The collapse of roads is only the beginning of the damage to our infrastructure from heavy rains, which will increase in intensity due to climate change.
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“There must be a reengineering of our infrastructures because in the past, we never thought of building these roads taking into account such weather conditions”, supports Philippe Gachon, professor of climatology at the Department of geography of the UQAM.
In several regions of Quebec, including Estrie and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, roads have collapsed due to the torrential rains of the past few days.
More and more intense
“Our infrastructures were created 50 or 75 years ago with engineering that predicted X amount of precipitation. With global warming, we can have more precipitation in a short time or continuously,” explains André Monette, meteorologist for MétéoMédia, who also did a master’s degree on this subject.
Part of Route 243 was damaged in the township municipality of Potton, in Estrie.
Courtesy Municipality of the Township of Potton
Episodes of heavy rain like the one we just experienced will indeed be more and more numerous, continues Mr. Monette.
“It is something that can be favored by climate change. Since it is warmer, the atmosphere can hold more humidity and there is more abundant precipitation.
Rethink everything
Worse still, receiving so much rain in the middle of summer during a warming climate means that the soil will be less resilient, which will promote flooding.
A sunken road in Saint-Raymond, in the Capitale-Nationale region.
Martin Lavoie
“Following heat waves which can cause the soil to dry out, the first intense rains, instead of infiltrating, run off,” explains Mr. Gachon. It’s going to have major effects on flooding and runoff factors.”
Thus, it is downright all our infrastructures that will suffer, which will force us to rethink the way we build.
“Our sewers, our roads, our asphalt: the waterproofing that we have made of all this will promote runoff and therefore generate floods and types of floods that we have never seen,” warns Mr. Gachon.
The expert also believes that our engineers are not yet sufficiently trained to build taking into account the effects of climate change.
“Europeans have been reviewing their courses and their curriculum within engineering training for years. We, in Quebec and in Canada, we watch the train pass, ”he laments.