People from all across Canada have been helping out in some way or the other at the Big Bar rock slide site, north of Kamloops.
Incident Commander Sarah Murdoch says the Federal and Provincial governments as well as First Nations People have been involved.
In fact, she says there’s been support from as far as Halifax.
“The Canadian Coast Guard out there, one gentlemen who helped first hand with the New Brunswick flooding,” she said. “We have people from Wildfire and the Coast Guard in particular who have a lot of experience with that, but not necessarily with salmon and then we’ve got our First Nations partners and ourselves at Fisheries and Oceans Canada that have the salmon knowledge, but maybe not the scale of a response.”
Murdoch says the operation is seeing success because of the amount of co-operation between various agencies.
“Just about 100 years ago now we had the Hope Slide and this is in that sort of degree,” Murdoch said, while on NL Newsday. “Given the dire straits many of our Fraser salmon stocks are in this year, it’s really great to see all levels of government to government to government response to this. People are pulling together.”
But despite all the help and support, she says there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Officials over the weekend said salmon can now be transported by truck as well as helicopter, after a successful trial run. The latest figures show an estimated 28,780 salmon have been able to pass by the slide site on their own, while nearly 57,000 have been transported by helicopter.
(Photo via Big Bar Unified Command)