HISTORICAL NEWS SEARCH - Government of British Columbia

federal tidal surveyor Bob Brown, had the wave struck at high tide, it would be very possible there would have been
considerable damage to housing at Kitamaat Village.
The 20-ft. (6 m) wave and a lengthy ocean turbulence, which followed, left a large warehouse and a pollution
control shed hanging precariously over the edge of the dock and would have to be replaced. The Northland Kemano IV,
a 145-ft. (43.5 m) covered barge was torn loose from its moorings and swept onto tidal flats, but was not damaged.
Hardest hit was the dock owned by Northland Navigation Co. A 225 x 40 to 60-ft. (67.5 m x 12-18 m) section of dock
was wiped right into the sea. According to Northland manager Don Murray, a quarter million dollars was a
conservative damage estimate.
Murray felt the wave was caused by an undersea hillslide, possibly in the area where Rivtow Straits was
dredging in Half Moon Bay. Here, the previous fall Rivtow had started work on a tug tie-up facility. An estimated
$75,000 damage was done as the area was gutted of roadwork and a bulkhead. Rivtow manager Capt. Tim Stangroom
reported “everything gone” from the installation. The Rivtow office barge sustained little damage after being torn from
its moorings at the Northland dock. At the Eurocan Pulp and Paper Co. dock, the estimated damage was close to
$200,000 to dolphins (pilings) and logbooms. Comptroller Herb Smart said 25 dolphins had been broken off by the
wave.
Gillnetters belonging to Allan Williams and Dan Paul were sunk and a packer owned by Walter Wilson
sustained an undetermined amount of damage. Lines from two new boats became wrapped around dolphins but Island
Point packer was swept to shore and back by the rush of water.
Chief Tom Robinson reported damage to harbour breakwater and considerable destruction of canoes and
small boats. He believed the wave and ocean disturbance were the result of man-made conditions, because “we’ve been
here hundreds of years and there is nothing; now, all of a sudden, there are these two occurrences.” He speculated the
wave and the one in October 1974 might have been caused by silt build-ups from Eurocan.
Robinson estimated the damage at Kitamaat Village at between $50,000-100,000. Provincial officials
estimated the former figure as low. Eighty percent of the damage done at the village was caused by floating logs
“going 20-25 mph (32-40 km/h) hitting canoes, boats and floats.” Federal fisheries officer John Macdonald ascertained
the height of the wave at Kitamaat Village at approximately 20 ft. (6 m).
Reports differed on how the wave and subsequent waves came in. Albert Walker noted that in the 1974
tsunami one of the waves was bigger than the others. This time, the waves were so close together that “they were just
boiling, it was continuous.”
Later, 10 mi. (16 km) down the channel, Marshall Grykuliak noticed what at first appeared to be a riptide
near Costi Island. The sea was dead calm when a small, 6-in. (15 cm) curl of water passed beneath his boat coming
from the direction of Kitimat.
Stangroom came down to the Kitamaat Village float when the second wave hit. He estimated the first two
waves at 12-15 ft. (3.6-4.5 m). A fourth he felt was so huge that it looked like it would break any minute. He looked
toward Eurocan and the whole of the booming grounds were dry “with a surf like on the west coast of Vancouver
Island.” The incoming water “just boiled over the bank, ripped loose logbooms and dolphins and took them out to sea.”
The first wave had already taken out part of the Northland dock with the second one getting the Eurocan booming
grounds. “There was 12-15 ft. of boiling, swelling, surging water right at mouth of Eurocan. The dolphins there are 20
ft. (6 m) out of the water, and I don’t remember seeing them behind the water.”
On April 28, a second ocean disturbance occurred when an acre (0.4 ha) of land fell into the sea at half Moon
Bay, north of the Northland dock. It happened between 10 a.m.-5 p.m. without any pronounced ocean disturbances.
------------------------------------
*1) There is considerable evidence to show that submarine slides predominantly occur associated with the low tide
(Murty 1979). The provincial government engaged Golder, Brawner & Associates Ltd. to conduct a soil analysis of
(Half) Moon Bay. (The Vancouver Sun, May 1, 1975).
July 26-27, 1975
Event type: Flooding and mudslide.
Precipitation: Not available.
Source: The Province, July 2 and 3, 1975; Coates 1992 (pp. 256-57).
On July 26 and 27, washouts forced the closure of the Rocky Mountain section of the Alaska Highway. Following
heavy rain on July 26-27, a section of the Alaska Highway closed after its washed out in about 14 places and three bridges
were knocked out. Climatically, it was a replay of the previous year, another summer of exceptionally heavy rain, when a
series of washouts stranded hundreds of travellers in the same area. The rapidity and severity of the runoff, this year, caused
greatest damage to bridges and proportionally less to the road surface. *1) For at least six days, the Stewart-Cassiar highway
was the only road link between British Columbia and the Yukon.
At Mile 32 between Dawson Creek-Fort St. John, travel was also restricted to one-lane after a mudslide covered
the road. About 800 people were stranded in Fort Nelson and 80 were trapped between downed bridges along the 355-mi.
(568 km) stretch of highway between Watson Lake-Fort Nelson. By July 3, there was still the possibility that some people
might be trapped between Mile 410-437, including the stretch where the Racing River bridge was still out.
125