BC Floods: 184 Abbotsford Residents Rescued by Air and Water in Sumas Prairie as Pumping System Remains Critical to Failure

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More than 180 Abbotsford residents stranded by the floods were rescued by air and water overnight Tuesday, Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said in an update early Wednesday.

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The rescue follows a warning Tuesday night for residents in the Sumas Prairie area for all people to evacuate the area immediately, as a pumping system was set to fail.

That included hundreds of farmers who had been left behind to care for their livestock and birds after an earlier evacuation order due to the initial flooding caused by an overflowing river south of the border.

The Barrowtown Pump Station, a four-pump station that keeps the Fraser River out of the Lake Sumas channel and protects many square miles of premium farmland, remains critical and could fail.

Braun said the pump expelled half a million gallons of water per minute for all four pumps. At 7:30 a.m. it had not failed, but the situation remained critical, he said.

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More than 300 volunteers, including retired firefighters, farmers and military personnel, collaborated overnight to help build a dam to protect the pump station, which is hit by a surge of water from the Nootsack River in Washington state.

“It was designed for a specific capacity. While the situation remains critical at this time, the Barrowtown pump station is operating at full capacity, but it was never intended or designed to take water from another country, ”said Braun.

The Fraser River has dropped about six feet, but it will have to drop another meter before the pump can stabilize, he said.

“I feel so much better today than I did last night,” Braun said at a morning news conference. “However, we still haven’t gotten out of this.”

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The Fraser River flooded in the Sumas Prairie and surrounding areas Tuesday night, causing catastrophic damage and causing significant risk to human life and devastation to livestock.

“This event is expected to be catastrophic. Residents who are unable to evacuate safely are asked to call 911 and report their location immediately, ”the British Columbia Minister of Public Safety said in a statement issued shortly after 11 pm Tuesday.

“If you are in the Sumas prairie and you have not yet evacuated, you must do so immediately. Do not stay for livestock or property. Flood conditions have escalated rapidly and pose a significant risk to life. “

Braun said he understands how difficult it is for farmers to lose their livestock, but the situation is extremely dangerous. Farmers have been moving cattle on motorboats, but the city still doesn’t know how much cattle have been lost.

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Fraser Valley farmers supply 50 percent of all of BC’s eggs, chickens and dairy products. There are 45,000 dairy cows in the valley and each chicken farm has about 25,000 birds.

Abbotsford Fire Rescue Service Chief Darren Lee said sandbags were being placed around the pump station to buy time and smaller bombs were being introduced to reinforce the station. All four pumps were working, but they could not stop the rise of the water in the canal and once the water entered the pumping station, he said, the pumps would fail.

If the pumps fail, an emergency broadcast will be sent to Abbotsford and Chilliwack residents via text message.

In Farnworth’s afternoon statement, he said that he has been in contact with Braun and that Emergency Management BC is ready to issue an intrusive broadcast alert through the Alert Ready system.

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However, he said the city has indicated that it does not want to issue an alert at this time.

Lee said rapid water rescue resources were being sent to the area so that at first light they could be used if people were stranded from rising water. Once the pump station fails, the water level was expected to reach around 10 feet (three meters) in the prairie, which could take two to seven days.

“With the failure of this key piece of infrastructure, the water within the Sumas Prairie will no longer be able to be pumped and water from the Fraser River will begin to enter the already flooded Sumas Prairie area,” the city of Abbotsford wrote in a prepared statement. tell people to leave the area.

The event is expected to be catastrophic. The City of Abbotsford has closed drinking water service to the area.

In the city’s warning to the remaining residents to get out quickly, it states that there is a “significant risk to life.”

In March, the Fraser Basin Council released a report stating that a major river flood could cost between $ 20 billion and $ 30 billion in damage.

The council warned that the Fraser River levee system that protects much of the valley was vulnerable to failure.

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