Flood evacuation orders lifted for 175 properties near Grand Forks

Good news for residents of the Grand Forks area: with flood waters receding, officials have lifted evacuation orders for about 350 people on 175 properties.

Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) spokesperson Frances Maika says most of the homes are in Grand Forks proper, but some are in Christina Lake, Midway and Rock Creek.

“It’s incredibly stressful to be out of your home, and that’s why our goal is to try to get — in the next I would say 36 to 48 hours, by the end of the day May 21 –the majority of people who are now on evacuation order, where it is safe to do so, back to their homes,” she said.

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As of Sunday morning, about 2,825 properties remain evacuated.

Maika said lower overnight temperatures and drier-than-forecast weather have contributed to dropping river levels, and the region appears to have seen the peak of the flooding.

“We could see another kind of uptick in levels at the end of the week with warmer weather,” Maika added.

“If we did get a very severe rain event somewhere in the order of 30 to 40 millimetres or more, we would see impacts again, but we don’t expect they would reach the levels we have seen because the snow levels high up — the snow is melting.”

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Residents returning home will remain on evacuation alert, and are being asked to leave sandbags in place out of an abundance of caution.

Maika added that there will be some residents who won’t be able to return home because the damage to their properties is too severe.

She said she was unable to provide an estimate on the number of uninhabitable properties as damage assessments are still underway.

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“There are a number of homes where that is the case,” she said. “Some of them are obvious, some of them are less obvious. There’s going to be frustration. And there’s a long road of recovery for everybody here, but we have had people impacted severely by this catastrophic flood.”

Maika said Canadian Forces troops in the area who have been assisting with the flood are packing up Sunday to re-deploy to areas where they are needed.

She said residents in the area who are returning home and get their drinking water from their own wells are invited to contact the RDKB about getting water testing kits.