Flooding displaces hundreds in B.C.’s Fraser Valley as some highways reopen

Hundreds of people and countless livestock in British Columbia’s agricultural heartland were displaced Thursday after torrential rainfall and historic flooding that forced mass evacuations in Washington State and swept north across the border.

For those in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, the scenes of swollen rivers, washed-out highways and flooded farmland stirred uncomfortable memories of the catastrophic flood of November, 2021, the province’s costliest natural disaster.

While this week’s event has not reached that level of destruction, officials warned Thursday that water levels were expected to rise into the night and that they were preparing for difficult days ahead.

“I want to emphasize that we are not yet through this emergency,” B.C. Emergency Management Minister Kelly Greene said in a news conference in Vancouver.

The flooding is the result of a powerful atmospheric river, an ocean-crossing weather phenomenon originating in the tropics or subtropics, commonly seen on the West Coast. Since Tuesday, between 90 and 150 millimetres of rain fell over southern B.C., officials said.

Washington State has borne the brunt of the torrential downpour. In the state’s northwest, 24-hour rainfall totals exceeded 130 millimetres in some areas. Authorities ordered the evacuation of residents in the 100-year flood plain along the Skagit River, which flows down from the northern Cascades and reaches saltwater roughly 80 kilometres north of Seattle.

Roughly 75,000 people live in those low-lying areas, around the cities of Burlington and Mount Vernon – both located on the Interstate 5 corridor that is commonly travelled by Canadians.

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson described “intense flooding” on social media and signed a statewide emergency declaration.

“The severity of the flooding on the Skagit River is something that no local resident has ever experienced,” he wrote Thursday afternoon.

In B.C., every major highway connecting the Lower Mainland and the Interior was closed late Wednesday night because of falling rock and debris, as well as avalanche hazards. Some highways remained closed Thursday evening.

As of Thursday, 453 properties in Abbotsford, which is located just north of the border, were ordered to evacuate, while 1,069 were on evacuation alert. As well, B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said that 66 farms with livestock have been registered under evacuation order, and 99 farms with livestock under evacuation alert.

Ms. Popham, who held the same role during the 2021 flood, said the province learned a lot from that disaster, in which hundreds of thousands of farm animals died. Dairy farmers now have a full-time emergency management specialist, she cited as an example, and have practised for scenarios just like this. Still, they are worried.

“I can hear the strain in their voices, and I know that they’re replaying some of the events that happened last time,” Ms. Popham said.

The Nooksack River, which topped its banks in Washington State on Wednesday afternoon and began flowing north across the border, peaked overnight and began to recede. However, water was expected to continue flowing into B.C.’s Sumas Prairie late into Thursday evening and potentially overnight, said David Campbell, the head of B.C.’s River Forecast Centre.

“We’re really cautioning that while some areas are improving, in through the valley, the Sumas particularly, we do expect to see the potential for ongoing, challenging conditions as we go through the day,” he said.

Mr. Campbell added that another stormy system is forecast to start Sunday, but that it is too early to know its risks.

U.S. monitoring records showed that the Nooksack River at 3 a.m. Thursday briefly exceeded the levels it reached in 2021. However, Connie Chapman, executive director of the provincial Water Management Branch, said other variables such as a shorter duration of rainfall produced a different result.

Mike Winbow, who lives in a trailer in Abbotsford, spent much of the night taking periodic measurements along the Sumas Canal and posting them to Facebook. He was worried about a repeat of 2021, when police rapped on his door and told him to evacuate in the dead of night. At the time, the area was a “sea of water,” he said, and the canal was nearly spilling over its dike.

“It was freaky,” he said. “There were jetboats going down the middle of the freeway.”

The water was much lower Wednesday night, about 12-15 feet short of the dike, Mr. Winbow said. Still, he wasn’t taking any risks. At one point in the night, he blasted an air horn to wake up people in neighbouring RVs and let them know an evacuation order had been issued for much of the surrounding Sumas Prairie. Only later did he realize the rest stop wasn’t included in the order.

“The authorities seemed better prepared this time around,” he added. “We had search and rescue come by last night to check on things. It was much calmer than 2021.”

Meanwhile, in Washington State, water levels on the Skykomish and Snohomish rivers approached record levels.

In Sumas, Wash., a border town just south of Abbotsford, “probably 100 per cent” of the downtown is underwater, Mayor Bruce Bosch said in an interview. “It’s looking like close to the ’21 flood.”

Local crews attempted to block floodwaters with sandbags, “but it didn’t stop it,” Mr. Bosch said.

In Everson, a Washington farming community where the Nooksack commonly overflows its banks, “it’s worse” than four years ago, Mayor John Perry said.

“Our west side of town got hit a lot harder than it did in ’21. We saw four to six inches more water in the streets and in our buildings.”

Mr. Ferguson, the Governor, called on the U.S. federal government to issue an expedited emergency declaration, which he said would allow the state to access additional safety measures and federal resources “to address the extremely challenging situation.“

The state mobilized several hundred members of the National Guard to help. They will likely be sent to the Skagit River area, according to dispatch instructions included in a video posted by the Washington National Guard.

The effects of “catastrophic” flooding are likely to continue through Friday, the U.S. National Weather Service said Thursday. It said waters are likely to pour over levees and landslides remain possible.

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