Residents of a large housing community near Penticton are on edge as rising lake levels threaten their properties.
B.C. Forestry crews spent all day Friday building up a long sandbag wall between Okanagan Lake and the Red Wings Resorts north of Penticton.
“Yeah we’re making it about a foot higher today,” forestry worker Corey Pendergraft said.
Emergency officials say the flood threat at the Red Wings housing community is critical and urgent efforts are underway to protect it.
“Immediate action is necessary to try and mitigate, to make sure that we are staying above the water and fighting the waves that could start doing some erosion damage,” emergency services supervisor with the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen Dale Kronenbusch said.
There are concerns that a barrier breach could flood a large part of the community.
“We are now just doing assessments to find out how high the water is going to go, where their electrical vaults are because they may lose power so we have to always stay on top of that. If that is the case I’m not sure how many units but we will have to evacuate people out of there if required.”
The low-lying housing community is home to many seniors and special arrangements have been made in the event of any evacuations.
“We have now brought in ambulance staff because there may be some ambulatory [residents} or some that need extra care in getting them evacuated or extra attention that may be required,” Kronenbusch said.
While stormy weather could make matters at the housing community worse, its proximity to the Okanagan Lake dam is also cause for concern.
The water level in Okanagan Lake is so high, more than 100 feet of beach at Red Wings is now submerged in water and several homes now have water in their crawl space.