Flood Reports

We are all in grade 6 at Xit'olacw Community School. We were all evacuated during the recent floods. It rained and rained and just did not stop.

Reinal's story

My brother was sleeping and my mom had tried to go and get some groceries for us but the line was too long - some people waited three hours in line. We then left our house because we were scared of the water and we went to our aunty Lucy's house. We had to stay with her for three days. I was so worried about our house and the animals. So many cows died.

We went back to our house on Wednesday - we can't drink the water now because of contamination- we must boil it before drinking it.

Samantha's story

We were driving around looking at the flood waters. I felt scared because our truck is small and I was scared we would get stuck. We went to Pemberton to try and buy food but the queue was so long because everybody was trying to stock up on food and they were fighting with shopping carts as they rushed to grab what was on the shelves. There were many ambulances and fire trucks and policecars all rushing around. We went to the Shell gas station because we were scared that the gas trucks would not get through for a long time.

We then had a treat at McDonalds to cheer us up. We went home and then the tribal police came and evacuated us - we had to move up to the new site and we stayed at my cousin Gwen's house. The house was overflowing with people and I had to do all the dishes! We managed to go home on Saturday - we were lucky because our house is built high on a wooden frame so the water did not damage our stuff. My grandma's driveway was washed away but the water also did not get inside.

Al

I felt very sorry for Herman because his house was under water- the water came in and wet everything. There was a camper that also got flooded. All the insulation in the houses that are flooded gets wet and so it has to be pulled out and replaced and that costs a lot of money. In our house my mom rushed us all to get our stuff ready to leave. Autumn's mom came and fetched us in her car. We came up to school as the school is an evacuation center. People were making food and we could watch videos in the library. The best was that we had no school. We slept in the library - luckily we had our bedding from home. We had pancakes for breakfast. The helicopters brought people to the school. Luckily nobody died in our community. I made a new friend from Kelowna - they were also stuck here. I liked it when Cyril came and drummed at night for us.