Choking back tears, Mary Cantwell clutches a storybook damaged in the Osoyoos flood waters.
For the past 54 years over Christmas her family read ‘The Night Before Christmas’ and signed their names on the front page.
Her husband died last year and it’s an irreplaceable cherished memento.
“This is the only thing that I felt really bad losing,” she said after returning home.
Her Harbour Key Drive property was under evacuation order for two weeks. The order was rescinded on Friday.
“I didn’t want to lose this but it was in water floating around on the floor and I said I have got to save it so I brought it upstairs and I laid it out on the deck,” she said.
A lifetime of memories are strewn across Cantwell’s lawn as she tried to rescue items from rising water in her basement.
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“The water was about up to there, a foot-and-a-half in some places to two foot in other places,” she said, while showing Global Okanagan her basement.
It’s a similar story across the street where Tom Soole came to the aid of his 86-year-old father.
His father also recently lost his wife and now has to cope with the aftermath of destructive high water.
“It’s a huge double whammy and he’s beside himself,” Solle said.
“This was his life and it’s all been taken from him and it’s sad to see my father in such a state.”
As lake levels subside, most evacuation orders and alerts were rescinded on Friday.
Osoyoos Lake peaked at 916.41 feet above sea level on May 11
Over the past 10 days it’s dropped by approximately two feet.
“We are hoping that if we do see a rise that it’s not going to be significant,” Janette Van Vianen with the Town of Osoyoos said.
Van Vianen asked residents to keep the sandbags in place “because the lake levels are still high. If they want to protect their properties, they want to keep them in place for wave action,” she said.
Families are returning home to heartbreak and some question where the help is.
“Just the big question of where is the relief, where is all this funding they’re talking about and how do you access it?” Soole added.
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