As residents, the B.C. government and First Nations prepare for water to surge through a landslide blocking the Chilcotin River, officials are warning of unpredictable water conditions along the Chilcotin and Fraser rivers.
“It’s not going to go crashing over and and wipe out a town or anything like that. That’s only in movies. This is real life,” Chief Joe Alphonse, the tribal chair of the Tŝilhqot’in Nation, told CBC News Friday. “But there will be a lot of debris that will flow, and the water is going to be really affected.”
The landslide earlier this week blocked the Chilcotin near Farwell Canyon, about 285 kilometres north of Vancouver. Residents of a nearby ranch reported it Wednesday morning.
That day, the Cariboo Regional District (CRD) ordered evacuations over 107 square kilometres along the Chilcotin River, stretching from where it met the Fraser River to near Hanceville, B.C.
Since then, officials have been expecting the dam to breach. CRD chair Margot Wagner told reporters Thursday the dam caused by the landslide was 600 metres wide and 30 metres high and it was holding back a lake filled with debris including fallen trees.
She said water is expected to surge past the dam in the coming days.
On Thursday, Emergencies Minister Bowinn Ma said if the dam broke, it could affect communities hundreds of kilometres away. She asked B.C. residents to stay away from the Chilcotin and Fraser riverbanks and to refrain from boating on these bodies of water.
B.C. Water and Land Stewardship Minister Nathan Cullen said crews were assessing the situation from above. The B.C. Wildfire Service also sent helicopters to help ministry staff create maps of the slide, so they could assess the damage.
Gerald Pinchbeck with the Cariboo Regional District’s emergency operations centre told CBC New Friday morning he had not received any more information, and officials aren’t sure what will happen next.
B.C. Emergency Management Minister Bowinn Ma and Water and Nathan Cullen, the minister of Minister of water, land, and resources, are scheduled to provide an update on the situation at 1 p.m. PT.
Alphonse said landslides are common for the area. The Tŝilhqot’in name for the place where the landslide happened is Nagwentled, which he said means landslide area.
He said when the flood happens, he expects water levels to rise along the river system.
“We hope and we pray that it’s going to happen in the current the best way possible,” he said. “Use common sense. Stay away from the river banks.”
One man was rescued and taken to hospital Wednesday after becoming trapped by the slide. No other injuries related to the landslide have been reported.
Alphonse said he expects the flooding to heavily reduce the sockeye salmon run this season.
“There’s going to be no fish in our deep freezers this winter,” he said. “That’s going to affect our people in a big way.”