An estimated 3,000 trees were blown down in Vancouver's Stanley Park during a fierce windstorm on Dec. 15. The west side of the park is still closed as crews continue their cleanup efforts.
Damage to Stanley Park is shocking
'It looks like a bomb went off,' as Province team tours site of devastation
Kent Spencer, The Province
Published: Friday, December 22, 2006
The damage to Stanley Park is shocking.
Province photographer Sam Leung and I had our first look behind the barricades yesterday.
The trees are gone along Park Drive at Prospect Point. Remember the pleasant green light falling through the overhead canopy during the summer? It was like a magic kingdom.
No more. That quaint tree-covered lane is now a useless mass of junk, good only for firewood.
Where there was a closed-in feeling, now there is only sky, giving an unwanted feeling of openness.
Chainsaw crews have cleared the road, doing an amazing job of climbing up bent-over timbers and sawing them off partway up without harming themselves.
At eye-level one senses the enormity of the carnage rather than taking it all in.
In its utter destruction, it is impressive. Thirty-metre timbers snapped off in midsection; four-metre-high chunks of mud and root from the base of fallen-over giants, which lie invisible among the mass of brush; four-metre strips of bark ripped off in the death throes.
"It looks like a bomb went off," said Sam.
Saws have been going full-time to reopen the road, but trees are still hung up and ready to go. It looks like it will be dangerous for some time to come.
At one point, a pair of bald eagles circled high above. They were making odd "ooh-ooh-ooh" sounds, like distress calls. Sam explained why. The park's ecology society told him the eagles had lost their homes. Two of four nests, which can weigh up to 500 kilograms, were blown down.
We weren't the only curious ones.
Helicopters buzzed overhead. One circled a dozen times, the people inside no doubt as amazed as we were by the scene of destruction.
Occasionally, a person appeared, silently taking pictures, like they were looking at a grave. No words were exchanged. It wasn't a place for conversation.
kspencer@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Province 2006
not much i can say.
Prev
It was actually 5 blocks away, and I didn't see it up close until High school. (It's beside the high school)
Linear Mode
