Island-Sity

Environment Canada meteorologist Louis Kohanyi said another 25-to-40 millimetres of rain was expected — making this likely the rainiest September in history for that area. “Port Hardy has received 178 millimetres of rain in the last 48 hours,” Kohanyi said Sunday evening. “We’re expecting the rain to arrive Sunday night. It’s definitely going to be a problem.”

Swollen rivers have devastated communities on Northern Vancouver Island and on the central coast portion of the mainland, with close to record September rainfalls in the region. Port Hardy, for one, is poised for a rainfall record. The rainiest September on record is 2004, when 260.4 mm fell. As of 6 p.m. Sunday, the community had already received 252.9 mm, with more rain on the way.

“It’s likely that we’ll have a rainfall record in Port Hardy,” said Kohanyi.

The official forecast calls for an additional 10 to 15 mm to fall Sunday night, with another 15 to 25 mm predicted for Monday.

The states of emergency that had been declared in Port Hardy and Port Alice were lifted Saturday night as the rain relented for a while.

On the mainland, meanwhile, Highway 20 was washed out in both directions 20 kilometres east of Bella Coola, effectively cutting off the town by road. Residents reported major flooding.

Rain was continuing to fall in remote Kingcome Inlet Sunday evening as the handful of people remaining in the central B.C. coast village wondered whether the community could withstand another flood.

Houses shifted off stilts, septic tanks flooded, heavy machinery was dunked underwater and steps and porches swept away Saturday when the Kingcome River swept into the community.

During the weekend about 80 people were evacuated by helicopter from the Central Coast reserve — the home of Dzawada’enuxw First Nation — and taken to Alert Bay, where most are staying with friends or relatives.

But 17 people chose to stay in Kingcome Inlet.

“We stayed because we’re looking after things,” said band administrator Roberta Smith.

The water had dropped by Sunday afternoon, but rain picked up again in the evening.

“We’re expecting our second deluge. We don’t know what that means in terms of flooding because we’ve never had seven or eight feet of water coming at us before and we’ve never had back-to-back floods,” Smith said.

Kingcome Inlet is used to smaller floods, which is why reserve homes are on three metre stilts, but Smith and other band members said the difference this time was the speed at which the water rose.

“It was very scary because it rose so fast. It’s usually not that swift,” Smith said.

Community members are pointing to years of clear-cut logging along the river, which they say has led to erosion and logjams that give way unexpectedly.

“And there’s climate change. We had never seen it rain like that for so many hours. It just came down in buckets,” said band chairman Joey Willie.

“The river was coming up and then the tide came in and kicked it over the bank,” he said.

Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs secretary treasurer Chief Bob Chamberlin of the Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish First Nation, who has family in Kingcome and is a former band manager, said as soon as the water recedes, assessors must go in to the community to look at safety.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada should then look at intensive riprapping above the village and consider building an access road from the head of the inlet to the village — something that has been requested for decades as a safety measure, but which draws objections because it would grizzly bear and duck habitat, Chamberlin said.

Usually community members can run boats up the river from the head of the inlet, but it is too dangerous during floods, meaning everyone has to be evacuated by helicopter.

It is also a post-flood problem as boat owners have to figure out the location of new snags and piles of debris in the river, Smith said.

Access is one of the many hurdles that will face community members as they try to repair the damage.

Dawn Nicolson of Port Hardy, whose 73-year-old mother was among the evacuees, was wondering where a cleanup should start.

“The houses are built on stilts. My mother’s house has no steps and the back porch has flipped up and then there’s water damage. We will need a ladder to get in and that’s just looking at the logistics of that one house,” said Nicolson, former principal of Kingcome Inlet school.

Getting equipment into the community will be hugely complicated and then there are challenges such as spotty power supply from diesel generators, contaminated water, disposal of wrecked household goods when all garbage has to be barged out, and places for workers to stay while repairs are being done, Nicolson said.

“It is mind-boggling,” she said.

In the longer term, people will not consider leaving the community where their ancestors have lived for hundreds of years, so better monitoring of the river should be part of the answer, Nicolson said.

“We need a helicopter to monitor the valley.”

When Kingcome residents arrived in Alert Bay, appeals went out to all Alert Bay residents to bring food and clothing to the recreation centre as most evacuees left with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

The response was generous, Willie said.

“Everyone’s doing great, but they’re all pretty shaken up and wondering about their homes. They don’t know what they’ll be going back to,” he said.

The weather forecast for the central Coast and northern Vancouver Island is rain, at times heavy, for the next two days.