MERRITT — As rising flood waters turned Merritt streets and backyards into devastating torrents of water on Monday, some residents headed up to a city viewpoint with binoculars to survey the damage being done to the community.
Some of them, including residents Dave and Jan Horne, said they know a number of people in the city who have been impacted by the flood.
“We live on the hill over here so the sirens this morning woke us up when the river crested the banks there and started flooding downtown, we could hear the sirens from our bedroom,” Dave Horne said.
“Every once in a while we get spring flooding. But the water level right now is higher than I can ever recall it being even in the spring flooding. So this is not good for people downtown.”
James Clark said he was up early alerting people about the flood.
“We’re actually on the phoning committee for our church, so we were on the phone tree this morning alerting everybody, just making sure they had an evac plan in order, and making sure anybody that needed help got help,” Clark said.
“We’re just looking around to see where else we can help out now. They need help with sandbagging down at Central Park.”
Diane Clark said she was supposed to be at Merritt Central elementary school, but classes were cancelled due to flooding.
“It looks like MSS [Merritt Secondary School], which is our high school, and also Central elementary are right down in the midst of this flood,” she said.
“I was going to be at Central today, and we got a call about six saying that schools were cancelled. But I had been up since five, because that’s when the Voyent alert came on, warning people there was flooding,” she said.
Evacuation orders were issued for the whole city at about 10 a.m. on Monday after heavy rainfall caused the river to breach its banks, and stopped operations at the town’s water treatment plant.
Earlier Monday, some whose houses were above the flood plains said they would stay, as they were able to stay put temporarily without using city facilities.
However, the municipality later said Merritt will be closed to everyone as of 4 p.m. Monday.
Mayor Linda Brown asked residents to remain calm as they evacuate the city. If they didn’t have a place to go to, residents were instructed to go to either Kamloops (odd-numbered addresses) or Kelowna (even-numbered addresses), where reception centres have been opened. A muster centre was set up at Nicola Valley Memorial Arena where people who don’t have their own cars could board buses.
