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Flood response

Kimberly residents grateful to city for flood response. Emergency crews and volunteers were all involved.

Dear Mayor McRae:

During the flooding that took place in Kimberley in Morrison Sub and the upper end of Wallinger Avenue last week, my wife and I were at our home in the affected area.

We'd like to tell you how pleased and grateful we are with the efforts of the City crews to deal with a very difficult and rapidly-changing situation. They were well-motivated and well-directed and did a terrific job in getting the berms in place and pumping set up to handle the flood water. I was assisting with the sand-bags on Tuesday evening, April 24, and observed the water advancing slowly but steadily across the Centennial Park playing fields. By 4 am Wednesday morning the upper end of Wallinger Avenue was under water, up to and over the sidewalks.

Throughout Wednesday, I was impressed by the number of emergency volunteers and neighbourhood volunteers who showed up at the Centennial Centre to help make sandbags.

Emergency crews were on scene from Tuesday late evening through the following weekend and worked long hours to control the flood as much as they could given the circumstances. Unfortunately for some of our neighbours, the combination of record snow packs, warm temperatures on the Tuesday and a severe rainfall Tuesday night resulted in an extraordinarily fast melt and run-off that caused the fast rise of water and flooded basements.

We would like to express our thanks to all the emergency and city personnel who worked so hard to stem the flood. Mike Fox in particular did a great job in organizing activities of the crews. If it had not been for all of their efforts I'm certain that the damage caused by flooding would have been very much greater.

 

 

RALPH BULLIS,

KIMBERLEY, B.C.