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A January to forget

Bright, blue skies and glowing sunshine envelope our office Thursday morning as we pen this editorial. It's a far cry from what the month of January brought. Days and days of rain, high winds and storms pounded the Coast.

Bright, blue skies and glowing sunshine envelope our office Thursday morning as we pen this editorial.

It's a far cry from what the month of January brought. Days and days of rain, high winds and storms pounded the Coast. Let's just say we're happy January is over and February is here.

We started 2006 with a bang - torrential rain on New Year's Day and high winds creating havoc up and down the Coast.BC Hydro was run off their feet dealing with downed power lines, while fire crews and police cleared streets and assisted wherever they were needed.

Then this week, Mother Nature gave us another taste of her fury.

Tuesday brought another day of heavy rain and high winds, with more power outages, downed trees and heartaches for our emergency crews.

If you haven't done so already, be sure to say thanks for our firefighters, police and hydro crews. They all did a fantastic job this month clearing streets, repairing power lines and keeping us safe.

Tuesday's last day of rain was one for the record books. The month was so wet, in fact, that a record was set in Vancouver for most rain days in January at 29. The old record was 27 days set in 1953. On average, a typical January has 19 days of precipitation.

If you're going to have a month like we did, we can at least take some pride in achieving a new record. But that really is little consolation.

Let's hope more days like Thursday are in store this month. Thank God January is over.

Send a messageThe Town of Gibsons is dealing with an interesting situation this week.

Council ordered property owners to tear down a rock retaining wall after it was determined to be a safety hazard. The Town has given the owners one month to rectify the situation.

The owners started the work without proper permits or consultation from the town. This could have been a disastrous situation, but luckily it was discovered in time before any real damage was done. And although the owners and the local contractor are horrified by the situation and have pledged to make it right, they should have done their research before hand.

It's still not clear if the town will take any further action against the owners. We think they should. Send a message to other developers and contractors that this is not the way to do business.