Season's Greetings from Thurber
As the Holidays approach, our thoughts turn to a stretch of Highway 3 that, one year ago, stood between families and the people they were travelling to see. In December 2025, an atmospheric river hit the Lower Mainland and Southern Interior of British Columbia just in time for holiday travel, damaging 22 locations along the roadway and impacting the travel plans of people hoping to see loved ones and commercial transporters delivering holiday gifts.
The BC Ministry of Transportation and Transit brought Thurber in to support its damage assessment and response. One of our main areas of focus was a 50-meter section of road that had been washed away and was impassible to road users. As the geotechnical lead for the project, Thurber’s team worked day and night in adverse conditions to assess the embankment’s stability and provide geotechnical recommendations for a temporary detour. Our team’s hard work saw the highway reopen to traffic in time for Christmas day, just 10 days after the initial washout.
It was a race against the season, but not our first. In 2021, another atmospheric river triggered the Seabird Island Slide, a rockslide-initiated debris flow that buried Highway 7 near Abbotsford under 82,000 m³ of debris. Thurber supported the emergency response to restore traffic safely, then partnered on a long-term, climate-resilient debris-flow mitigation system to protect the corridor for years to come. Our work on this site earned the Transportation Association of Canada’s Climate Action Achievement Award.
Atmospheric rivers are becoming more frequent and more intense as our climate changes: heavier rain, drier dry spells, and snowpacks caught in repeated freeze-thaw cycles. All of it puts more strain on the roads we depend on, especially during the time of year when we are trying to get home to our loved ones.
As these events become more common, so does Thurber’s commitment to our communities. Whether it's emergency response on existing highways or geohazard assessments that help route the next generation of infrastructure around danger before it's built, Thurber will be there so the road home stays open, however hard the weather tries to close it.