When The Rains Hit, Highway Thru Hell Had Cameras On The Highways

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Highway Thru Hell

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When: Mondays

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Where: Discovery Canada

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Since 2012, Highway Thru Hell has followed highway recovery crews as they’ve come to the aid of jackknifed semis and stranded motorists. But no one was prepared for November’s extreme weather events.

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“We know that big rain events do tend to bring mudslides,” said Nicole Tomlinson, showrunner for the series. “We featured one in the show a few years back in the Fraser Valley. We were aware of the huge precipitation event coming the Friday before, and then on Sunday things started to happen west of Hope. There have been mudslides there and on Highway 7. We were prepared to respond to that.

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“It came as a complete shock that the precipitation events wrecked the Coquihalla, wrecked Highway 1 and wrecked Highway 8. That wasn’t even in the outer realms of our imagination. Never did anyone go, ‘Oh wow, this could take all the highways out.’”

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Highway Thru Hell is a B.C.-produced and filmed series that documents maintenance and rescue crews as they fight to keep the province’s trucking routes open. Since filming generally takes place in October and November, the atmospheric rivers fell on the show’s watch, with six crews already in Merritt, Hope, and the Fraser Valley.

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Tomlinson and her crews were at the Coquihalla with cameras rolling when the water began to flow and overtake the highway, and maintenance crews were telling people to turn around.

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“Trucks were dropping their trailers and people were abandoning their vehicles,” she said.

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They were also present for “a wild battle” to save one of the bridges on the highway after the first rains subsided.

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“We were there with highway crews using big machines and whatever they possibly could to save the infrastructure.”

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Over the years Tomlinson, who’s been with the show since its inception and has also worked “in the field” filming footage for the show, has grown fond of the Coquihalla.

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“Oh my gosh, the Coquihalla is like a person to me. It’s been in my life in a very big way for a decade. And a lot of our crew have been on the show for years.”

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As the show’s point-person, she faced wanting to capture what was happening while respecting people’s need for privacy.

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“When there’s so much at stake, that’s when you want to be there as a storyteller. But that’s when people least want to expose themselves. Other media will come and go, but I think the fact that we’d been in those communities for years meant that people invited us in. They shared their most vulnerable selves when they felt that their homes and businesses were at risk, when they were hurting for their community and scared about what was going to come next. They let us in. I’m grateful for that.”

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She’s also grateful to all the long-haul truckers, the maintenance crews and everyone else who persevered through the catastrophe.

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“They’ve never been called on in this way before. They’re tired and frazzled, but they’re out there and they’re rallying so that we can have the creature comforts that make our lives and homes what we want them to be. We captured some of those stories as well. We had a driver get very emotional trying to get home the other day on Highway 3. These are real people, and they are risking their lives so we can have the things we feel we need for a comfortable and rewarding life.”

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We won’t see the footage of the rescue operations until sometime next year, though.

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“We just finished delivering Season 10,” said Tomlinson. “It’s 18 one-hour programs so it’s a huge endeavour. It goes through a lot of post-production.” The last three episodes of Season 10 airs along with a 10th anniversary special in January.

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