged or burned to the ground.

Gu says the California wildfires are a sobering reminder that city council needs to continue their work.

“There’s no amount of planning that could get you out of that…some of these micro-events, like a smaller regional wildfire, that’s something that we can try to plan for,” said Gu. “We can’t have a magic ball and say, ‘well, that would have happened had we not prepared for this?’”

The proposed motion is set to be discussed at the Burnaby city council meeting this Tuesday at 5 p.m.