Locals coming to rescue of those stranded by B.C. storm

Communities in Southern, B.C. are pulling together and confronting Monday’s weather crisis with kindness.

As record rainfall created a dangerous — and for some traumatic — experience, locals like Pastor Jeff Kuhn with the Grace Baptist Church in Hope are offering what they can.

Sunday night, the church offered more than 150 people shelter after Kuhn noticed many were sleeping in their vehicles because of highway closures from landslides.

Because power was out at this time, the pastor tells CityNews, “The worst thing was when everything shut down,” like hotels, restaurants, and gas stations.

Power for this area has been restored, but Kuhn says the water has been “treacherous.”

“It’ll be nice when these people can get home because they’re tired… We had a couple of single individuals that were traveling by themselves and we’re afraid they were going to get pushed off the road or stuck in water, so they came in quite shaken.”

Related Article: People trapped in cars as flooding, mudslides close most major B.C. highways

Most of the people who sought shelter at the church were traveling through Kuhn says, adding only about a dozen were locals on evacuation alert.

“They’re in a crisis and they’re living it together. People don’t want to be here, they want to get on home. But they’re happy they’re inside,” he says.

“For the most part, it’s good. People were sleeping all through the night. You could walk through the sanctuary of our church and hear a bunch of snoring,” Kuhn says.

Kuhn says he’s grateful to see all the community support as they pull together to keep people fed, warm, hydrated, and even caffeinated.

“People [have been] dropping off food, as well as agencies that knew we were doing, and t restaurants just sending stuff over so we could feed people this morning. You know, it’s kind of neat to see the community pulled together. Hope’s really good like that.”

Local pizza place pitches in 

Meanwhile, owners of Hope Pizza Place are serving stranded passengers hot tea, toast, and garlic bread despite being in the dark.

Akshay Davesar with the restaurant says they haven’t had power but it hasn’t stopped them to heat up their one gas stove one do what they can.

“We can’t make any pizzas or anything [but] we’re able to make some Indian tea. And the only thing that we thought of that we could cook out for people is the garlic bread using the stove.”

A little bit of kindness goes a long way. The owners of Hope Pizza Place served hot tea and toast to those stuck in their cars due to power outages and mudslides closing the highway. @CityNewsVAN #BCStorm pic.twitter.com/hcTYDNswk2

— Tarnjit Kaur Parmar (@Tarnjitkparmar) November 15, 2021

Davesar says many people have been relatively happy and grateful to get something to eat and drink since they have been stuck with nothing since Sunday afternoon.

“We have a lot of people trying to at least pay for something,” Davesar adds, adding, they’re just happy to help during this emergency. “But we get people just sneakily leaving some money on the counter.”

Frank Rizzardo with Emcon Services is in Merrit, where floodwaters have inundated two bridges across the Coldwater River. In Rizzardo’s time working to maintain roads and bridges, he says he has never seen anything like this, which is why he is worried for seniors in the region.

Related Article: Entire city of Merritt being evacuated due to flooding

So, he is driving to help evacuate the elders from the Florentine senior’s home.

“We would have to move those residents out to one of them multiple municipalities around us that is accessible by vehicle or by road that isn’t impacted by floods. We have to organize the buses and whatnot. We have one small 20 person bus but it’ll be multiple trips to another site to get those out. And some of our seniors need assistance. So it may be won’t be quite as easy as getting in a car and driving there. That’s very scary.”

– With files from Claire Fenton and Bailey Nicholson