It’s been a difficult start to the week for many people in Metro Vancouver, like Laura-Jade Artus, who has had to recover from the frightening and overwhelming rainstorm this weekend.
Artus said despite knowing the forecasted storm was ahead, she was not expecting how severe the weather would have turned out.
This season’s first atmospheric river in Metro Vancouver caused rapid flooding, a sinkhole, landslides, and a fatal mudslide.
Widely spread videos online show water gushing into streets and overflowing creeks and streams. Artus is one of many people who shared videos of flooding and tells Daily Hive she is now one of many people in the region who’ve experienced damage to their home.
“I, personally, have never seen anything like this,” Artus wrote in a TikTok post
@happilyeverartus More scenes from today’s atmospheric river. Of course, there are far worse things happening in the world and we are incredibly lucky to live in such a comfortable corner of the world, but I, personally, have never seen anything like this. #nvd #deepcove #northvancouver #vancouverflood #atmosphericriver #fyp ♬ original sound – Happily Ever Artus
Artus explained that on Saturday, she woke up to her home “vibrating” and assumed an earthquake had struck.
“There was a lot of loud thudding, and I know that we’d had a lot of small earthquakes recently, but we actually hadn’t been feeling them in this house,” she said. “So I thought, well, this could be a slightly bigger earthquake, and then it wasn’t.”
She later realized it was boulders rolling down the creek which runs between her home and her neighbours. Artus lives in North Vancouver’s Deep Cove.
As Artus and her mom looked out the window to see the creek, she described it as “violent.”
“It was higher than I’d ever seen it,” Artus said, adding it was “quite surreal.”
@happilyeverartus What a day! We have been incredibly lucky to escape this flood without any property damage, thankfully, because it gave us the time to be able to help neighbors who weren’t so fortunate! Hope everyone is back in their homes soon 💔 @fraservalleybuzz #atmosphericriver #vancouverflood #northvancouver #deepcove #nvd @Honey_The_ShihTzu ♬ original sound – Happily Ever Artus
“We could tell that there was some kind of blockage because the water was level with the ground at this point,” she told Daily Hive.
Artus said she called the district to report the incident but didn’t realize it would only get worse.
“Within maybe 30 minutes to an hour, the creek had risen and it was overflowing,” she said. “You could see all of the brown water going down the main road onto Gallon Avenue, so you could tell when it had changed from rainwater that had been rushing down the street all morning into the muddy water that was pouring out of the creek.”
The North Vancouver resident added that the water was so high that it started leaking through a wall of boulders into her neighbour’s yard, then poured into the driveway, and the drains began to back up with mud.
She added water levels even rose to halfway up ground-floor windows of nearby apartments.
“You could see that these people had put blockades, [like] towels, on their window ledges to try and stop it coming in.”
At this time, Artus said she thought her and her family “had a really lucky escape” and the storm hadn’t impacted them and spent their time helping their neighbour.
“But because the water was so high, it was actually hiding the damage that was underneath,” she said.
Eventually, when the water subsided, Artus and her family realized a part of the wall supporting their front entrance was gone.
Artus said the City has sent a engineer to inspect the area and she is waiting for an assessment to determine the next steps and the safety of her home.
“We’re just hoping that they realize this is no fault of our own and that this creek is district property and do something about it soon,” she added.
Since posting videos of the flooding in the areas, Artus said people have commented that she should have expected the water to rise because she lives near a creek and in an area known for being such a rainy city. However, she defends herself adding, “nobody had predicted this amount of water in such a short space of time.”
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Lower Mainland recorded record-breaking rainfall this weekend.
Coquitlam saw the highest rainfall of all the BC South Coast cities this weekend, with 256 mm, or 10 inches, between Friday night and Sunday afternoon. West Vancouver saw 203 mm, or about 7 inches, while the rainfall at the Vancouver International Airport was 113 mm, less than half of what the Tri-Cities saw.
With files from Megan Devlin