The City of Merritt says it is too soon to say how much damage was caused by flooding on the Coldwater River which forced the entire city to evacuate two weeks ago, on Nov. 15.

However, CAO Sean Smith tells NL News it won’t be a billion dollars like what the City of Abbotsford is projecting, but he says they’re working to put that figure together.

“In our community, this is largely something that has affected public infrastructure to a degree, but its private residences by and large,” Smith said. “We have had a lot of residents whose homes were affected and so we have bridge infrastructure, road infrastructure, water, wastewater, and we’re still quantifying that as best as we can.”

Smith also says he doesn’t want to speculate what that figure could be as the City of Merritt is still assessing the damage caused by flooding.

“The reason I am a little bit hesitant to provide an answer directly is because we have those assessments ongoing,” Smith added. “We will absolutely provide that information when it comes but where I only have very preliminary information right now, and we’re just not in a spot to be able to answer that question.”

This morning, staff in the City of Merritt say the Coldwater River did not overflow its banks on Sunday night even though the river reached a peak of 177 cubic metres a second.

Similarly, the Nicola-Similkameen School District is also still assessing the damage to its schools in Merritt.

“We’re not able to put a number on it right now. We do have some support out of the Ministry of Education as well as a project manager who has been hired on to help do those assessments alongside [Operations Manager] Darrell Finnigan and his team,” Superintendent Stephen McNiven told NL News.

“We’re also working with the school protection program as soon as possible to get a handle on what those costs will look like and I know the Ministry of Education and their capital program has been supportive so we’ll be working with them as we go forward but no number at this point,

Three schools – Diamond Vale Elementary, Merritt Central Elementary and Merritt Secondary were all damaged by flooding, as was the SD58 office.