People who were stranded by high water due to flooding are rescued by a volunteer operating a boat in Abbotsford, B.C., on Nov. 16.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Chelsey Hughes is thankful to have survived a mudslide that slammed into her car before it landed in a swamp as she was driving along a British Columbia highway during a record-breaking rainfall. Now she’s thinking of others who are dealing with similar harrowing experiences.
Hughes, 24, was heading home on Highway 7 between Agassiz and Hope when she saw a tree starting to fall as a slide shoved her car about a kilometre off the road and down an embankment.
“Then the car stopped moving and I was just shocked. I was afraid to move because I didn’t know if I was injured,” she said after spending about five hours shivering on top of her car without a jacket next to another vehicle with three young university students sharing one jacket atop their vehicle.
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When Hughes finally connected with a 911 dispatcher, he helped her monitor one student’s condition after he had an asthma attack.
Then they waited for about five hours before seeing the lights of rescuers.
They spent an hour hiking out of the area, she said of the traumatic events that unfolded Sunday night before nine of them were taken to hospital in Chilliwack.
Nearly 300 people on that stretch of highway were rescued by helicopter throughout Monday after spending the night in their vehicles.
Hughes said she travels with snacks, water and a tarp in the truck of her car, but quickly realized she couldn’t reach any of those supplies, which were submerged in the rising, muddy water.
The Surrey resident and yoga instructor is now thinking about the family of a woman who died while driving along Highway 99 near Lillooet as crews search for at least two others who went missing along that route.
“I think that could have been any one of us, and there’s nothing that you can do. When we got hit by that landslide, we just had to surrender,” she said Wednesday.
Hughes said she is also thinking of residents of a low-lying area of Abbotsford after warnings that they face a significant risk to life and must get out immediately to avoid rising water levels.
Community members band together to rescue stranded cattle from farms after rainstorms caused flooding and landslides in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Mayor Henry Braun is calling on the province for help, as an imminent failure of a pump station is anticipated to worsen the existing flooding conditions.
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