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Ice jams bring new flooding, evacuations in British Columbia

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

(01-25) 06:15 PST (AP) --

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KAMLOOPS, British Columbia (AP) -- Ice jams have brought new evacuations and damaged some bridges in southcentral British Columbia as residents of evacuated houses in North Vancouver look forward to returning home.

As a week of heavy rain and unseasonably warm temperatures followed a week of 30-below-zero weather in the North Thompson valley, massive chunks of ice dislodged a bridge on Highway 16, the Yellowhead Highway, and bent another over the North Thompson River at Birch Island, flooding houses and shutting Highway 5N.

Provincial road crews and contractors established a 24-hour construction site late Monday afternoon at the Mad River bridge, about 25 miles north of Clearwater, to build a temporary span.

About seven and a half miles upstream, chunks of ice as large as a school bus piled up at the hamlet of Birch Island, causing road washouts and filling basements with water, said Jim McBride, director of community services for the Thompson-Nicola Regional District.

About 100 residents left 40 houses even before an evacuation order was issued, and an emergency social service center was established at the North Thompson Sportsplex in Clearwater, McBride said.

In addition, 420 people were placed on evacuation alert from the Birch Island bridge to Blackpool.

The Mad River bridge closure, about 19 miles north of the Birch Island ice jam, was caused by a nearly 20- foot-high ice pileup that dislodged the concrete bridge from its pilings Sunday in a narrow canyon upstream from where the Mad empties into the North Thompson.

A temporary bridge should be open to traffic at the site later this week, said Dave Crebo, a spokesman for the provincial Ministry of Transportation.

In North Vancouver, where one resident died and her husband seriously injured in a mudslide last week, 37 houses remained under evacuation orders but James Ridge, chief administrative officer for the District of North Vancouver, said some owners might be allowed to return home as early as Tuesday.

"We're cautiously optimistic that we're over the worst of it, and certainly the weather is cooperating," Ridge said.

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