Many of you may be hearing on the news about Fort Langley, Glenn Valley, Chilliwack, Hope... all these towns threatened to flood in our area.
The water is very high (although gone down again in the last few days) but due to major flash floods and never ending rain here and north of us it is not helping the situation.
This is the Fraser River it spilled over its banks in 1948 and in 1972... and I believe it was close to flooding in the 90's too.
This past winter there was a huge snow pack in the mountains and with all the rain we've had... well... it spelled F-L-O-O-D
Karl and I took a drive past our friends place on Saturday the 23rd...
to the left is a farmers field under water and you can see the water creeping onto the road
Further down it was over the road
We, of course, had to take a drive through it!
Many of the roads are closed because of the high water alert.
We tried to continue down the road to a farm we know right on River Road but they had evacuated that section and no one was allowed that far down the road.
So we turned around and came back. I took a picture of a friend of mine whose house has been sand bagged and they too are evacuated. The grey behind the house in the trees is the river.
The next day... Sunday we took another drive down to our friends place... Karl took his transit to measure how many inches or feet the water had to raise before entering his house or mobile home.
On our drive we came across this: This place always looks uninhabitable but someone actually does live here... pretty sure he is evacuated now.
We arrived at our friend, Gregs, property (he has renters living here)... the water has come up over a low part in his driveway. This day the water has actually receeded... it was higher before.
Karl and Greg measuring height - this house is a heritage house and it never got wet in the flood of 1948 so here if hoping it won't flood this time.
If you turn around from what they are doing you can see the dike.. that is a municipal truck driving along checking the height of the water and the dike. That is Greg's field covered in water too.
There is another dike and that is between Gregs house and the River - which is also known as the train track. Greg is on the right side of the tracks but the wrong side of the cross dike!
The evacuation alert has been lifted until the weekend. There has been major flooding and monsoon rain north of us and they expect that water to come rushing down the river to our area this weekend.
We, personally, are safe from the flood waters but in Glenn Valley there are many farms - one being a 650 head dairy farm.
In the worst case scenario, if the water breeches the dike (meaning Gregs place will REALLY be under water!) This farm (Pool's) will move thier 280 head of milk cows and unweaned calves to our barn. We will then be milking 150 of ours and 280 of his! Its all planned out "just in case" but we are really hoping it won't happen.
#1 its a HUGE undertaking,
#2 his herd has hairy wart (a cow foot fungus that is VERY hard to control - we don't have it in our herd - we have heard that we have the reputation of the only one in the fraser valley that doesn't have it - we would like to keep that reputation!)
#3 - the only reason he would move to our place is if the dike is breeched... he will then be milking at our place for a minimum of 2 months - that will be a lot of work for him... as his other animals will be pastured on high ground at someone elses place... he will have no access to his own feed so he will be using ours and anything else he can get his hands on. Tough this time of year when its just the beginning of summer and not much cropping has been done!
I certainly don't wish this issue on anyone. I truly feel for those in MB that had to go through this ordeal last year.
So far so good here, lets hope we have bypassed the worst of it
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