Abbotsford farmers file flood lawsuit, claim governments failed to provide warning

Farmers in Abbotsford are taking that city, the province and the Fraser Valley Regional District to court. They claim the governments failed to properly warn them about November’s devastating floods.

The farmers have filed a class action lawsuit, meaning other people in Sumas Prairie can add their names to it.

Anthony Vecchio, a founding partner with Slater Vecchio LLP is representing the farmers in the lawsuit.

“Failure to warn is really the manifestation of the case, and failure to act once they knew or should have known to act, they didn’t in a timely manner,” said Vecchio.

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Vecchio notes a 2015 report highlighted dike deficiencies and says the three public bodies named in the lawsuit were aware of its findings.

“These people have a right [to compensation],” he said. “They deserve better. They deserve more.”

In November, southern B.C., including Abbotsford’s Sumas Prairie region, was hit with catastrophic floods and landslides which it is still recovering from. Thousands of British Columbians were forced to leave their homes, and five people died after being caught in slides.

Hundreds of thousands of farm animals also died as a result of the disaster.

In a matter of days, several farmers lost their crops and expensive farming equipment.

Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun estimated more than 1,200 acres of blueberry fields were flooded, killing the plants. It takes years to cultivate blueberry crops, usually taking about four years to produce a good one.

Braun has said that after the November floods, the dikes were built up higher than they previously were.

With files from OMNI and Tarnjit Parmar