And how many of those people who are trying to get up or down to/from the interior have their passports with them. Vancouver is completely cut off from the rest of the province and could be for several days which is playing havoc with trucking routes and rail lines (which are also destroyed in the slides) and getting goods into the interior cities. Talk about supply chain issues. This storm and the results are devastating.

There was a town. Lytton, which was completed destroyed in the forest fires in the summer, an hours drive north of them is a town, Merritt, which was just completely evacuated due to flooding. Just bizarre.

I heard about it on the news--just terrible.

We have a friend in Abbotsford, he hasn’t been able to get to work at the university, and now it is closed for the rest of the week. He is on a hill, much of the population is, he says, and fairly safe, and those at risk are mainly the farmers. But I would still worry about the mudslides, especially after last year’s fires.

This was on the editorial page this morning;

BC has been through so much this year!

I have been watching, the photos I’ve seen show absolutley devastating damage to infrastructure and communities. Lytton especially I felt badly for, after the fire this summer.

That's terrible. I hope people have enough food and supplies.

"Residents in these areas are being told to fill their gas tanks in their vehicles and be prepared for a minimum of three days without food and essential supplies."

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/breaking-news-catastrophic-flood-warning-issued-as-pump-failure-leads-to-fraser-river-flooding

It makes our own little problems here sound small. As bad as it has been and there has been some significant flooding on the Skagit and lots of closed roads but nothing on the scale of up north. We still have no power but I believe we can now get out if we had to go somewhere. The phone and internet is back-that is a yeah. I really feel for our neighbors up in Canada.

It's so horrible for BC and the whole area. Hoping the dams and levees hold in the Fraser River Valley.
I have dear friends who live on the Nooksack river south of Sumas whose place floods every year and has for 45 years. Their house is built on a slab, the living quarters on the 2nd floor, so the river just flows through the ground floor - and they spend a lot of time mucking out the silt. But this year it flooded 6" higher than it ever had before and all the things they'd safely piled in plastic bins (apples and squash for the winter, plus other things) just floated away. But unlike BC areas, their roads are still intact.

blfenton, I was just reading that Burrard Bridge was closed for a while on Monday due to a barge that is hung up on Sunset Beach. They were afraid it could come loose and collide with the bridge.

What a mess!

I hope things improve soon. Stay safe!

I did ot pay very close attention to this story. i just read some of the news and it is horrible! i visited Vancouver a couple years ago and fell in liove with it. We stayed in Kitsilano and drove over the Burrard Bridge.numerous times. What a mess.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-province-mulls-state-emergency-after-floods-food-shortages-reported-2021-11-17/

Cows being rescued from flooded barns

Just saw it on the PBS Newshour. Wow -- hang in there, friends and neighbors!

Horrible news. Sending good thoughts to those people...messes like this can take so long to restore.

This morning on the CBS news, they only covered Sumas, Washington, and ignored Canada! I'm about ready to stop watching CBS morning news altogether. I never watch CBS evening news, but I do like parts of the Sunday program - perhaps half of it.

I've lived in the Fraser Valley my whole life and have never seen anything like this. We are about 15 minutes west of Abbotsford and at a fairly good elevation, so not worried for ourselves. One daughter is an RN at the ER at Abbotsford Hospital and they are overwhelmed. Friends of ours were on their way home from Kamloops Sunday afternoon and got stuck between mudslides. They slept in their truck for two nights and were rescuded by Canadian Armed Forces helicopter today. It will take months to get things back to normal.

Excerpt from The National Post

“For one of the only times since the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885, every single Canadian land route to the Pacific has been cut. Extreme rains brought a series of devastating floods and landslides that have severed the Trans Canada Highway, the Coquihalla Highway and both major rail lines over the Rocky Mountains. Unstable conditions have also forced the closure of the Trans Mountain pipeline and critical gas pipelines serving the City of Vancouver.”

“The coming days are poised to yield any number of supply chain crises across Western Canada; bare grocery store shelves in Kelowna, backed-up grain shipments throughout the prairies and gasoline shortages across Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland.”

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/photos-the-catrastrophic-damage-that-severed-b-c-from-the-rest-of-canada/wcm/9e699781-a4e9-4a16-abe2-a5844f9237cd/amp/

This is frightening. So sorry for the people who are caught in this.

Such awful devastation. So heartbreaking.

I've been reading updates online and it just seems to be getting worse. What a terrible ordeal for everyone in the area. This afternoon my son was telling me about several co-workers who were stranded because of the mudslides. He's a TD bank exec and fortunately he's back in the States but he was really worried when he heard what was happening.

nekotish - my DIL is a speech pathologist at Abbotsford hospital and some of her patients are cancer patients. One of them helicoptered in for their appointment. Fortunately she was able to get to work.

As a side story, to top this all off our premier was diagnosed with throat cancer two weeks ago.

I just read a couple of news stories, Reuters and another more local news source with many photos. Bejng in the southeast, we only get a small segment of news like this sometimes, as other national news seems to overtake these stories. Such devastation and its truly heartbreaking when a disaster like this happens.

What people dont understand is the time and resources it takes to get the cleanup done and the basic infrastructure restored. Many smaller communities never fully recover.

My sister lives near Vancouver (she's fine) and tells me they're routing ferries from Swartz Bay (near Victoria) up to Nanaimo carrying supplies for the north of Vancouver Island because the area is cut off by damage to  the south/north highway from Victoria over the Malahat pass.  And apparently someone in the interior is rescuing horses with his speedboat.

This is just awful and I agree there hasn't been much coverage on the news I've watched. I have a friend in Washington state and she told me all about it. I feel so bad for the people and animals. It reminds me of Ida which struck the east coast in September. Our climate will never be the same. These events will occur more and more often.

I hadn't heard. I'm terribly sorry. My thoughts and heart go out to you all.

The animals that have survived have no water and no feed, all ruined by the flooding. Abbotsford has half of all the dairy farms in BC. My heart breaks.

I have a friend that was on!y going to spend A few days in Vancouver with her sons. She usually drives from the Interior but this time she flew and now she's stuck. Planes are booked solid. She's hoping to get home hopefully by this weekend.

Friends on Vancouver Island are telling me that gas in running out and there's a possibility of food shortages. They don't know if people are panic buying or what. Malahat highway, that goes from Victoria to up island, is closing from 6pm to 6am every night til the road is repaired. Read about one person who took 8 hours to get home. People are going nuts with the basically one lane and are threatening the flag people. Cops were called. It's devastating and devastated.

Sadly, the US media seems to believe that nothing happens up there in that blank white space on the map north of us. Same story with Hawaii (and Alaska).

We have GOT to support stronger efforts against global warming! Time's Up!

It is sad and scary. This is going to happen more often.

I was just reading that it will likely take several months to get the Coquihalla Highway back in order. Repairs and reconstruction will be happening during the months that see the harshest conditions weather-wise.

A friend of mine in Vancouver shared this photo on Facebook:

Highway 1, Abbotsford, BC This is probably near Sumas, east of Vancouver. He said that there were a lot of trailers that got damaged there, many of them by fires that the fire department could not reach.

HIghway 1 is the main Highway out of Vancouver to begin the trip to the interior. It takes you to Hope where it then splits into 3 highways that go in slightly different directions depending on where into the interior of the province you want to go. This part of highway 1 shouldn't take too long to repair once the water recedes. The other 3 highways are the ones that have the mudslides/rockslides at various points and are the ones that are essentially broken. The goal is to get whichever one is broken the least opened asap for transportation of people and goods. The engineers will decide that. The destruction of this main transportation infrastructure system is unbelievable.

Here in Kelowna, grocery stores have empty shelves.

Mother nature is taking back what was once, righfully hers. We humans must learn to to respect nature. 100 yrs ago, the sumas was a lake which was drained to created astonishingly fertile farm land.

https://fvcurrent.com/article/sumas-lake-flooding-history/

It's so sad to look at those photos. Building houses on a lake bed is asking for trouble, there is a reason for a lake to be there at 1st place. We shall respect nature indeed. I hope people in the flood zone all have flood insurance, and get air dropped food, water and feed very soon.

When you go through Sumas there are deep drainage ditches everywhere. Obviously water is a problem there. Here the river which is the flooding source can be diked but the flood potential is still severe and in bad years it gets out of bounds. We have too much development in flood prone areas.

@Lars the photo you posted shows the Whatcom Road turn off. Take a right, then go a wee bit and turn left and follow that around the mountain and you're at my parents home. Sumas WA, is located just outside that shot on the top left. The city of Abbotsford itself, was spared this flooding. Most of it is in the Sumas valley that the #1 highway runs through. The entire valley was once a lake up until about 100 years ago when it was drained for the highway.

Also, last time I went to Abbotsford (2 years ago), we accidentally took the 5A from Kamloops. It was a beautiful drive which I would gladly do again. There's been nothing on the news how that way turned out. It ends in Merritt, which is pretty much gone now. Four deaths so far, and one person still is missing.