Residents along the Chilcotin River in British Columbia’s Cariboo region can return home now that an evacuation order issued when a landslide blocked the waterway for days has been downgraded.
The Cariboo Regional District issued the evacuation order on July 31 for 34 parcels of land along the river due to the landslide and declared a state of local emergency.
The evacuation order covered a stretch of the river about 30 kilometres long and spanning nearly 73 square kilometres.
The district says the order has been downgraded to an evacuation alert, but it’s warning residents not to interfere with any monitoring activity as landslide and river assessment is still ongoing in the area.
The district is also asking people to be aware of additional slides or flooding.
Water and debris surged down the Fraser River Tuesday after water breached a natural dam, caused by a landslide, upstream in the Chilcotin River. As Yasmine Ghania reports, multiple emergency alerts have been issued, and debris is forecast to make its way to the Lower Mainland by Tuesday night.
B.C.’s minister of emergency management and climate readiness said in a news conference on Tuesday that there is still concern about the impact of the Chilcotin River landslide.
Bowinn Ma says the province is monitoring salmon stocks as the fish head up the Fraser River and into the Chilcotin, and they are monitoring the banks of both rivers to ensure any additional slumping doesn’t create new challenges to fish passage.