With RCMP drones overhead, search crews continued to comb the banks of the Coquitlam River on Wednesday for any sign of a missing man who may have been swept away during the weekend’s powerful storm.
The efforts came as other parts of the Lower Mainland continued to grapple with cleanup after an atmospheric river dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on the region between Friday and Sunday.
Robert Belding, 59, was last seen around 5 p.m. Sunday evening in the area of Galette Park. He was reportedly walking a dog near the river. The animal was later located, raising fears Belding may have fallen in the river.
“Over the weekend we did have a record amount of rain and the water levels of the river have swollen quite significantly,” Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Alexa Hodgins said.
“At this point, we are still holding out hope, and we are continuing efforts to hopefully find our missing person.”
Coquitlam Search and Rescue was on the ground with a dog team Wednesday, and said it would like to deploy its swift water team but that the conditions were still too hazardous.
“The water’s still fairly high, so it’s not safe for us to get in there. The other factor is the water is quite murky, so there’s not a whole lot to see that we can’t see from the surface,” search manager Helena Michaelis said Tuesday night.
Locals like Malcolm Sutton. who said he grew up on the river and knows it well, also turned out to help.
“My grandparents raised me just to treat others how you want to be treated and to treat others with dignity and respect,” he said.
“And if I was ever in that situation I would want others to look for me, I would want to be treated with respect and found. I don’t want a family to have to go through not having the answers.”
Meanwhile, residents of the Woodlands neighbourhood of Deep Cove in North Vancouver are assessing damage to their properties after the storm delivered 340 mm of rain, flooding creeks and creating dangerous debris flows.
“A mountain has landed beside our house and now we have a creek running through our front yard and how do we even begin to fix this? It’s just overwhelming,” resident Bruce Hamersly told Global News.
His next door neighbour’s home suffered even greater damage, with ground-floor windows smashed and the ground floor filled with mud and debris.
Engineers and geoscientists have been through to make assessments, but cleanup work has yet to begin.
Residents point to evidence of a landslide uphill from the neighbourhood, and say they’re worried the instability could lead to further damage, with more rain in the forecast for this coming weekend.
“There has been some movement and I’ve sent our engineers and geoscientists just to do their assessments on that to make sure its safe for people to go through those areas,” District of North Vancouver Emergency Operations Centre manager Peter Hohen told Global News.
Anywhere from 30 to 70 mm of rain is possible across the Lower Mainland by the end of Sunday, with the North Shore mountains receiving the majority once again.