Vancouver Island businesses begin to bounce back after Hwy. 4 wildfire closure

Businesses in the Alberni Valley and farther west are beginning their financial recoveries, as the key highway into their communities partially reopens.

Highway 4 opened to single-lane traffic on Friday, after weeks of closures due to the Cameron Bluffs wildfire.

“We’re all very excited to have that road open again,” said Twin City Brewing owner Aaron Colyn. “I think the community is excited to have things kind of come back to normal.”

The collective losses business suffered during the 17-day closure aren’t known, but many are reporting major financial losses.

“If we can’t get products to deliver to people and sell to people, we are absolutely dead in the water,” said Jowsey’s Furniture owner Mark Norn.

Even though a detour route was set up between Port Alberni and Youbou, Norn said freight catering to his shop wasn’t able to move through. He figures the store has lost up to $60,000 through the closure, and caused them to rely on the support of neighbours.

“We have stuff sitting in Nanaimo that’s been kindly stored by other furniture stores, competitors even,” he said.

Norn said furniture products for his store are flowing again but there are delays on items.

Twin City Brewing’s owner said his team relied on community collaboration too.

“A fellow brewery in Cumberland actually offered to fly us grain on a small Cessna plane into the Port Alberni airport so that we could continue to brew beer,” said Colyn.

He’s launching a summer ale to toast Cumberland Brewing Company this week, as the crew joins many in welcoming the return of tourists.

“We almost cancelled our trip,” said traveller Andrew Moore. “We saw online it was opening this weekend. Lucky us, we were able to go.”

He was bound for Tofino when he stopped in Port Alberni.

The general manager of Tofino’s Long Beach Lodge Resort tells CTV News she hasn’t heard of any accommodators that haven’t suffered a significant drop in occupancy during the closure.

“To have this throughout almost three weeks of June was a significant hit to the business right at the start of peak season,” said general manager Samantha Hackett.

“Our occupancy over the weekend was not as high as it normally would be had this situation obviously not happened,” said Hackett. “We had some occupancy increases but we were still at only about 60 per cent for the weekend.”

The high-end resort is confident going forward now that the road has reopened.

The province had to introduce safety measures to prevent debris from falling onto Highway 4 through a seven-kilometre stretch from Koen Road to Cathedral Grove, before reopening that section Friday.

“This hopefully prompts a serious look at a second route in and out of town. A viable route. A shorter route. A paved route,” said Norn.

There are plans for a full reopening of Highway 4 in July.

“For the businesses anyways, we feel very confident going forward with the road and the access and even the detour staying open,” said Hackett. “It really helps give people options and lots of flexibility now.”