The Cowichan River Floods Nearby Duncan, B.C.

Friday morning, in nearby Duncan, BC, the Cowichan River overflowed its banks, flooding homes and causing several hundred residents to evacuate. The municipality declared a “state of emergency” to deal with all the problems. This was the worst case of flooding in the Cowichan Valley since 1972.

Beverley St. in Duncan taken on Friday, November 20th AM(Times-Colonist)duncan

I took this picture Saturday morning, November 21st from the same spot IMG_3272

I didn’t know anything about this flood until we watched the 6:00pm news on Friday.  I was surprised, even shocked, because I had driven right through Duncan around 2:00pm, and other than noticing that the Cowichan River seemed abnormally high, I didn’t see anything else out of the ordinary.  The news reports indicated that the flooding had occurred early that morning and the areas affected were a few hundred yards up the river from where I crossed it.

This isn’t a river – its just part of the overflow from the Cowichan RiverIMG_3264

It seemed doubly surprising to me as I re-read my blog from Friday, where I said, in the first sentence:  “The rain finally let up yesterday and it turned out to be a pretty nice day – we even got a bit of sunshine.”  I had absolutely no idea, at the time, that a disaster was unfolding.  It had been raining quite a bit during the week, but that’s pretty normal for November around here and it sure didn’t seem any worse than previous years.  So, why the big flood now?

The normally, easy-flowing Cowichan River is raging full-speed these days

It turns out that two major factors conspired to cause the flooding.  First, the Cowichan River was running full steam due to the week of rain.  Second, this coincided with a high-tide Friday morning which backed the water up the river causing it to overflow its banks and flood the adjacent homes and streets.

I decided to take the 15 minute drive into Duncan Saturday morning to have a look for myself.  I took the Cowichan Bay Rd. route down by the water to see how bad it was.  As I approached the first bridge over the Kokisilah River, I was stopped by a traffic attendant to tell me that they had just re-opened the road but there were still spots were a few inches of water covered the road.  He just told me to be sure and take it slow.

The Cowichan River was still high on Saturday, but much lower than FridayIMG_3276

He wasn’t kidding!  There was water everywhere.  What looked to be a new river flowing alongside the road, was simply part of the overflow from the Cowichan River that was now flowing through a farmer’s field – it even had small rapids in it.  The road was ok though, except for a few places.

I safely made my way into Duncan and approaching the worst hit areas, I saw that the flood waters had receded from the residential areas leaving a trail of mud and debris behind.  Most of the streets in the area were still blocked off to vehicles, by the RCMP, but pedestrian traffic was allowed.  I spoke with one of the residents who was still busy pumping out water.  He told me at the worst point of the flood, there was 3 ft. of water in his house – what a mess!

The school playgrounds and fields were still sitting under 2 ft. of water SaturdayIMG_3271

Late yesterday afternoon, the Provincial Government announced that homeowners would be eligible to receive financial assistance from the Disaster Relief Fund.  These funds will cover 80% of all damages in excess of $1,000.  This will be of tremendous help as most of them don’t have flood insurance due to their proximity to the river.  Don’t you just love insurance companies?  You can only get flood insurance if you live in a place where there is no danger of flooding!

Luckily, given our location, it’s extremely unlikely that we’ll ever have to face that particular problem.  We live high up on a hill overlooking the Cowichan Valley. It would take a flood of biblical proportions to ever flood us out.  The rains let up Saturday and the Cowichan River is emptying into the ocean again, so hopefully, this will be the end of the flooding for a long, long time!

Have a great Sunday, and thanks again for visiting!

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