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Leaving home is a difficult choice for Christy Vesa, whose housing situation is already vulnerable but now faces an evacuation order due to flooding in Abbotsford, British Columbia.
The city in the Fraser Valley is the only district in the province It remains under a flood warning on Friday after days of heavy rain and rising floodwaters.
Wesa took refuge in a campervan at the camp on Whatcom Road, but says it was hard for her to say it was warm and dry.
“It's raining so hard that our floors are getting wet,” she said. “We need a little help.”
Although floodwaters are expected to peak Friday, Dave Campbell of the BC River Forecast Center said Friday that another atmospheric river moving into the region will bring more rain on Sunday and Monday – and that precipitation will continue throughout the week.
As of Friday, more than 450 properties in the area were already under evacuation orders in the Fraser Valley, mostly in Abbotsford, and another 1,900 properties were on alert.
The Whatcom Road camp is among areas where people have been ordered to leave.
David Campbell, head of the BC River Forecast Centre, outlined what's expected in the coming days after flooding hit parts of the Fraser Valley.
Get out of Mother Nature's way
Richard Maloney says he packed up and left his trailer late Thursday night when authorities issued a new evacuation order.
He says he's “hoping for the best but expecting the worst” as he waits to see if the flooding will impact his home.
Maloney says he gathered all the personal belongings he could and packed up his car. Everything that he could not take with him, he put as high as possible.
“There's nothing I can do to stop the flooding or the damage or anything like that,” he said. “I just have to help the people around me as much as I can.”
He says he's trying to stay positive now and may worry about what will happen to his property “in the future.”
“You just have to play smart [and] get out of Mother Nature's way.”
Camp 2 is under evacuation alert
But shelter space could be limited if more unsheltered people are forced to move under evacuation orders and warnings, according to Ward Draper, pastor of Ministries 5 and 2, who works with unsheltered people.
Draper says there is a gap in the number of shelters compared to the number of homeless people living in the area, including those living in trailers and vehicles parked at Camp Whatcom, as well as another at the Cole Road rest stop, which is also under an evacuation alert.
The latter, which is the larger of the two, is cut off by floodwaters above Highway 1 and nearby roads and is accessible only from the east side, said Jesse Wegenast, executive director of the Sparrow Humane Society.
He says this will make it difficult to communicate with people if an evacuation order is issued for Cole Road.
Sparrow Community Care Society operates a 20-bed overnight shelter (expandable to 50) that was opened as part of the province's extreme weather response program.
According to the BC Housing Fund websiteAbbotsford operates 13 year-round shelters and extreme weather response shelters with 267 beds.
Floodwaters are rising again in British Columbia's Fraser Valley on Thursday, even after the rain has stopped. The surge is coming from Washington state, where the Nooksack River is flowing north for the second time in four years. Atmospheric rivers, exacerbated by climate change, are piling up, and transboundary mitigation efforts are still delayed. CBC's Johanna Wagstaffe finds out why British Columbia is once again facing a flood peak it can't fully control.
Wegenast says the connection is better than in 2021, when an atmospheric river caused widespread flooding and damage in southwestern British Columbia.
However, he says he remains “very frustrated” that there is a “jurisdictional gap” in providing 24-hour support for people experiencing homelessness in extreme weather conditions.
