This image from the Burnaby Fire Department’s 2015 risk assessment shows how a tank farm fire could risk the adjacent conservation area. With construction going on in the area, Bowcock said there are concerns that heavy machinery could spark a grass fire in the area-in fact, he said the fire department has responded to at least 1 grass fire on the Trans Mountain property.Ī fire there, he said, could put the tanks at risk. “The greatest risk at this time would be the greater risk of grass fires in and around that facility, the greater accumulation of heat on metal surfaces that could cause ignition sources,” he said. That means there’s a component of the mixture that would be only a bit more flammable at 20 C than at 40 C, Bowcock said. The pipeline carries a “fairly wide range hydrocarbon”-bitumen that would evaporate into gas, and therefore be flammable, at a higher temperature mixed with a solvent that would turn to gas at a lower temperature. Heat waves like this one are only expected to become more common, CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe said over the weekend, and that kind of weather creates a tinderbox for wildfires.īurnaby Fire Chief Chris Bowcock said the high temperatures may not directly increase the risk of a tank fire.
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That record was then expected to be broken again on Monday, with temperatures forecast to crack the 47 C mark in Fraser Canyon yesterday. That work is expected to start sometime in 2020.As the planet heats up and climate change brings more extreme weather like this week’s heat wave, Burnaby’s fire chief says there could be an increasing risk of a storage tank fire on Burnaby Mountain.īC experienced record-shattering high temperatures over the past couple of days, with Lytton seeing the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada on Sunday, at 46.6 C. That section of pipeline will require boring a 2.6-kilometre tunnel through Burnaby Mountain. The terminal and tank farm will be connected by pipeline. There, in addition to the expansion of the Westridge terminal, 14 new oil storage tanks will be built at Trans Mountain’s tank farm on Burnaby Mountain, bringing the total number of tanks to 26. In B.C., some of the most intensive construction work will be done in Burnaby. The work also involves extending the foreshore. In the Lower Mainland, much of the work going on now is concentrated at the Westridge site, where barges, cranes, derricks and other heavy machinery are working to expand the existing terminal, which will have three berths for oil tankers. Security perimeters have been cast around some of the key construction areas, like the Burnaby tank farm and Westridge Marine Terminal. “These projects are nation-building in their scale because, I think, it will be reasonable to call upon other Canadians to augment the workforce.”
“I think every British Columbian who’s qualified to do this kind of work will be busy,” Campbell said.
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At peak construction, each spread will employ about 350 construction workers, tradespeople, truck drivers and labourers. “We’re definitely excited to see it get underway because it’s going to mean an awful lot of employment for British Columbians and Albertans,” said Patrick Campbell, Canadian pipeline director for the International Union of Operating Engineers.Ĭampbell’s union represents about 35 per cent of the workers on three of the pipeline segments or “spreads” in B.C. Those numbers were originally expected to reach 3,000 by the end of this year. But the $7.4 billion to $9.3 billion pipeline twinning project is now under construction.Īlso going ahead is $150 million worth of investments in new vessels and bases by the Western Canada Marine Response Corp., which paused its expansion following a Federal Court of Appeal decision that quashed the original approval of the pipeline twinning project.Īs of September 30, 2,200 workers had been hired, and are now working, mostly at either end of the pipeline, in Burnaby and Edmonton.
Given all the protests and legal and political setbacks it has suffered, that skepticism was understandable. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted in mid-July that the Trans Mountain expansion project “is going forward, and work is getting started this construction season,” a typical reply was “I’ll believe it when I see it.” NovemTrans Mountain Burnaby terminal construction will take 3 years
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