Kelowna supporting hundreds of evacuees from flood-ravaged Merritt

The Central Okanagan Food Bank is one of the organizations lending its support to the people who have been displaced from their homes in Merritt.

“With all the hardship that they’ve experienced….we just feel we have the capacity to try to help those people,” said Trevor Moss, chief executive officer with the Central Okanagan Food Bank.

On Monday the entire City of Merritt, with a population of roughly 7,000, was ordered to evacuate after flooding from the Coldwater River caused the complete failure of the municipality’s wastewater treatment plant.

Emergency operation centres were activated in both Kelowna and Kamloops as a result.

Emergency program co-ordinator for the Central Okanagan Sandra Follack told Global News at least 1,200 people have registered for services locally.

The evacuees receive shelter as well as food and clothing vouchers through the province’s Emergency Support Services (ESS) program.

The province extended that support from the typical 72 hours by at least another week until next Wednesday, at which time those supports may be extended even further.

2:18 B.C. storm puts further strain on already-crunched supply chain

“We are realizing that a lot of people are going to be here longer than seven days simply because of the extent of damage that’s been taking place in Merritt,” Moss said.  “So what we’re doing right now is, we’re just going to be providing some emergency hampers for any of those evacuees.”

Moss said evacuees have started inquiring about accessing those hampers.

“Yes. We have calls in our West Kelowna location so we have already started to distributes emergency flood hampers,” he said.

The emergency hampers are being put together amid chain supply challenges due to panic buying as a result of highway closures.

“As we heard from Premier Horgan yesterday, the current limited supply of some products is expected to be temporary as new routes to the Interior are developed, so I urge people to be patient and considerate of others,” said Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran. “This is not a time to panic – it’s a time to be considerate to your neighbours and others in our community who don’t have the ability or resources to stockpile supplies.”

Moss said there are a variety of ways the public can help the food bank support the evacuees.

“They can volunteer to help us create those hampers, they can actually go to our website and donate and if they have some non-perishable items that they want to donate to the food bank, we will gladly accept those,” Moss said.

2:28 No timetable for Merritt residents to return home