Delivery delay: Impact of B.C. highway closures will soon be felt in Alberta
Grudev Sandhu and his truck full of frozen food are supposed to be in Surrey, B.C. right now.
Instead, five days after leaving Toronto, he's parked beside the highway west of Calgary, waiting for further direction now that part of his route is washed away.
"I cannot keep going," said Sandhu. "The company is trying to see if I can unload in Calgary then I will return from here to Toronto."
Sandhu says he's slept in his tractor-trailer the last two nights as he awaits word from head office.
Major highways and rail routes in southern B.C. are impassable after days of torrential rain and flooding.
Jesse Meyer was hauling grain from north of Grande Prairie to Abbotsford when he got caught between washed out roads.
"We can't even go back and we can't go forward, we really have no option right now," said Meyer "We are in our truck so we can sleep here and we have some extra food. We are comfortable, we just don't know how long we are going to be stranded here."
Experts say it could be a while.
"If you think of all the routes we have between Calgary Edmonton and Vancouver this is the first time I'm aware of where every single thing is cut off," said Kent Fellows of the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy.
With roads and train tracks closed, and the Trans Mountain Pipeline taken offline as a precaution, nothing is moving, That means the impact of the flooding will be felt by people far from it.
"This isn't a slow down, this is a shutdown," says Fellows, "The longer this takes the more you are going to see shortages at stores and increasing prices of the things we can get."
It's believed up to 100 vehicles could still be stranded by mudslides or washed out roads and there is no timeline on when they'll be free.
Meyer says he just wants to get home.
"We just don't know how long we are going to be stuck here," he said. "The restaurant here also says they are almost out of food. There are quite a few people here as well."
It's estimated that roughly 10 per cent of vehicles travelling between Calgary and Vancouver are transporting products for resale.
Companies are now being advised to keep their products in warehouses until the roads reopen or alternative routes are found.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Cargo ship had engine maintenance in port before Baltimore bridge collapse, officials say
The cargo ship that lost power and crashed into a bridge in Baltimore underwent 'routine engine maintenance' in port beforehand, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday.
A Nigerian woman reviewed some tomato puree online. Now she faces jail
A Nigerian woman who wrote an online review of a can of tomato puree is facing imprisonment after its manufacturer accused her of making a “malicious allegation” that damaged its business.
Far North police 'dispatch' polar bear stalking schoolyard
Police and local hunters in an Ontario Far North First Nation community have “dispatched” a polar that was showing abnormal behaviour and treating the area as a hunting ground.
Donald Trump assails judge and his daughter after gag order in N.Y. hush-money criminal case
Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at the New York judge who put him under a gag order that bars him from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in his upcoming hush-money criminal trial.
Families shocked after Niagara Falls hotel cancels bookings made year in advance of solar eclipse
After having the foresight to book their Niagara Falls hotel rooms more than a year in advance, several families planning to take in the solar eclipse next month were shocked to find out their reservations had been cancelled.
B.C. rescuers face 'high likelihood' of failure to reunite orphaned orca with pod
The race to reunite an orphaned orca calf that’s stuck in a shallow lagoon with a neighbouring pod has entered its fifth day, and a marine scientist says the clock is ticking.
Video shows police interrupting auto theft in progress outside Toronto home
New video footage obtained by CP24 shows the attempted theft of a vehicle in a North York driveway earlier this month that was ultimately interrupted by police.
Majority of Canadians believe in life after death: Angus Reid survey
A new survey from the Angus Reid Institute has found that a majority of Canadians believe in some form of life after death, a proportion that has held steady for decades.
MyPillow, owned by U.S. election denier Mike Lindell, formally evicted from Minnesota warehouse
A court ordered the eviction Wednesday of MyPillow from a suburban Minneapolis warehouse that it formerly used.