Disaster and unknown future
Analysis of flood maps and decades of information sharing between municipalities in two different countries have given Abbotsford a very good idea of which homes and farms are in danger from flooding. The whole Sumas area is susceptible to some degree, but people have continued to live and farm there anyway because of the excellent soil, and a system of dikes and pumps is set up to spare residents from most regular flooding.
But the November flood came with the most rain Abbotsford has yet seen in a two-day period. Scientists called it a 50-to-100-year flood, meaning they expect a flood that bad once or twice a century. But with climate change, those yardsticks are changing, and scientists and residents are worried such catastrophic events will be more common.
Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun sees preparing for flooding in the Sumas area as an urgent necessity because of climate change. And he knows that any good option will include elements of rebuilding and retreating from the area.
“I’ve lived here for 69 years and the climate in Abbotsford today is not what it was when I was eight years old. It just isn’t,” he said told the Star.
“Then we had a lot of drizzle throughout the winter. Now we get two or three days (of ) a downpour like I’ve never seen in my life. All of that to say — it is changing and what may have been a one-in-100 storm the way we’ve been modelling, the new normal may be that’s a onein-25-year storm.”
Having good knowledge about which areas will flood when rivers breach is both a blessing and a curse. It gives the city — which, unlike Lytton, has the resources to hire technical experts — the ability to strategically designate some areas as flood plains, while using more advanced pumping and dike technologies to protect as much productive land as possible.
But, for the people living in those flood plains, that can be a hard message to accept. You may know you’re living in the eye of a hurricane, as De Wolde described. But there is always the temptation to believe you could be spared its ill effects. City plans that designate your property as a flood zone, stopping homes from being erected there and allowing only flood-resistant crops to be grown, take that possibility and lingering hope away.
Last month, eight councillors and Braun met with staff about four options for protecting the strategically important farming area. Maps were included with every option, and three scheduled meetings were held for residents of the Sumas area to come and ask questions of city staff and the mayor.
Farmers who launched cattle rescue missions by boat and heaved sandbags over properties for days in November found themselves this month hunched over event tables in an elementary-school gymnasium, filling out a consultation survey on which parts of Sumas the Abbotsford council should lobby higher levels of government to save.
The price tag for the infrastructure needed ranges from $100 million — to upgrade the existing pump and protect the smallest number of farms and homes — to $2.8 billion to erect new dikes and pumps and safeguard the most. After consultations, whichever option Abbotsford endorses will be brought to higher levels of government to ask for the money. Different versions of the plans mean potentially sacrificing different parts of the area, the next time disaster hits.
Braun said he knows that no matter which option is chosen, some retreat will have to happen. He has assured residents that if they have to leave their homes, they will be made financially whole for their losses. But he thinks the bigger picture is saving as much productive farmland as possible.
“It sounds harsh, but maybe there’s places where there’s floods occurring, and they shouldn’t rebuild there. Because if that happens every five or six years, is it worth rebuilding all of that stuff? Either that or you build dikes around it to protect it,” he said. “I think we in Abbotsford have to protect our farmland.”
Even then, not all farmland will be in the clear. De Wolde said it looks to her as though her property is in the line of flooding no matter which option is adopted.
Tery Kozma and Rick Gahwiler’s property, wedged between the Trans-Canada Highway and the Sumas Dike, has their house and workshop, but no farmland. On each option presented by Abbotsford, it looks to Kozma as though their property will be designated as a flood plain, and they won’t be allowed to live there.
After the flood on the day they went to rescue their cats, it was surreal for her to paddle up to her property. As she did, Kozma recalled the time a Sumas Nation councillor told her that their property was situated where the beach on Sumas Lake used to be before it was drained.
“I’m also Indigenous, so when this happened, I just basically said that, you know, Mother Nature wanted her lake back, and she took it,” Kozma said.
Gahwiler and Kozma are both in their late 50s and have disabilities. Kozma said it’s been stressful on both of them just getting the property in good enough shape to live in for now, with an eye to selling it in the future. But without knowing whether their property will be in designated flood plain, they’re in a holding pattern.
“Is it only the government we can sell to? And what are they going to give us per acre?” she said.
The couple saves up and pays to have repairs done whenever they can, but they also rely on local Facebook groups and volunteer organizations that offer building materials to people whose homes were flooded. “Right now we’re paying out of pocket and we’re depending on the community.”
Mike Farnworth, B.C. minister of public safety and solicitor general, says these are exactly the kinds of conversations he expects communities in his province will increasingly have to have.
“In Grand Forks, there was a decision to relocate a significant part of that neighbourhood just flooded a couple of years ago,” he said. “And you know, in the case of Abbotsford, they put out these four scenarios and they’re having that discussion. They will decide what they think is best in terms of their communities.”
While Farnworth said he wants recovery decisions to be made by local communities rather than dictated top-down by the province, he said he does think the province needs to play a bigger role in emergency planning. B.C. is working on new emergency-management legislation that would make the province a partner in local governments’ emergency plans. The goal is to create something that would provide resources to smaller communities such as Lytton and also, it’s hoped, ensure that more robust plans get made, outlining things such as evacuation routes, how emergency operations centres get set up and how aid will be distributed when disaster strikes.
The need for that kind of planning has been noticed by the insurance industry. Rob De Pruis with the Insurance Bureau of Canada says it became clear to insurers very quickly after the fire that Lytton did not have the expertise or resources to lead the recovery effort.
That’s something Mattiussi, who spoke for the village, acknowledges: the village’s staff and budget just couldn’t rally the level of organization needed to respond to a disaster as big as the Lytton fire.
“B.C., like many other provinces, their emergency management framework is a locally led recovery,” De Pruis said. “While that makes sense on paper, when we think about Lytton, they only had six fulltime staff. The reality is there has to be more resources available.”
As for Kozma’s questions about Sumas, De Pruis said it’s time to ask bigger questions about those communities.
“Over the last century, people started to build homes and put up their farming sheds and structures in a place called lake bottom, and now when there’s a big flood … should we really be rebuilding in those areas?” he said. “I think the time has come to have the difficult conversations and it’s between government stakeholders, insurance industry, and the residents of the community.”
In both Sumas and Lytton today, an interim pace of life has resumed. Nothing is normal, but life goes stubbornly on as residents wait to either repair the lives they once had or move on from them — to rebuild or retreat.
People still drive through the fenced-off ruins of the village of Lytton on their way to run errands in Lillooet, advised by signs to keep their windows rolled up and the air in their cars on recirculation to protect from toxins. In Sumas, people take their dogs for a walk at McDonald Park, where they can walk along one of the gravel dikes they rely on to protect their homes from flood.
Thorpe, the Lytton woman currently rebuilding, says it’s a strange feeling, to be in this transition phase between disaster and an unknown future.
She doesn’t know what the community she’s building back in will ultimately be. And it sometimes makes her sad to talk to other people who lost their homes in the fire, especially those in their 80s and 90s who would love to be home again but, for now, have no way of coming back.
“There’s people that see it as hope. Because we’re right here on the hill, you can’t miss us,” Thorpe said. “And there’s some that resent it, and I can understand that too.”
While she and Glasgow work through it all, living in their new home while they build it, Thorpe has also been busy filling their new barn with animals.
Three lambs born this spring prance over to her like curious puppies to receive pets while one of Thorpe’s dogs scratches at the barn door. Referencing new life from the ashes of their old life, she named one of the lambs Phoenix. Later in the day, Thorpe is going to pick up some chicks.
“I don’t know where we’d be without them,” she said. “They kept us going. We had a purpose.”
Many things about the couple’s future remain uncertain. But as Thorpe works to rejuvenate her little flock in Lytton, even while the earth underneath her burnt home remains exposed, she finds more and more reasons to be glad they returned.