Ten years ago a windstorm destroyed 10,000 trees in Stanley Park
Posted December 11, 2016 7:37 pm.
Last Updated December 11, 2016 7:41 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Ten years ago this week, Stanley Park took the brunt of an epic windstorm.
Winds reached 120 km/hr. Roughly 10,000 trees were wiped out, representing about 41 hectares of the park.
“It was quite distressing, really. The immediate reaction was unhappiness,” says Bill Stephen, an urban forest specialist for the Vancouver Park Board.
He and his team were the first people on the scene the next morning. He recalls that even getting to the service yard was task, given all the debris on the ground.
The first order of business was to open up the causeway and the route to the Vancouver Aquarium.
Another park feature took almost a year to repair – the seawall.
“When the trees had toppled, they pulled the slope down with it. There were major unstable areas. There were mudslides. The surf itself had undercut the seawall, too. So it was damaged from underneath and above,” says Stephen.
The park board says restoration of the park cost $10 million. Many individuals and companies donated to the cause. Jim Pattison made a personal donation of $1 million.
Stephen is pleased with how the park has rehabilitated itself over the years.
“If you look around on the forest floor, you’ll see a lot of trees that we planted that are now three metres tall. There’s a lot of vibrant native plants on the forest floor that taken over.”
Though the storm was devastating, Stephen says the view from Prospect Point was improved, thanks to the swath of trees lost because of the wind.
He points out they’ve learned a lot about the park’s ecosystem in the last ten years. He says the forest is managed better, they know more about the park’s natural drainage system and they have even identified some threatened species, like the Lewis’s Woodpecker and Brandt’s Cormorant, which frequent the park.
