Some good news for residents in Cache Creek as evacuation orders for 11 properties along the Bonaparte River have been downgraded to an alert as of this morning.

“We lifted the alert for all but one trailer that is a bit over the bank with the river underneath it,” Emergency Operations Centre Spokesperson Wendy Coomber told NL News.

She says the move comes as rain in the forecast this week did not materialize, adding water levels on the river are also dropping, albeit slightly.

“We’ve been told by the BC River Forecast Centre that they may downgrade us to an advisory but they weren’t quite sure whether they were going to do it today or early next week. It all depends on the weather,” she said. “We do have more rain coming, but they said also that they didn’t feel it would be significant enough to make any impact on the water levels.”

“Even the experts are scratching their heads and they admit freely that this is very unusual for the Bonaparte and they’re not quite sure how to read it this year.”

A further 160 properties in the village continue to be on an evacuation alert, with Coomber previously telling NL News that people could be evacuated to Kamloops if the situation worsens.

“A silver lining is that while the river hasn’t gone down a whole lot, at least it hasn’t risen,” Coomber added, noting the village has had to deal with flooding in four of the last six years.

Coomber says repeated flooding year after year is damaging both Cache Creek as well as the nearby Bonaparte River. Once the risk of flooding has subsided this year, village officials will be reaching out to various government ministries to try and find a permanent solution.