Fifty families were ordered from their homes in the Terrace area of northwestern B.C. on Wednesday, as the swollen Skeena River continued to rise.

Some streets in Terrace are underwater.
(Brian Anderson)

The 200 residents of Brauns Island on the outskirts of the city had been on evacuation alert for the past couple of days because of the rising flood threat.

The flood situation in northern B.C. has hundreds of residents on alert, after the high water levels forced evacuation orders for dozens of homes late Tuesday night.

The Bulkley, Fraser and Nechako rivers had all overflowed their banks Tuesday. The heavy flooding sent people packing from 26 homes in Smithers and forced 10 families out in Prince George.

Even more evacuations are in store for Wednesday, and city officials expanded the local state of emergency for some low-lying areas of Prince George.

A spokesman for the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George told CBC Newsworld on Wednesday it rained through the night in the region.

The Fraser River has overflowed its banks, flooding a Prince George park and threatening nearby homes.
(CBC)

"The volume on the Fraser River is increasing and we're not going to see that stop for at least three or four more days," said Finlay Sinclair.

"We will have to determine and evaluate this morning whether we have to do anything significant in the rural areas to try to manage people's safety because the Fraser not only has a high level right now, but the ferocity of the river is quite substantial."

On B.C.'s South Coast, five families were ordered out of their homes on the Mount Currie reserve north of Whistler Tuesday night after the Birkenhead River overflowed, cutting off some road access.

Hundreds of homeowners on alert

More than 600 homes were on evacuation alert late Tuesday in the Terrace area, and in Langley, Fort Langley, Maple Ridge, Abbotsford and Chilliwack in the Fraser Valley.

A local state of emergency was declared Tuesday in Terrace, which has lost its major road links to the rest of the world.

To the west, Highway 16 was closed Tuesday between Terrace and Port Edward, near Prince Rupert. The highway is also closed 37 kilometres east of Terrace, the site of last week's rockslide.

Acting Mayor Marilyn Davies said Terrace and Prince Rupert residents can expect a shortage of gasoline and produce because of the road closures.

Solicitor General John Les toured the area by helicopter Wednesday. noting that some sandbagged dikes built by homeowners trying to save their properties along the Skeena River were holding, but others were not.

"Obviously there are several neighbourhoods in Terrace and surrounding areas that are pretty heavily impacted," Les said. "Clearly, there is a real human story being told in some of these places."

Les noted that stretches of the local CN Rail line were also underwater.

Further north, Telegraph Creek Road was washed out by flooding, leaving 300 residents of that area cut off.

Many other roads and back roads have already been washed out in the area, including 25 kilometres of the Nisga'a Highway between Canyon City and Greenville.

Les, who got an aerial view of the Fraser River in the Prince George area on Tuesday, noted the unprecedented conditions remind him of the situation leading up to the flood of 1972.

He added that everything that's happening on the upper Fraser will be hitting the Fraser Valley four days from now.

Officials say that by the weekend, the upper Fraser could reach its highest level since they began measuring back in the 1950s.

The flooding is due in part to the rapid melting of the winter's record snowfall, helped by soaring temperatures last weekend and heavy rains that followed.

Prison flood plans

Despite the problem on the upper Fraser, officials said they're not expecting any major flooding in the Lower Mainland unless heavy rain dumps over the region in the coming weeks.

However, Corrections Canada is preparing an evacuation plan for its prisons if flooding of the lower Fraser River does become a safety concern.

Worries that water could seep into underground electrical systems and bring power down at Kent maximum-security prison in the Fraser Valley have officials trucking in a generator and diesel fuel as a precaution. As a last resort, officials said, more than 200 inmates would be transferred to other facilities.

"We have a plan with Mountain Institution, which is next door, and they're slightly higher, so they will be able to provide us with food and necessary resources to keep us running if we're here," assistant warden Gordon Mattson said.

Kent staff were keeping inmates updated on the flood levels and crews were rushing about 5,000 sandbags in to protect utilities, Mattson said.

 

With files from the Canadian Press