Image Credit: archival footage

By Dylana Kneeshaw

50-year anniversary

WATCH: Floods of 1972 helped Kamloops prepare for future high water years — like this one

Jun 2, 2022 | 4:33 PM

KAMLOOPS — It’s been 50 years since the South and North Thompson Rivers peaked at historic levels — breaching banks and seeping into homes throughout the Kamloops area.

The flooding in 1972 caused particular damage to the Westsyde area after the dike was breached near the Oak Hills subdivision. While homes in Brocklehurst and along Schubert Drive had water come from below, flooding basements.

It’s been decades since the event, but for people who experienced the floods first-hand, it’s something that has stuck with them ever since.

Doug Collins, the former news director of CFJC, was reporting on the floods at the time. He recalls what happened on June 2, 1972, when the dike in Westsyde split and poured the North Thompson into the Oak Hills mobile home park.

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“It was just… well it seemed instantaneous. How fast the water went in, and people were scurrying around trying to get out.”

For people who were living in Kamloops at the time, the memory of that day and the following weeks is as sharp as ever.

“It was the water table that caused a lot of the damage. Other than Oak Hills, it wasn’t water coming over the top of the dikes — it was the water table coming up and up and up and up and seeping into people’s basements.”

Along with working long hours to cover the disaster, Collins was also living in Brocklehurst at the time.

“We’d travel around all night long and check the dikes and all that kind of stuff. And we used to take coffee to the workers and that sort of thing,” he says.

Most residents living in flooded areas spent their time checking on properties, sandbagging and salvaging belongings. Some had seen similar conditions in the 1940s, but for most people this was unprecedented.

Mel Rothenburger, former editor of the Kamloops Daily News, was two years into reporting for what was then known as the Kamloops News Advertiser. Rothenburger says it turned into a large scale event, with provincial and federal ministers and resources suddenly responding to Kamloops.

“It was big, national news at the time,” he says. Looking at where the city stands now, Rothenburger is paying close attention to the monthly river forecast updates and how the waterways are rising.

“I think things are going to be hopefully much less dramatic than they were back then, when there really was no real preparation for such a thing. It was a total surprise and everybody had to scramble to do the best they could with bulldozers and equipment of all kinds — whatever they could get a hold of.”

Usually, the South Thompson River peaks about two-to-three weeks after the North Thompson River. The BC River Forecast Centre says the greatest risk for Kamloops is if the two rivers peak simultaneously, which is what happened in 1972 after a period of significant rainfall.

The City’s utility services manager, Greg Wightman, says Kamloops is well versed in emergency preparedness.

“Probably one of the most beneficial things we have now is just predictive modelling and tools that allow us to take information that we get from the province and really predict where the water is going to hit. And that allows us to get out and protect things in advance as opposed to responding.”

This year, Wightman figures the rivers will reach their peaks at later dates.

“Typically, it’s in to the first week of June by the time we see the rivers peak here. But this year we’re looking at probably the first week of July — so about a month delay. As you can see the river behind us, it hasn’t risen yet. It’s still quite low,” he explains. “We haven’t started with any of our flood response plan activities yet — lots of planning obviously, but nothing has started yet, and here we are in the first week of June.”

Along with river peak times, Wightman says so many scenarios could impact how 2022 plays out, such as if the area sees consecutive days with above average temperatures or an extreme amount of rain. But unlike 1972, additional dikes and other improved protections are embedded throughout the city and a new flood mitigation project at Riverside Park has just wrapped up.

“We’re protected to a one-in-20 (year) mark — which is about 1999, just to give some context to it. And the way this project has been built is we have the ability to deploy temporary flood protection measures on the pathway that we’ve built, which will allow us to protect to a much higher elevation if required.”

Residents will be keeping a watchful eye on how the rivers rise this year, but if 1972 is any indication, they can have confidence in how Kamloops will respond to whatever Mother Nature throws at it.

“The community stepped up. The dikes eventually got fixed, the rivers went down and we carried on with life,” adds Rothenburger. “But there was a lot of damage that occurred because of it.”