Flood waters run through the village of Cache Creek on May 3, 2023 (image credit - CFJC Today)

By Michael Reeve

CACHE CREEK FLOOD 2023

‘The big wild card will really be that rainfall’; Forecast could bring more trouble for Cache Creek

May 3, 2023 | 4:10 PM

KAMLOOPS — “The Village of Cache Creek has gone from an emergency situation to a disaster,” said Mayor John Ranta.

On Tuesday (May 3), community members in Cache Creek were in the parking lot of the fire station filling sandbags. Twenty-four hours later that parking lot was a raging river. Water flows through the open bay doors at the fire hall, and through rooms of the motel across the street.

“At this point, it’s not looking very optimistic. The water levels today look higher than they were yesterday, in spite of the fact we had a hydrologist fly up in a helicopter and look at it and come back and told us, ‘You are probably through the worst of it, it should get better tomorrow’. But it doesn’t look better today,” said Ranta.

Ranta was forced, at midnight Wednesday morning, to place four additional homes on evacuation order, that’s on top of the house which was devastated earlier this week. Other homes in the community are on evacuation alert.

CFJC TV Special

Inspirational stories of 2024

3h ago

CFJC TV Special

Art of Christmas 2024 with Art Knapp Kamloops

5h ago

1000 Ways to Heal

1000 Ways to Heal: Winter Solstice

Dec 23, 2024

“There is five properties under evacuation order, and as well we have evacuation alerts on all the properties on Old Cariboo road as well,” said Ranta. “Those people need to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice and hopefully they wont have to. But that’s the situation right now.”

The worst of it may not be over for the village with temperature expected to be around 30 degrees Celsius, followed by forecasted rain this weekend.

“We’ve been looking at six, seven days of well above normal temperatures and that has really continued to crank up the snowmelt rates where we still have snow,” said BC River Forecast Centre Hydrologist Dave Campbell. “The big wild card will really be that rainfall. We can see the pattern. We have good confidence there is going to be rain — it’s coming across the bc interior.”

Sandbags are being laid around the community as contractors also place boulders along the sides of the creek to prevent further erosion. The highway through town is closed to vehicle traffic as a raging river runs through the middle of town, leaving some locals to try anything to stay dry.

“There is a river flowing down the road and it’s flowing into businesses in the south end of town that are phoning me and asking, ‘Can’t I stop the water?’ But I just don’t have that close a relationship with God to be able to make that happen. I wish I did. It’s just devastating what’s happening here, it’s unprecedented,” said Ranta.

The mayor also confirmed that power is out for a section of the community near the post office, as a power pole was taken out by the water.

“We aren’t through this yet, but optimistically the river levels will come down over time. and after we get finished with Cache Creek we will probably have to be dealing with the Bonaparte River,” added Ranta.