Thousands of airline passengers stranded. Roads impassable because of snow. Power failures by the dozen.
The last two weeks have been a winter nightmare for Vancouver — huge dumps of snow followed by rain, heavy slush and flooding. All over the city, people are griping about the toll storm after storm has taken on their holiday season.
They’re also asking another question: What if this happens during the 2010 Winter Olympics?
PHOTO: AP
Vancouver airport, transit and city officials say they’re using the storms as a learning opportunity.
With 400,000 passengers passing through Vancouver in the last week on 5,000 flights, the volume of traffic is near what it will be during the games, said Don Ehrenholz, vice president of operations for Vancouver International Airport.
He promises improvement by the time the Games start.
“In our planning for 2010, we are planning that there will be a snowstorm of a fairly large magnitude at the worst possible time — either at the very first couple of days or the very last day or two, which is one of the more difficult times for getting people out on time,” Ehrenholz said.
The city’s transit system will be different in 2010, with more buses and a new subway line that won’t be affected by weather because most of it runs underground, said Ken Hardie, a spokesman for TransLink, which handles public transit in British Colombia’s Lower Mainland.
The SkyTrain elevated rail system has been shut down in conditions far less severe than those in Vancouver over the past week.
“I understand that the type of weather that we’ve had over the past week or so is a one-in-10-year event,” he said. “Let’s hope we’ve gotten it out of our system for another 10 years.”
Events will be divided between the area in and around Vancouver.
The communities are connected by Highway 99, also known as the Sea-to-Sky highway — a winding route with plenty of steep hills.
Before the Beijing Olympics last summer, Chinese authorities were so afraid of rain disrupting the opening ceremony they experimented with cloud seeding.
Al Wallace is regional director of Meteorological Services Canada, which is providing weather services for the 2010 Olympics.
He said a weather-control project is not in the works for 2010, mostly because it hasn’t been proved to actually work.
Vancouver’s Olympic organizing committee acknowledges that while it has command over virtually every aspect of the Games, the weather is one thing it simply can’t control — even if it is one of the most critical elements of staging a successful Winter Olympics.
“It could either work with you or really work against you,” said Tim Gayda, vice president of sport for the organizing committee. “Right from the get-go, we’ve always planned to deal with the worst.”
But planning can go only so far. Gayda said his team has its own approach, on top of meticulous planning.
“We just pray,” he said.
Bologna on Thursday advanced past Empoli to reach their first Coppa Italia final in more than half a century. Thijs Dallinga’s 87th-minute header earned Bologna a 2-1 win and his side advanced 5-1 on aggregate. Giovanni Fabbian opened the scoring for Bologna with a header seven minutes in. Then Viktor Kovalenko equalized for Empoli in the 30th minute by turning in a rebound to finish off a counterattack. Bologna won the first leg 3-0. In the May 14 final in Rome, Bologna are to face AC Milan, who eliminated city rivals Inter 4-1 on aggregate following a 3-0 win on Wednesday. Bologna last reached the
If the Wild finally break through and win their first playoff series in a decade, Minnesota’s top line likely will be the reason. They were all over the Golden Knights through the first two games of their NHL Western Conference quarter-finals series, which was 1-1 going back to Minnesota for Game 3 today. The Wild tied the series with a 5-2 win on Tuesday. Matt Boldy had three goals and an assist in the first two games, while Kirill Kaprizov produced two goals and three assists. Joel Eriksson Ek, who centers the line, has yet to get on the scoresheet. “I think the biggest
From a commemorative jersey to a stadium in his name, Argentine soccer organizers are planning a slew of tributes to their late “Captain” Pope Francis, eulogized as the ultimate team player. Tributes to the Argentine pontiff, a lifelong lover of the game, who died on Monday at the age of 88, have been peppered with soccer metaphors in his homeland. “Francisco. What a player,” the Argentine Football Federation (AFA) said, describing the first pope from Latin America and the southern hemisphere as a generational talent who “never hogged the ball” and who showed the world “the importance of having an Argentine captain,
Noelvi Marte on Sunday had seven RBIs and hit his first career grand slam with a drive off infielder Jorge Mateo, while Austin Wynn had a career-high six RBIs as the Cincinnati Reds scored their most runs in 26 years in a 24-2 rout of the Baltimore Orioles. Marte finished with five hits, including his eighth-inning homer off Mateo. Wynn hit a three-run homer in the ninth off catcher Gary Sanchez. Cincinnati scored its most runs since a 24-12 win against the Colorado Rockies on May 19, 1999, and finished with 25 hits. Baltimore allowed its most runs since a 30-3 loss to
RSS