Standing near a rail line next to the U.S. border, Abbotsford, B.C., resident Robbie Friesen said the ground under his feet was dry about 30 minutes earlier.
“Now at our deepest point we're about four feet underwater here at the centre of the road,” he said on Thursday.
Friesen said as soon as the waters “breached over the train tracks, water started flowing and it was probably going (up) inches within minutes.”
Friesen, who lives on nearby First Avenue, said it’s a familiar scene.
“We know as soon as it breaches right on the train track where CN is, it all flows through and most all the backside of these houses are going to flood, and it's just going to keep finding the lowest point this way.”
Fast-rising floodwaters in British Columbia's Fraser Valley have forced families and farmers to escape a situation many have seen before, after atmospheric river weather systems sent cross-border outflows pouring into the province from Washington state.
Friesen said the feeling Thursday was “very similar to four years ago” when the Nooksack River in Washington state overflowed and sent water gushing into the Sumas Prairie, during floods that caused billions in damage.
“Exact same feeling where you look and you're like, oh, the water's OK. And then within minutes it gets into the house and then there's nothing you can do after that,” he said.
He said his biggest concern is for the region’s farmers, “struggling to get everything together, all their personal items, all their livestock, and all their belongings out from a dangerous area.”
"And when you have to make decisions quickly, it's obviously a lot of stress and, yeah, it's just a scary experience,” he said.
All major highways out of the Lower Mainland had been shut Wednesday, but by Thursday evening all except Highway 1 and Highway 11 at the Sumas border crossing had reopened.
Evacuation alerts and orders were expanded on Thursday as the floodwaters rose. The province said all travel in the Fraser Valley should be avoided unless necessary.
The City of Abbotsford, which declared a local state of emergency on Wednesday, said Thursday that residents of more than 450 properties had been told to get out immediately, with more than 1,000 under evacuation alert.
On Whatcom Road, a search team in red suits and lifejackets waded through floodwaters to knock on the door of a home on Thursday afternoon, escorting residents out as brown floodwaters rose around them.
Directly in front of the home, a torrent poured over the road and started filling an adjacent field.
Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens said in a video update that flooding was "tracking similar to the 1990 flood," when cross-border floodwaters closed the Trans-Canada Highway for 26 hours.
"This is a lesser event than what we experienced in 2021, but conditions and forecasts are always subject to change," he said.
In an update around 6:30 p.m. Thursday, the City of Abbotsford said floodwaters were expected to peak within 12 hours and reach Highway 1 overnight. It also urged residents to stay out of evacuation areas and away from flooded roads.
B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said in a news briefing on Thursday that more than 160 farms were in the way of the floodwaters and were either on evacuation order or alert, although the poultry, cows and hogs were considered safe.
Poultry farmer Corry Spitters, who lost 200,000 chickens in the 2021 floods, said the hours leading into Friday would be crucial and he was “at the mercy of the nature.”
Brad Driediger, who owns Windberry Farms in Abbotsford, worked through the night on Wednesday placing sandbags around the property.
“I know that a lot of farmers I've talked to have done the same, to prepare as best they can, to minimize damage to their properties, and then ultimately, you can only do what you can do,” said Driediger, who is also president of the BC Poultry Association.
David Campbell with the BC River Forecast Centre said that while rainfall warnings had come down, floodwaters pouring into the Sumas area would keep rising into Friday as water from the Nooksack River in Washington continued to spill into the Fraser Valley.
He said the series of atmospheric rivers had dumped up to 150 millimetres of rain in some areas since Tuesday.
Campbell said another wet system is coming in on the weekend, but that will give a little bit of time to create room in many of B.C.’s rivers that are near or at flood stage.
“When it comes to the Nooksack, obviously it’s a more complex system and clearing the water (off) various flat terrain around the Sumas as well as the Nooksack flood plain takes a little bit more time.”
Abbotsford resident Spencer Cording surveyed the floodwaters along the U.S. border on Thursday and said it reminded him of 2021.
“It's kind of ridiculous. We've had four years to prepare and it doesn't look like a whole lot's been done,” he said, blaming a lack of cross-border communication between authorities.
Fellow Abbotsford resident Jessica Krins was among evacuees told to leave their homes around 11 p.m. Wednesday.
She said watching the floodwaters was “bringing back PTSD from last time.”
Krins is a veteran of Abbotsford evacuations, having been forced out of her home twice in 2021, when she said she was given 15 minutes to get out and people were “banging on the door.”
“It comes fast,” she said. “It sucks because it's just a waiting game, just waiting to see what happens.”
She said she and others talk about what happened in 2021 all the time. “We're like, 'Oh, remember when it flooded four years ago? Will it ever happen again?' And here we are, happening again.”
Farther to the east, the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen ordered the evacuation of the Princeton Municipal Campground because of "the immediate danger to life safety caused by flooding."
The regional district also declared a state of local emergency on Thursday as water levels rose in several rivers in its jurisdiction.
At one point in the deluge on Wednesday, every major highway between the B.C. Lower Mainland and its Interior was cut off by flooding or slides, but that is gradually improving.
Janelle Staite, with the B.C. Ministry of Transportation, said during the government briefing that cleanup and assessment was a priority.
"I'm happy to report that while there are road impacts, we are not near the state of infrastructure damage that we experienced during the 2021 event."
North Shore Rescue said in a statement that it helped rescuers in Chilliwack, B.C., pull a group of five people and their four dogs off an island in the middle of the Chilliwack River as floodwaters rose around them in the early morning hours of Thursday.
Search manager Dave Barnett said it was feared the group would be swept away as the waters rose, so rescuers could not wait until morning.
He said a helicopter equipped with night-vision capability, and a team of specialists was able to hoist the group out one by one, in a rescue that took several hours.
"The area, of course, likely wasn't an island until this recent flood surge and the waters rising and essentially cut them off," he said.
"And the terrain was very challenging. There was a lot of brush and brambles. Trees were falling because of the floodwaters washing the roots away and so on. And then if that wasn't enough challenge, the winds were very, very high. This was a challenging hoist extraction."
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
