Abbotsford | Reuters — The death toll in Canada from massive floods and landslides that devastated parts of British Columbia is set to rise, with the province declaring a state of emergency on Wednesday.
Authorities have so far confirmed one death after torrential rains and mudslides destroyed roads and left several mountain towns isolated. At least three people are missing.
Provincial Premier John Horgan described the calamity as a once-in-500-year event.
“We will bring in travel restrictions and ensure that transportation of essential goods and medical and emergency services are able to reach the communities that need them,” he told a news conference, urging people not to hoard supplies.
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The massive floods and mudslides also severed access to the country’s largest port in Vancouver, disrupting already strained global supply chains.
Some of the towns are in remote mountain areas with limited access and freezing temperatures.
In Tulameen, northeast of Vancouver, up to 400 people are trapped, many without power, said Erick Thompson, a spokesman for the area’s emergency operations.
“(We) did a helicopter flight recently, dropped off food,” he told CBC.
In Hope, 160 km east of Vancouver, food was starting to run low. Pastor Jeff Kuhn said a quarter of the town’s 6,000 residents were seeking shelter.
About 100 volunteers at the Dukh Nivaran Sahib Gurdwara Sikh Temple in Surrey spent all night Tuesday preparing about 3,000 meals and then hired helicopters to deliver the food to Hope, president Narinder Singh Walia said.
The disaster could be one of the most expensive in Canadian history.
The flooding is the second weather-related calamity to hit British Columbia in the last few months. A massive wildfire in the same region as some of the devastation destroyed an entire town in late June.
“These are extraordinary events not measured before, not contemplated before,” Horgan said.
Canadian exporters of commodities from grain to fertilizer and oil scrambled to divert shipments away from Vancouver but found few easy alternatives.
Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railway (CP, CN), the country’s two biggest rail companies, said their lines into Vancouver remained unusable on Wednesday.
After a phenomenon known as an atmospheric river dumped a month’s worth of rain in two days, officials are concerned that another downpour could overwhelm a pumping station near Abbotsford, a city of 160,000 to the east of Vancouver, which has already been partly evacuated.
Mayor Henry Braun said volunteers had built a dam around the station overnight.
“That will buy us some more time but if we had another weather event like we just went through, we are in deep doo-doo,” he told reporters Wednesday.
Farmers in Abbotsford ignored an evacuation order on Tuesday and desperately tried to save their animals from rising waters, in some cases tying ropes around the necks of cows and pulling them to higher ground.
Provincial agriculture minister Lana Popham said thousands of animals had died and others would have to be euthanized.
Environment Canada said Abbotsford would receive more rain early next week.
Rescuer Mike Danks, part of an Abbotsford evacuation team, said the situation had been very tough.
“The majority of people had elderly parents with them that were unable to walk, suffered from dementia,” he told local outlet Black Press Media.
“You’re trying to assist them into a helicopter at night.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while in Washington on a trip, said his government would help the province recover from what he called a “terrifically bad situation.” Ottawa is sending hundreds of air force personnel to aid the recovery.
Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on Twitter Wednesday also acknowledged B.C. producers left “stranded” by road and rail closures, and added her department is “monitoring the situation closely and working with our provincial counterparts to respond.”
— Reporting for Reuters by Jesse Winter in Abbotsford, David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Ismail Shakil in Bangalore, Rod Nickel in Winnpeg, Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto and Nia William in Calgary; writing by David Ljunggren.
