Mudslide has blocked Highway 99 due to incessant rain. Vancouver (and lower mainland) is inaccessible to Canada by road.
Hundreds are trapped between mudslides on another nearby highway:
You know things are bad when it’s too dangerous for rescuers to show up.
How much rain did this region recently get?
Roughly 6-8 inches in the past 48 hours, depending on area.
Wow. I hope they have enough clean water and food for a while…
My daughter who lives in Vancouver has kept me updated on this and has been forwarding me some dramatic pics. It’s quite frightening. We just returned from a 9 day visit there last month. Hope, BC is completely cut off, all roads in and out are closed now. All this after their horrible heat wave this past summer. .
South of the border, I-5 has also been blocked by landslides, so the international land route is cut off as well.
Not in Merritt, which has been evacuated:
I was reading that we are presently in a “La Nina” weather pattern, and this very wet weather pattern is supposed to continue for several months.
Yikes!
Also, i fixed my typo, Northern_Piper didn’t misquote me.
Are these rains in any of the areas affected by fires earlier in the year?
I have family that lives near B’ham and there are lots of mudslides and roads closed due to flooding. All that area to the north around Ferndale often floods, but it’s pretty bad right now.
There’s only one road in and out of Vancouver?!
Mountains. Vancouver itself is on the Fraser Delta, but to get there by road, options are limited.
There are a couple of highways out of Vancouver. The northwestern route, Highway 99 is also closed north of Pemberton. The main freeway eastbound is closed between Abbotsford and Chilliwack, and that gets you to one of the main highway junctions around Hope. The major highways of that junction are all closed as well.
Yes. Many of the areas affected by flooding and mudslides were sites of forest fires recently, meaning there are no tree and grass roots to hold the earth and water in place.Also, much of BC is settled in valleys and along rivers, so excess rainfall even in areas not torched means risk for flooding when rainfall exceeds the “normal” limits. This may be an answer to a question you didn’t ask, upon second reading
Nope, that was pretty much what I was wondering about.

There’s only one road in and out of Vancouver?!
Look at the Vancouver/southern BC region on Google Maps with the Terrain function turned on, it’ll show you how limited the road access is.
Now I know why my friend’s bus got stopped in a huge traffic jam this morning. On top of discovering that her repaired condo still leaked rainwater into her guest bedroom after an expensive fix. That’s an argument against moving there (along with cost of living).