“Just as it’s in a river’s nature to flood,” she writes, “it’s human nature to forget what floods can do.”
I always thought the big threat in the Lower Mainland was the mighty Fraser River and I guess it still is, but this week has proven that even the smaller currents can wreak havoc in our lives. The above quote is from Jane Watt, a historian who prepared an amazing book called High Water that documents the two most devastating floods in Lower Mainland history. One in 1894 and the other in 1948. Both took place in the spring, during the “freshet” when rain and meltwater converge into the province’s waterways.
I consulted her book extensively when I wrote a story about the potential for floods in the Fraser Valley. We had just moved to Chilliwack and I was obsessed with this new landscape needed topics for non-fiction courses in my Creative Writing MFA program. As noted in the previous post, I had just found out that a swath of flat land between Chilliwack and Abbotsford had once been a lake! Then I found out that the whole area had two catastrophic floods, which you can read more about in the story that eventually made its way into Maisonneuve Magazine.
My grandpa used to say look all around before you buy a house. He thought people who bought houses in floodplains were fools. But people have always lived by water.
Of course, I bought a house on a hill top in Ryder Lake and forgot to look up hill to see the drain pipe our neighbor had aimed at our yard (to drain the “overflow” out of his own flat spot) and we got a crawlspace full of run off. Nothing compared to what others are facing.
The lake was drained and look what we’ve built in the meantime. Houses with expensive electronics in the basement and gyprock that is ruined with slightest moisture. Barns full of helpless dairy cows. Dikes that we've known for years might not hold the cold swirling water back. In Holland, they’ve taken flood mitigation next level, which you can read about in the story.
“People don’t take things seriously unless they’ve seen it with their own eyes,” said Neil Peters, retired inspector of dikes, who told me he's been trying to get people to take flooding seriously for his entire career.
Now they have.
I hope we don’t forget.