Floodgates opened, dike breach sealed in Abbotsford, mayor says

Vancouver -

A breach on the Sumas River dike has been sealed, but work is continuing to reinforce it, Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said at a news conference Sunday afternoon.

Additionally, the floodgates at the Barrowtown Pump Station are now fully opened, Braun said.

Despite this good news, however, the mayor said the city is "still a long way from being out of danger." Braun said the local state of emergency has been extended to Nov. 29.

Earlier in the day the City of Chilliwack had announced the completion of repairs at the dike in a news release lifting an evacuation alert in that city. 

Braun began his remarks by highlighting the work of staff and residents near the pump station to prevent it from catastrophically failing earlier last week.

"After my visit to Barrowtown this morning, I have a whole new appreciation for just how close we came to this disaster being much, much worse," Braun said. "We came extremely close to losing this absolutely critical piece of infrastructure."

The closure of the breach in the dike and the opening of the floodgates mean that water is no longer flowing from the Sumas River into the former Sumas Lake bed. Instead, the Sumas is flowing directly into the Fraser River, as intended, and the pump station is pumping water out of the former lake and into the Fraser as well.

Work still needs to be done to increase the width and height of the repaired dike, Braun said, noting that the water level in the Sumas River is now rising because of the breach closure.

"This was a monumental task that we undertook and are still undertaking," the mayor said of the dike repair.

"The situation here remains fluid, and a key component of how well we are able to keep things moving in a positive direction is directly related to how much our weather continues to co-operate," Braun said.

Sumas Prairie resident Erik Timmermans was excited to hear about the progress on the dike.

“It’s good news,” he said.

On Saturday, volunteer Menno Koehoorn used a boat to take Timmermans to his home for the first time since the floods hit.

His cat was in need of rescue and the family needed to retrieve important items.

His property was surrounded by water and there was about eight inches of water inside his house.

“It’s just devastating to see your house being flooded and all your belongings floating around,” he said.

More than 100 Canadian Forces troops are on the ground in Abbotsford, helping to rescue livestock, fill sandbags and move people, supplies and equipment around the flooded region. 

The Sumas Prairie is a 90-square-kilometre, low-lying region in southeast Abbotsford, more than two-thirds of which is the former Sumas Lake.

Floodwaters from the Nooksack River in the United States drain north via the Sumas River into the Fraser. When an atmospheric river brought heavy rain and melting snow to the Pacific Northwest last weekend, the dike that holds back the Sumas was breached in two places, flooding much of the prairie and allowing the former lake to begin reforming.