Flooded homes in Princeton, Nov. 15, 2021.
Image Credit: FACEBOOK/Linda Sheppard
November 21, 2021 - 2:29 PM
The Mayor of Princeton is "apprehensive" about what lies ahead as the community begins to deal with the devastation left behind from a massive flood.
Much of the downtown was decimated when the Tulameen River overflowed its banks last week, flooding homes and forcing people to evacuate. Many remain under an evacuation alert.
READ MORE: 'We lost everything': Many residents in Princeton, B.C. still digging out from flood
The town’s primary water line connecting homes to its water supply north of the Tulameen River has been damaged, and city crews are running a fire hose across the river to separate fire hydrants in the interim to provide water to the northern section of town.
Mayor Spencer Coyne said roughly 100 homes are without water because they’ve lost water pressure in parts of the community. The town has a population of roughly 2,800.
“We’re placing a pump in our sewer lift station today to try to stabilize that,” he said, adding the city is also working with agencies to determine long-term housing solutions as well.
The city will be putting in a new water line tomorrow at a cost of roughly $500,000, but Coyne said they don’t have approval from the province.
“We’re still looking for help from the senior government but right now we have to do it. We’ve lost all four of our water lines on the north side of town and we need to have water. If we don’t have water, we don’t have fire protection,” Coyne said.
“It would be nice if bureaucracy would be more practical,” he said.
Some people are returning to their homes now that damage assessment teams have been to the community, Coyne said.
Houses are given coloured cards to show the level of damage. Green means re-entry into the home is permitted if an evacuation order is not in place, a yellow card means access is restricted and a red card means residents should not enter the property unless authorized to do so by the jurisdictional authority.
“There are only four properties with red on them which is amazing. The majority of them have yellow and there’s a few of them with green and we’re looking at how to help people with green get home as soon as possible,” Coyne said.
Tomorrow, they’re establishing a volunteer workforce to start moving items out of homes and Tuesday garbage will hopefully be picked up out of flooded areas, he said. Today, Nov. 21, they’ll be focusing on humanitarian efforts for the long term.
Coyne said he’s “apprehensive” about the next few days as snow and rain are in the forecast.
“I’m concerned that we can’t get all our authorizations on the diking to get back up to normal level. We could see flooding,” he said. “We need the authorization (from the province) to build back to where we were, that’s what we’re waiting on.”
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