The BC River Forecast Centre has downgraded the “flood warning” to a “flood watch” in the Cariboo and Thompson Plateau, but the flood risk still remains.
Cache Creek councillor and Emergency Operations Centre spokesperson Wendy Coomber says 10 evacuation orders and nearly 200 evacuation alerts remain in place. She says several homes along the creek have reportedly had their basements flooded.
Cache Creek itself peaked last week, and Coomber was asked about the risk from the Bonaparte River.
“It fluctuates a little bit overnight, but it’s pretty much remained steady for the past two or three days, thanks to cool weather. That means that the snow hasn’t been melting at the headwaters quite so rapidly. Although that may change this weekend.”
Temperatures in Cache Creek are expected to rise to 21 degrees and 20 degrees for Friday and Saturday, respectively, with overnight low temperatures as high as nine degrees.
Between Cache Creek and Ashcroft, the Bonaparte River is flowing at levels seen every 20-to-50 years as of this morning, at 69 cubic metres per second. That is down slightly from 72 m3/s on Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, Coomber says stage-four water restrictions are in place for residents.
“Both of our wells are in the Cache Creek park, which is right next to the river. The river has come up quite close to one of them, so we have decided to shut it off for safety’s sake… It’s spring, everybody wants to have a nice green lawn and a nice shiny car again, but we’re telling them just to restrict their water right now to drinking, cooking and personal hygiene.”
Coomber says the riverbanks have been eroding in “quite a few places” because of the fast-moving water.
“This year is, obviously, the worst for the creek in memory. As it flows in the Bonaparte, the Bonaparte has been slumping away in a few places too. And every once in a while they expose some of our utility lines under the ground, which calls for immediate action on the part of our public works crews. They need to make sure those lines are protected and secured.”
She adds that public guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have changed the flood response compared to recent years.
“We’ve moved our emergency operations centre into our community hall just so we can sit further apart. It was in our village office before. And as I’ve mentioned in the past, we would’ve had a sandbagging bee long before now for the residents to come and fill bags together and take them away, but we’ve had to dump our sand and sandbags at various places around town for people to come and get.
“Trying to maintain a distance while responding to an emergency has been a challenge, but we’re all learning new ways of doing things.”
