Princeton’s mayor has become very comfortable with adversity.
A year ago this week, Spencer Coyne watched his town crumble around him under the weight of an atmospheric river.
It caused the Tulameen and Similkameen rivers to bulge. Dykes breached, water rushed into the town, power was knocked down, homes were destroyed, and critical infrastructure was decimated.
“Some people lost everything. Absolutely everything: You know, childhood memories, pictures, photographs,” Coyne said, recalling that much of the town was under six to seven feet of water a year ago today.
Coyne was pitching in and working alongside his community when it all crashed down. When everyone from news crews to the military descended on the small B.C. town, he was there answering questions and issuing pleas for help, that were answered by everybody from the Canadian Armed Forces to volunteer armies.
“We were fortunate nobody lost their lives. And I mean that maybe that’s the best thing that came out of it,” he said.
“The infrastructure, the structures, that’s one thing but our people are really the story, in my opinion.”
Floods tested the mettle of Spencer and the community in general — the latter being something that Coyne was notably proud of.
“I grew up here. I’m from here, and my family has been here for generations on generations,” he said.
“One thing that this flood did was reinforced that we’re resilient people, and it doesn’t matter what you try to throw at us, we’re gonna get back up no matter what …. and we’re gonna go back to work.”
That said, the effects of a natural disaster of that magnitude weigh on even the strongest of people. And everyone has their limitations. Some found their way out of the situation by finding their way out of the town, where housing was available.
“It’s a shame to lose people because of it. When you lose community members, it’s like losing part of yourself,” he said, Tuesday.
“One of the things I was concerned with right off the bat was keeping our community together. It’s important after a disaster to keep your community healthy and vibrant and together. That’s the whole meaning of community, is togetherness.”
For those who remained, there are other challenges. In an interview earlier in the week, Coyne said that heading into the one-year anniversary of the natural disaster, top of mind was the mental health of a population that had been dealt such a blow.
“Every time there’s an atmospheric river announced on the news, people get concerned and we’ve started to notice it’s almost like post-traumatic stress, which is alarming,” he said.
“We’re trying to figure out how to deal with that. It’s a little bit beyond our capacity. But we are noticing it and we are trying to find ways to help people through that.”
Bringing the community infrastructure up to snuff may help calm some.
Parts of the dam that failed in the flood were rebuilt right away.
Coyne said the dykes have been rebuilt back to the standard that they needed to be at. The city is waiting for engineer reports on what to do next with the diking system as a whole, with the aim of having a better system in place than what was there before.
“We have to meet whatever the new benchmarks that were set during the last flood,” he said. “So if the 200-year flood is now a 50-year flood, we have to prepare for that instead of a 200-year flood.”
In the meantime, much of the town’s infrastructure has been repaired, too. Coyne said they’re awaiting permits that would allow the town to do the work on a facility that would allow the town to come off the boil-water advisory that’s been in place for the last year. If all goes well it should be back to normal by next summer.
Housing also remains a concern with 40 to 50 apartment units lost in the flood.
“The big part right now is we lost three apartment buildings. Those apartment buildings are still not occupied,” he said. “Two of them are part of a BC housing complex and that’s why we have temporary housing coming in.
“We’re working with BC housing to make sure that those people have homes for the winter.”