Lakefront residents brace for worst
Residents say they’ve seen Okanagan Lake higher but are taking action to prevent flooding
Waterfront property owners in the Central Okanagan are placing sandbags on docks to try to prevent the structures from becoming unmoored by rising lake levels.
It’s hoped the extra weight will keep the docks in place and stop them from floating away as the lake crests in the days ahead.
“There is some concern for sure among those of us who live along the lake,” Frank McFadden, a resident of McDougall Street in Kelowna, said Tuesday. “We’re not panicking by any means, but we are taking preventive action.”
McFadden, who has owned waterfront property since the 1950s, has seen the lake higher in the past than its current level. What’s unusual this time, he says, is how quickly the lake has come up so early in spring.
“I think by the time this is all over this year, it’ll be one for the record books,” he said.
Farther south along the lake, at Bluebird Road, longtime waterfront resident Dorothy Zoellner has also seen lake levels higher than the current mark.
“To me, there’s nothing all that unusual right now, to be honest,” Zoellner said.
Like many other waterfront residents, Zoellner believes her home is set far enough back from the lake that there’s little chance of water entering her residence.
The only time her basement was flooded, she says, was as a result of heavy rains rather than water coming up from the lake.
On Tuesday afternoon, the lake had an elevation of 342.7 metres above sea level.
Crews were placing flood-control barriers in several sections of the waterfront between the William R. Bennett Bridge and properties south of Kelowna General Hospital.
Stakes have been pounded in some sections of the shoreline showing the extent of flooding if the lake, as expected, reaches 343.6 metres above sea level.
“That point represents the elevation of the flood projections including a buffer for wave action,” according to a press release from the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre.
In areas without stakes, residents can also gauge the expected height of the lake by measuring 90 centimetres above the current lake level.
“Mark this level on something stationary, such as a tree, fence or wall,” the emergency operations centre release states. “Build flood protection measures up to that height.”
Before the Okanagan drainage control system was completed in 1958, the level of the lake would vary much more than it does today, sometimes by three metres or more.
In 1903, Okanagan Lake flooded as far as Ellis Street, causing wooden sidewalks to float. In 1948, another bad flood year, fish swam along Richter Street.
In April 1954, when the lake was at abnormally low levels, residents were complaining about exceptionally marshy conditions along the shoreline. They worried the Kelowna lakefront would become “diseased and insectinfested,” the local MP, O.L. Jones, told the city’s board of trade.
VANCOUVER — Homeowners are being asked to build sandbag barriers almost one metre high to protect their properties from possible flooding caused by rising water levels in Okanagan Lake.
Stacey Harding, risk manager for the Central Okanagan Emergency Centre, said that while cooler temperatures have slowed snowmelt, rain may bring water into homes.
“What we’re recommending is that people do take this very seriously and do get their waterfront protection measures in,” he said Tuesday.
The Central Okanagan regional district said crews in the Kelowna area are making plans to deploy flood protection measures.
Since Monday, the lake has risen more than 2.5 centimetres, the district said in its daily update on flooding conditions across the region.
“Residents in Kelowna neighbourhoods between William R. Bennett Bridge and Kelowna General Hospital area might see work crews installing flood protection measures on the beach along the lakeshore starting (Tuesday),” the release said.
The regional district planned to use various measures including bladder dams and sandbags along the nearly two-kilometre stretch of waterfront just south of the Bennett Bridge.
Lake levels have reached 342.7 metres and flood protection measures in two parks in West Kelowna were underway, while other barriers had already been set up in West Kelowna and along Bellevue Creek, in Kelowna’s south end, the district reported.
“If water reaches the 343-metre level, low-lying areas adjacent to the lake will flood and creeks such as Mission and Mill will begin to back-flow, causing them to potentially spill their banks,” a district release warned Monday.
Recent rains and cool weather mean heavy snowpacks haven’t melted in the hills around the Central Okanagan, but Environment Canada was forecasting several days of warm weather ahead for the Interior, with temperatures expected to reach 27 C by early next week.