By Tom Mark

Vernon Seeking Flood Disaster Relief

Sep 12, 2017 | 6:06 AM

The City of Vernon has applied to the provincial government for disaster relief related to this spring’s flooding.

Public Works Manager James Rice says a number of locations along Okanagan Lake and BX Creek were damaged.

“This includes areas along the lake shore. A number of our lake accesses were damaged, a few city parks and we also have to do an assessment of BX Creek above Swan Lake to determine whether or not dredging is required along that section of the creek.”

Rice says a rough number of the damage estimate is 200 thousand to 400 thousand dollars.

“There was some erosion damage on two of our sites – Whitepoint Road and Foster Road. A couple of picnic tables were damaged. garbage cans.”

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He says even those small things add up.

James Rice says studies on BX Creek and Vernon Creek will be done to see how they can stand up in the future.

“We’ve made application to the province to complete some engineering on the creek as well as our bridge crossings to make sure they have capacity for future events.”

The city spent weeks over the last month recovering sandbags and sand put out during the flooding..

Rice says about 40 thousand of some 200 thousand bags were recovered.

They were taken the regional district’s landfill for disposal.

“I know a lot of residents were using the sandbags for fill along their properties and their landscaping and there were also a lot of volunteer community groups collecting the sandbags by donation.”

Rice says the event was a learning experience for the Emergency Operations Centre and the Emergency Response Plan.

“We’re looking at everything from staffing and callout lists to communications and IT or even just determining whether we’ve got sufficient and available resources to handle these kind of events.”

He says staff did an excellent job dealing with the response.

City officials will be spending the next couple of months reviewing everything to see what kind of changes may be made to ensure a quick and effective response.

by Tom Mark