While British Columbia’s levee design levels are set to protect against a 1-in-200-year flood, levee levels in many parts of the Fraser Valley are not high enough.
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As the Fraser River continues to rise, BC’s riparian communities are stepping up flood preparations, including the city of Mission, where crews will install a Tiger Dam flood barrier along the lower areas of the Mission Levee to prevent possible flooding. floods.
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While it’s unclear exactly how high the water will reach, some models predicted a level of 7.3 meters on the Mission gauge by July 7. The last time the Fraser rose above 7 meters in the Mission was in 1972, the third largest flood on record after 1894 and 1948.
uses of BC several different models to predict river levels, which are largely determined by weather throughout the vast Fraser River basin. Warm weather can rapidly melt snow from mountains and cause water levels to rise, while rainfall in upstream communities can also have a dramatic impact on levels.
On Friday, others forecast models they showed a 20-foot peak in Mission on Monday or Tuesday. Only one level of more than 6 meters has been seen twice so far this century in 2012 and 2018.
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“These predictions are more than five days out and have a high degree of uncertainty as they depend heavily on rainfall and other factors,” said a to update of Mission City. But the release advised property owners to have a flood plan and to check updated forecasts daily.
On Friday, the Fraser River in Mission was at 18 feet by mid-morning, still well below the 27-foot mark reached during the record-breaking 1894 flood.
Although British Columbia’s levee design levels are set to protect against another 1894 flood, several studies over the last decade indicate that levee levels in many parts of the Fraser Valley are not high enough.
the Abbotsford News reported Tiger Dam will be deployed in the weakest part of the Mission Dam, where it is only 7.2 meters above sea level and more than two meters below construction flood level.
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During the November floods in Abbotsford, a Tiger Dam was used to protect Highway 1. The dam was built with custom-made water-filled tubes about three feet high that combine to create a water barrier. Tiger Dam is a proprietary name given to the system by the American company that makes them.
In Abbotsford, crews including members of the Canadian Army and the Abbotsford Fire Department worked through the night to pump water into the dam, which was installed in a desperate effort to contain flooding from the Sumas River.
the Abbotsford News reported that the Tiger Dam should span 700 meters at the eastern end of the 3.5-kilometer Mission Dam near Harbor Avenue and Horne Street.
If the levee were to fail, nearly 100 commercial and industrial properties would be flooded.
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Flooding preparations also continued downriver on Friday, where Barnston Island remained on evacuation alert.
In a statement, Katzie First Nation Chief Grace George called on residents of two Katzie communities to be prepared to evacuate.
“The chief and council will do their best to provide as much advance notice as possible, but changing weather conditions could mean little or no notice, so residents and visitors are asked to be prepared,” he said.
Katzie First Nation has 85 houses outside the levee, including those on Barnston Island.
Studies have found that BC First Nations are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which could lead to more intense and frequent flooding and wildfires, with many reservations and treaty lands located near water or forest, but minimally. protected.
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“We are the ones most at risk during these catastrophic weather events, which sadly are no longer isolated incidents but rather ongoing impacts of climate change,” British Columbia Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee said after the flooding. of November.
A Fraser Basin Council 2015 study found that 61 reservations and other parcels of treaty land in the Lower Mainland could be inundated in a major Fraser River flood or coastal storm surge flood.
A University of Waterloo study published earlier this year found that 81 percent of the 985 indigenous land reserves in Canada face flood risk, with the largest number of “hotspots” located in B.C.
In other parts of the province on Friday, rivers continued to rise due to melting ice and rain.
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A flood alert was issued earlier this week for the Quesnel River, as well as a flood watch for the Thompson River from Kamloops to the Spences Bridge and the South Thompson River, including Shuswap Lake.
A flood alert it also remained in effect for the Nechako River and Upper Fraser River, including areas from Prince George and tributaries upstream through the Robson Valley and the McGregor River and Fraser River from Prince George to Quesnel.
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