B.C.'s Storm of the Century

"They [her six- and four-year-old children] are getting scared."

"My heart breaks listening to my kids [ask] for water and food and I have nothing to provide for them."

Angela Howard, marooned on a B.C. flood-swept highway

"We all had moments like,'Is this it? Is this the last time we're going to see our kids'?"

"We were talking to our parents and our families, but it was just a scary situation."

Melanie Forsythe, marooned between mudslides

"People were going off the side of the road. We had cars flipped over."

"A situation where one member [of rscue crew] had to throw in a life-jacket and swim out, wade out to a car that was overturned to bring someone back [to safety]."

Mike Serr, Abbotsford, B.C. Police Chief

A woman and children who were stranded by high water due to flooding are rescued by a volunteer operating a boat in Abbotsford, B.C., on Nov. 16, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

 

Angela Howard did her best to rise to the emergency occasion for her children, rigging plastic bags to the outside of her vehicle in hopes of catching rainwater as her children slept fitfully behind her in their car seats during their interminable wait for rescue. Every now and again she would turn on the car to warm the interior, carefully watching the gas gauge. 

The monumental rains and windstorm that began on Sunday had dissipated by Tuesday, leaving the threat of flooding to remain a major risk with more evacuations ordered for large swaths of the British Columbia cities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack. Nearby farmland was under water. Farmers were helping one another to get their livestock to higher ground  The entire 8,000 population of Merritt was evacuated on Monday.

The Port of Vancouver sees $550 million in cargo pass through daily, everything from cars to food. Now that eastward routes are out of commission with road closures due to rock- and mud-slides, goods  will not be moving as they normally do, to arrive at final destinations in good time. The entire country will feel the impact of this weather catastrophe, not only the people living in the B.C. Interior.

 

Parts of southern British Columbia remained under local states of emergency on Tuesday after unrelenting rains caused severe flooding, stranding hundreds of people in their cars across multiple highways and swamping homes in the Fraser Valley. Here, people are transported on a boat after being rescued from an area that was cut off due to flooding in Abbotsford, B.C. Ben Nelms/CBC

 

"This is like having a labour strike, it's big. It will harm the flowthrough of goods for however long this lasts", increasing costs and slowing down delivery times, noted rail consultant Malcolm Cairns. All rail service to and from the port facility was halted, according to the Port of Vancouver. The province is preparing to provide 1,000 cots to be put up in shelters at churches and high schools for stranded motorists.

Mudslides and flooding had trapped hundreds of people in their vehicles, forcing others to evacuate homes in communities nearby. Helicopter rescuers airlifted 275  people to safety from where they had been stranded for over 17 hours between mudslides near Agassiz, B.C., some 120 m. east of Vancouver. One woman was found dead in her car under a mudslide near Lilooet.  Others are reported missing.

 

Homes and farmland in the community of Sumas Prairie are pictured underwater during flooding in Abbotsford. Dozens of families living in the area were ordered to leave their homes immediately on Tuesday as water levels started quickly rising. Ben Nelms/CBC

 

Rescuers equipped with diggers and dogs worked to dismantle huge debris and mud mounds looking for anyone left behind in cars trapped under the mudslides. "If a bit of machinery contacts a vehicle or the dogs indicate a person, that's when we stop -- and dig by hand until we find what they were indicating, to confirm whether it's a live victim of if it's a recovery", explained Capt.John Gormick of Vancouver's heavy urban search and rescue team.

By the time the heavy rainfall subsided Monday afternoon several areas had received 100 to 250 mm of rain over a period of 36 hours, an amount that usually falls during B.C.'s fall-to-winter rainy season in a month's time. The Weather Network called it an "atmospheric river" that triggered multiple mudslides across highways and bridges. Winds gusting up to 90 km/r continued to blow through the province. According to Environment Canada, 20 rainfall records were set on Sunday.

Two people canoe past a submerged truck near a flooded Trans Canada highway in Abbotsford, B.C., on Tuesday. Officials in the province were still assessing damage from floods and mudslides after torrential rains that began on the weekend finally started to subside. (Ben Nelms/CBC)