Second permanent access road to Juniper Ridge delayed further to 2027

Work on this permanent route – which had been identified as far back as 2007 – as well as the other emergency exits in Juniper Ridge began after the Canada Day fire of 2021.

While the fire did not destroy any properties, a number of Juniper residents who were trying to flee were trapped on Highland Road due to a lack of available escape routes.

“July 1, 2021 was the hardest day I’ve had as a politician,” Councillor Mike O’Reilly said at the meeting. “I remember it extremely well and the fear from our residents and really what was happening to them and them not knowing [what was happening].”

Three emergency egress routes have been set up since that fire, and the city has organized evacuation route tours in 2023 and this past Saturday (July 26) so residents could familiarize themselves with two of those exits — Juniper East and on Coldwater Drive.

The Juniper East emergency exit connects Kicking Horse Drive to Valleyview Drive while the one on Coldwater Drive connects to High Canada Place in Rose Hill. The third emergency exit — on Galore Drive — also connects to Rose Hill Road.

Map showing the exits from the Juniper Ridge subdivision of Kamloops as of April 2023. (Image Credit: City of Kamloops)

As for the permanent route, Kwiatkowski said an update is expected to go before city council in the near future, though it is not clear when that might happen.

“Ideally, we’d like to start clearing this fall and do all the earthworks next year and then all the roadworks and utilities in 2027,” he said. “That’s kind of the timeline. There is a fair bit of work up there, if you were to walk and look at the gullies.”

Kwiatkowski also said the city, the developers of the Juniper West neighbourhood and area residents all want this project to move along as quickly as possible.

“We all are very keen,” he said. “We plan to be bringing something forward to council very quickly as we look to paper up an action plan to move this along. We will do a formal announcement hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Concerns about Juniper access routes remain

Some residents took to social media to voice their frustration after a two-vehicle crash on Highland Road last Friday (July 25) led to a number of traffic woes as Highland Road was closed to all traffic for a while.

“We have an accident at the bottom of Juniper Hill Road right now and nobody is able to go up or down. Both emergency exits are locked off,” Roxanne Engli said in a public Facebook post.

“[Four] years after the fires that were a serious threat to Juniper [and] nothing official has been done. We need two permanent routes in and out now.”

Others responded to that post and suggested that while the crash was an inconvenience, it wasn’t an emergency that affected the entire neighbourhood.

“I have been in Juniper over 30 years and we have only experienced one interface fire and minor traffic incidents on Highland,” an anonymous commenter responded.

“It’s an accident and accidents take time to clear,” added Nikki Brown. “It may be an inconvenience but think about the people that were in the accident and how serious it is.”

Speaking at the May 13 Committee of the Whole meeting, Councillor Bill Sarai said he has heard from Juniper residents who were concerned that the gates to those emergency egress routes are locked.

“If an event ever happened again, who will be the go-to person to open that gate when its locked?” he asked.

Protective Services Director Ken Uzeloc noted that if the city’s Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) is activated, the decision to open those gates will made by EOC staff in conjunction with Kamloops Fire Rescue.

“If it’s just a normal response, it will be the fire department that determines when evacuations need to happen,” Uzeloc said. “We will not be opening the gates up in advance because all that is going to lead to is people using the road when they shouldn’t be using the road and causing issues.”

He said the plan divides Juniper Ridge into zones and sectors, and emergency management staff know homes and people are in each of those sectors.

“We will alert people who need to be ready to go and we will evacuate those based on priority,” Uzeloc said. “We’ll be working with CSOs who will be opening the gates from the bottom up and with the RCMP who will be managing traffic as evacuations are happening.”

The City of Kamloops has previously said that there will be similar evacuation route tours in other neighbourhoods once those emergency routes are finalized.

“We’re establishing similar route mapping in collaboration with our [Geographic Information Services] department and we’ll produce those as they’re completed,” Emergency Preparedness Manager Ty Helgason said in May.

“The neighbourhoods are being done in order of prioritization based on fire risk, flood risk, complexity of egress, infrastructure and a variety of other criteria.”

Uzeloc added the plan is to divide the entire city into evacuation zones and sectors just like in Juniper.

“We call them tactical evacuations for a reason,” Uzeloc said.

“It is to evacuate in stages so that it can be done orderly and effectively otherwise you do end up in a situation like last time where communications [came] from the wrong individual and we ended up with the problem that was witnessed by everyone.”

by Victor Kaisar

Second permanent access road to Juniper Ridge delayed further to 2027

Concerns about Juniper access routes remain

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