Pooling water and debris from trees is keeping road maintenance crews busy this holiday season, even with the lack of snow. (Dreamstime)

By Alex Rawnsley

storm season

Heavy rains bringing difficult highway conditions throughout Island

Dec 28, 2023 | 4:20 PM

NANAIMO — Recent heavy rains, combined with what’s forecast to hit the region in the coming days, has highway service crews on the lookout.

Mainroad Contracting, who maintain Island highways and main side roads in the region, say they’ve been busy over recent days dealing with debris on highways up and down Vancouver Island.

North Island manager Chris Cowley said a big part of their general duties at the moment includes ensuring catch basins are clear to avoid water pooling or washouts.

“On Christmas we had a couple of minor ones that were easily taken care of, but that’s certainly a concern with these heavy rains and we have extra crew on staff and doing extra patrols to try and respond to them as quick as they come up.”

Recent storms are at least partially to blame for a nearly 24 hour closure of Hwy. 4 beginning around dinner on Monday, Dec. 25, as rock debris fell onto the roadway.

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Other issues regarding tree debris and pooling water have been reported in parts up and down the Island.

The heavy rains over recent days comes following a prolonged drought through the region, stressing trees and potentially weakening them.

Rainfall makes them very heavy, very quickly.

“In areas where there’s lots of trees with heavy saturated soils, we’d be concerned about trees coming down so I think the driving public just needs to drive with extra care and expect debris on the roads from the wind.”

In additional to dealing with the effects of rainfall, crews from Mainroad continue to be watchful for snow in the forecast.

While temperatures haven’t threatened the freezing mark over recent weeks, temperatures are forecast to dip slightly early in the new year.

— with files from Jon de Roo, 97.3 The Eagle

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