One home washed away in B.C. mudslide, owner missing: police

COQUITLAM, B.C. – First responders in Coquitlam, B.C., spent much of the weekend searching for a person who is missing after their home was washed away in a mudslide triggered by torrential rain across British Columbia’s south coast.

Officers responded to a report of the slide along Quarry Road on the east side of Pinecone Burke Provincial Park at about 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Coquitlam RCMP said in a statement issued Sunday.

The slide washed away one home, and Cpl. Alexa Hodgins with the Coquitlam detachment said it’s believed the home was occupied at the time.

The Mounties said they were communicating with the homeowner’s family.

The slide has rendered the road impassable, cutting off several other residents who confirmed with emergency personnel that they were sheltering in place.

B.C.’s River Forecast Centre, meanwhile, downgraded flood warnings Sunday for the Coquitlam River and waterways on southwestern Vancouver Island.

Lower-level flood watches cover the southern half of Vancouver Island and the rest of the province’s south coast, including the Sunshine Coast, Metro Vancouver, the Sea to Sky corridor and the Lower Fraser River and its tributaries.

In addition to the flood watches, the District of North Vancouver announced in a social post that a state of local emergency has been declared. The post states the emergency and previous evacuations were necessary due to inspections finding potential failure of private infrastructure was a risk to public safety.

An update from the centre said additional rainfall was expected Sunday night as a “second and final pulse of moist air” moves from the coast to the Interior.

The atmospheric river weather system that lashed B.C.’s south coast on the day of the provincial election sent daily rainfall records tumbling on Saturday.

Environment Canada figures showed new daily rainfall records were set in Victoria, Squamish, Vancouver, West Vancouver, White Rock, Langley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Hope, Nakusp in the Interior, and the Agassiz and Pitt Meadows areas.

West Vancouver saw 134.6 millimetres of rain, smashing the record of 34.8 millimetres set in 1970, and images posted to social media in the city on Saturday showed a surge of brown floodwater flowing down a sloping street.

Environment Canada figures released Sunday afternoon showed Coquitlam had seen 233 millimetres of rain since Friday, while West Vancouver had seen 190 millimetres, and just over 160 fell in the Vancouver harbour area.

On Vancouver Island, the weather office said the Kennedy Lake area north of Ucluelet had seen a whopping 317 millimetres of rainfall since Friday.

Environment Canada lifted rainfall warnings across the south coast later Sunday, while a bulletin remains in effect in the West Kootenay and Columbia regions, including a stretch of the Trans Canada Highway between Revelstoke and Golden.

The BC Hydro outage map showed nearly 1,800 homes and businesses on the Lower Mainland, Sunshine Coast and south Vancouver Island still without power heading into Monday morning.

About 60 customers are also offline in the Central Interior region of Williams Lake.