Montreal’s air quality has been affected by western fires.
Updates from August, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The owner of the Old Montreal building that burned in March 2023, killing seven, had the temerity to take the city to court, alleging that it had been negligent in its inspections. This week, a Superior Court judge gave him the bum’s rush.
Nicholas
But only because he was late in filing. Judge said he still gets to sue the city over faults by firefighters fighting the fire (doesn’t mean he’ll win). We might still pay him money, while the criminal investigation crawls along.
Kate
I’ll be spitting fire if the city ever gives that man a cent.
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Kate
Businesses near Friday’s water main break have sustained losses while 150,000 households are boiling water till further notice and bus routes are rerouted. More photos from CBC and coverage from the BBC.
Blork
Imagine walking by that spot just as it erupted. BOOM! You could literally drown by walking down the street.
Ian
On the wrong spot you could be blown into the air and have your body found in HoMa. Consider that water pressure can lift manholes on Sherbrooke just in a heavy rain, the amount of water pressure in that blowout is no joke.
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Kate
Weekend notes for mid-August from La Presse, CityCrunch, mtl.org, CultMTL, Sarah’s Weekend List.
Weekend road closures from CTV, although Friday’s water main break may add a few.
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Kate
La Presse’s Maxime Bergeron tells about the experience of a St‑Henri resident when the cushions on her balcony furniture were stolen by someone at the nearby Maison Benoît-Labre, and she wanted help getting them back.
Ian
When I lived in St Henri in the 90s somebody stole my wind chimes. WHERE WAS MAXIME THEN, EH
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Kate
A major water main break near the access to the Jacques‑Cartier bridge plunged the morning commute into chaos for many. Photos show an outrageous geyser.
Adding at noon from radio news: power has been cut off in the area for safety, and there’s a boil water advisory in Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve and Montreal East for the moment. Papineau metro station is being protected with sandbags.
JaneyB
Oh good lord! Now that’s a twist for the commute.
Ian
Lots more pics & video from TVA here – pretty insane!
Joey
The transition from ‘things at present are generally OK’ to ‘at any given moment we are dealing with one or more floods, fires, ice storms or heat waves’ is happening much more quickly than I think a lot of climate-change-aware people anticipated.
CE
I don’t see how a water main break has much to do with climate change.
Kate
The water mains are getting a workout as the ground freezes and thaws more often. I don’t know if it’s the only issue but it has to be a factor.
Joey
More flooding = more strain on aging infrastructure = more ‘small’ problems (basic water main break) & more likelihood of ‘major’ problems (i.e., today’s mess).
In addition, even small floods can have devastating consequences that, ultimately, will make more and more homes uninsurable.
Moreover, even if today’s episode is the result of poor infrastructure, negligence, criminality or a mere accident (remember when the McGill reservoir parts of downtown because a construction worker hit a pipe?), the system is less resilient because of climate change. So while the cause of the break may not be climate change related, the impact will likely be exacerbated by climate change.
walkerp
And just think about how much impact a record-breaking downpour of 175 mm of water has on the water system.
The climate change-aware people that I know are not surprised at all. Scientists have been saying it’s going to be exponential for decades and now we are starting to see it. It is really, really scary. The only good thing is that may be the damage that is coming will finally start to wake people up to make the real change we need to at least mitigate the damage we have already done.CE
All these arguments make sense although I think a water main break is a very small consequence of climate change and likely could have happened even if there we weren’t experiencing the changes we are now. I feel like when every little disaster that can be tangibly blamed on climate change is said to be a result of it, it kind of cheapens the argument for many people.
@Walkerp, I remember reading a lot from the more alarmist side of the climate change discussion around 2005-10 and the big thing they talked about was the cascading effect of climate change where one change would affect other changes and so on which would snowball into an unpredictable monster. A lot of those arguments were sidelined or thought to be problems we wouldn’t see until the end of the century (thus giving us time to fix them). A lot of what I remember reading then is coming true now, and it’s just getting started. Unfortunately, I don’t think people are going to wake up and I think we’re too far into it to turn the ship around.
Ian
“I feel like when every little disaster that can be tangibly blamed on climate change is said to be a result of it, it kind of cheapens the argument for many people.” 100%, this. It’s also a convenient cop-out.
I suspect that we will find out that the major water main break has to do with mechanical failure as a result of incompetence, much like why our potholes come back each year while the city blames our freeze-thaw cycle. Toronto’s climate isn’t substantially different from ours, please show me the major water main breaks there – or even regular water main breaks anywhere near the regularity that Montreal with its decades of poor maintenance enjoys. Ottawa has WORSE winters than us, why don’t they have potholes like we do?
Perplexing. /sMontreal is constantly under construction precisely to prevent this kind of infrastructure failure due to a lack of regular maintenance, and the cause of this lack of regular maintenance can be directly attributed to greedy, lazy, buck-passing politicians at every level for decades before the “roadwork nightmare” was made necessary. The only reason we are getting our bridges rebuilt is because they were literally in danger of collapse.. that’s not because of the climate, either.
Joey
@CE it feels like a majority of climate change news consists of “scientists assumed X wouldn’t happen for decades and when it did happen it would be gradual, possibly intense; turns out it’s happening now and it’s worse than expected and it is causing Y, which scientists hadn’t anticipated.”
Kevin
If something goes wrong in Montreal/Quebec, the first things to suspect are corruption and incompetence. See Big O, Blvd. De Souvenir, Viger Tunnel…
walkerp
I’m genuinely quite baffled by your perception of how scientists have been talking about climate change. Maybe I am misreading you, but for most of last ten years, my reading has been “we are reaching a tipping point beyond which the impacts of the change in the average temperature will start to become exponential.” There was no consensus on exactly when that tipping point would be but that when it came, we would start seeing an increase in extreme weather events that would get worse and worse.
In any case, it appears we have passed the tipping point so what we perceived in the past is probably not worth arguing about.
Also, stupid to argue climate change vs infrastructure. We need to fight on both fronts: radically changing our behaviour to stop the warming for the long term and building up our infrastructure to mitigate the damage that is coming.
And yes, Quebec corruption and inefficiency is most likely a significant factor in this water main burst, but please let’s not act like Toronto and Ottawa are bastions of infrastructural excellence.
Ian
Oh they’re not, but the infra is better than ours on any given day. And when it does fail, they certainly don’t make up excuses like our glorious leaders.
It’s really not stupid to argue cliamte change vs infrastructure, they are two separate things that can and should be dealt with in different ways. Saying “my hands are tied” is such a classic Quebec move that it barely merits mention, let alone excuse.
Chris
>The only good thing is that may be the damage that is coming will finally start to wake people up…
Thanks for the good laugh walkerp! I needed one today.
Ian 20:24 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
I was noticing the suspiciously red mid-afternoon sun yesterday and wondered about that, as according to the SOPFEU fire maps there’s only a few fires up north.
maggie rose 21:06 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
Bluesky Firesmoke.ca is interesting to watch. Vermont has been affected with high atmosphere smoke from Canada and when it gets mentioned in their forecasts, I figure Montreal will be too. I just like Gary the weather guy on WCAX at night. The movement of smoke has been very changeable in the past week, sometimes missing us, then shifting quickly. https://bluesky4.eos.ubc.ca/forecasts/current/
mare 21:45 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
I went for a nice cooling bike ride just now but had to return home. It wasn’t cool, I couldn’t breathe and thus it wasn’t very nice. The moon is very beautiful though.
Can’t imagine how it is living close to those fires.
MarcG 08:45 on 2024-08-17 Permalink
Went for a walk/jog in the woods yesterday and wore an N95 for the terrible air and was surprised by the nasty looks I got. It’s not like there’s only one life preserver and I’m hoarding it, they only cost a $1!
EmilyG 12:59 on 2024-08-17 Permalink
Yeah, I thought the light looked more orange than usual, even though I was indoors.