Vandals hit Elaho logging sites
Spikes are driven into bridges and heavy equipment is vandalized. Damage is estimated at $40,000 by company officials.
Copyright 2000 Pacific Press Ltd, The Vancouver Sun
October 4, 2000
By Glenn Bohn
Hundreds of spikes were found driven into logging road bridges Tuesday and heavy equipment was immobilized in what forest company officials said was the worse single day of vandalism in the Elaho Valley since anti-logging protests began there in 1977.
Keith Rush, forester and general manager of coast operations for International Forest Products estimated the damage at at least $40,000.
''It's pretty frightening,'' Rush said. ''This is the second time in three weeks.''
On Sept. 15, when a B.C. Supreme Court judge imposed unprecedented one-year jail terms on two Elaho logging protesters that he found guilty of criminal contempt of court, loggers found more than 200 spikes in one bridge, on the only road into the Elaho.
On Tuesday logging crews driving into the valley found someone had driven hundreds of spikes into four wooden bridges they needed to cross to reach their work site.
The heads of the spikes had been cut off, leaving knife-like points aimed at the tires of oncoming vehicles.
Football-sized boulders and other debris had been placed across the road, so the loggers' convoy stopped in time.
As the loggers cleared away debris, flattened the spikes and cautiously made their way up the main line logging road north of Squamish, they came across a vandalized road grader and log loader, as well as a water tank toppled across the road.
Interfor safety coordinator Dal Shemko said someone also endangered the lives of loggers in late August by removing a pin in the pulley of a logging cable used to yard trees out of a clearcut. A logger might have been hit by the cable, he said.
Shemko also noted that a logger working for another company died Sunday during an unrelated logging accident.
''It just highlights the fact that logging is the most dangerous industry in the province,'' he said.
''These workers cannot afford the stress and strain of this kind of stuff. They were held up for two or three hours this morning, waiting for bridges to be cleared and looking at their vandalized machinery. You can imagine what those guys are thinking on the job today. You're asking these people to focus on their work, and it becomes well-nigh impossible at some point in time.''
On Tuesday, for the first time since illegal protests and vandalism began in the tree farm licence three years ago, Interfor chartered a helicopter and invited Vancouver news organizations to see what vandals had done. (The Vancouver Sun is paying for the two seats it used during the $1,240-an-hour charter.)
Rush promised to show some ''pretty serious stuff'' as the helicopter flew up the Squamish Valley and passed over the second-growth forest he called a ''green mosaic'' of different-aged trees.
''I'm calling it 15 miles of vandalism,'' he said.
It starts at the first bridge the loggers came across, at Mile 22 of the mainline road up the Squamish Valley. It ends at a bridge at Mile 37, where the Elaho River flows into the Squamish River. About 300 spikes were found in the four bridges. All are one-lane log bridges bridges over creeks and rivers.
Every window in the cab of the vandalized road grader was smashed. Hose lines were cut. Gravel was poured into every lubrication point or engine part the vandals could reach, Interfor employees said.
Except for a spray- painted slogan referring to ''corporate greed,'' the vandals left no written statements.
RCMP Sergeant Gary Brine said no groups or individuals had claimed responsibility for the vandalism.
Peoples' Action for Threatened Habitat -- an environmental group described earlier by a judge as having organized and orchestrated illegal blockades in the Elaho -- didn't respond to interview requests put to its Vancouver office.
Police arrested 17 people in the Elaho on Aug. 30 -- allegedly for mischief and aiding and abetting mischief -- when one man in a log tripod blocked a logging road.