By Greg Fry

B.C. responds to flood threat across the province

May 7, 2018 | 4:15 PM

KAMLOOPS — Fresh on the heels of the worst wildfire season in provincial history, the province is now bracing for the ever-expanding flood risk.

Head of the BC River Forecast Centre Dave Campbell said many areas of the province — from the Southern Interior up through the Central Interior — have been busy weathering the effects of a rapid snow melt.

During a provincial teleconference Campbell added the monthly snow bulletin, which was released today, showed the snowpack is quite a bit higher than it was April 1 at 168 per cent of average across B.C.

He added the concern now will be the weather.

“Weather developing this week is concerning for flood risk. We have another couple days of warming trends and wetter weather on Wednesday. Precipitation amounts in the 5 to 15 millimetres range.”

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Campbell said that may be followed up with warmer weather this weekend which could complicate matters even more.

Of particular concern to people in the area is Nicola Lake, which reached full pool today.

“So, it’s currently at 625.83 metres. It came up faster than anticipated last week,” said Flood Safety Engineer Sarah Simon. “The current inflows to Nicola Lake are in the order of a 1 in a 100 year flow and the outflows are obviously smaller than that. But as the lake continues to come up we’re going to need to start pushing more water through unless we start to get less water coming into the system.”

Despite the threat she said it’s “a little bit too early to predict what the lake is going to get to and where the flows will be.”

Provincially as a whole, Chris Duffy, executive director of programs with Emergency Management BC, painted the following picture of emergency preparedness:

“There’s currently 17 states of local emergency in B.C., eight band council resolutions, 21 evacuation orders affecting 187 homes, 22 evacuation alerts affecting 585 homes. 13 local authorities have emergency operation centres activated and 10 First Nations have emergency operation centres activated.”