A powerful storm that swept through Maple Ridge has proved to be especially destructive for those living at a local tent city.
“It was start and then, wham! It was crazy, you could hear tents going down,” Peter Woodrow exclaimed.
“It was like snowballs – major snowballs coming at me.”
Woodrow is one of 120 people who currently reside at Anita Place Tent City.
Some of the tents were salvaged because the people inside were holding them up, while the majority of homes collapsed.
“Everything’s just water logged. We managed to save one big bag of clothes,” Katelyn Gagnon said.
She considers herself to be lucky because she ran to higher ground and was able to recover some items while others lost whatever little they had.
Friday night, half of the people at the homeless camp were taken to an emergency centre.
The mayor said the destruction proves there is an immediate need to create a permanent shelter.
“We’re really looking forward to understanding what the immediate emergency plan is to get these people out of that camp and into housing because we can't manage this camp safely anymore,” Mayor Nicole Read said.
There are 55 modular homes opening in October but they won’t be able to fit everybody from Anita Place.
With files from CTV Vancouver’s Breanna Karstens-Smith
