As the river continues to rise in Terrace locals are preparing for flooding.
“Yesterday the forecast said it’s going to be pretty bad, this morning it said it’s going to be really bad,” said Cameron Bell who rents land from Hidden Acres Farm and Treehouse Resort to grow produce.
“In 2021 the river hit about 6100 cubic meters per second and that was I think near 11 meters,” said Bell.
“That flood in 2021 involved water about two, two and a half feet up that wall,” Bell pointed toward the greenhouses.
“We built that with sandbags that year. So this year we built it with plywood so that we don’t have to take it all down afterwards. We just have a few sandbags around the outside for some stability. And so this morning the forecast said today is going to be 6100, and tomorrow is going to be 6800 so we’re still preparing for that.”
Nevertheless, real-time data from Usk showed the river plateauing a little bit, so Bell said with a bit of luck it will stabilize and they won’t see it rise too much more.
“If we get unlucky then with the hot weather all that snow is going to melt and we’re going to see the river come up.”
Bell and volunteers have built a berm on the river side of the property to hopefully avoid the worst of the flooding, and push the water into the hay field.
“If it starts coming over this way, that’s when we’re going to sandbag some parts of the road so that’s why we have volunteers right now bringing sandbags down so we can play defence on the road and keep it out as long as possible.”