Neighbourhood pulls together laying down sandbags to save homes
93 properties have been placed on evacuation order in Okanagan Falls and Osoyoos
Flooding had triggered evacuation orders for 93 properties in Okanagan Falls and Osoyoos, and severed a vital transportation link between the region and the B.C. coast as of Thursday afternoon.
The evacuations in Okanagan Falls were ordered Thursday morning by the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen after Shuttleworth Creek began spilling into a residential area.
“It’s been pretty wild today. The water’s still rising and hopefully it peaks in the next few days,” said Cameron Baughen, an information officer for the RDOS emergency operations centre.
A BC Wildfire crew was expected to be reassigned from the Twin Lakes area Friday to assist with floodmitigation efforts in Okanagan Falls, he noted, while heavy equipment has also been called in to rebuild and armour the banks of Shuttleworth Creek.
“The (evacuation) order will stay on indefinitely until we see what we can do with Shuttleworth Creek,” added Baughen.
The evacuation order applies to properties on Maple Street, Brockie Place, McLean Creek Road, 14th Avenue and Mimac Court.
As of 4 p.m., 27 people from 14 families had registered at an emergency evacuation centre.
Among those evacuated was Shawn Rouw, who has lived on 14th Avenue for 11 years.
“The last couple days we’ve been steadily watching the water levels climb,” recalled Rouw as he took a break from sandbagging.
The situation seemed to have stabilized, but “it just kind of all broke loose (Wednesday) night.”
Rouw and other community members spent the week laying sandbags in a bid to save homes and properties.
“Everybody in the whole neighbourhood has put so much effort into trying to save everybody else along the way,” he said, describing the period as an emotional roller-coaster.
Also on Thursday, The RDOS issued an evacuation order for 39 homes in the Solana, Harbour Key and Willow Beach areas of Osoyoos due to the rise of Osoyoos Lake, which is being pumped up by the swollen Okanagan and Similkameen rivers.
And a local state of local emergency was declared for Area E (Naramata), the last of eight RDOS rural areas to get such a declaration for all or part of it.
Meanwhile, Highway 3 is closed indefinitely 14 kilometres west of Keremeos due to the Similkameen River spilling onto it.
Motorists are being advised to detour on the Okanagan Connector.
Elsewhere in the Southern Interior, evacuation orders were issued Thursday for approximately 1,500 properties in the Grand Forks area due to high water in the Kettle, West Kettle and Granby rivers.
“This is definitely going to be in the range of a onein-200-year flood,” said Frances Maika, spokeswoman for the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary. “And it could be worse than that.” The flooding has resulted from a combination of a record-setting snowpack — 206 per cent of normal in the Okanagan as of May 1 — along with unseasonably warm temperatures followed by heavy rains this week.