The province is ready to assist Quesnel to protect areas from flooding.
City Manager Byron Johnson…
“The province has told us if it gets to the point where we need diking that they have inflatable diking that we can install in quite short notice and they can get it up to us within 24 hours and they say they have a huge supply.”
Johnson says they are a lot different than the dikes that the city used the last time there was flooding…
“The last time we installed temporary dikes we actually installed what are called gabeons, which are wire baskets that we fill up with rocks and sands, and then we build earth dikes around them. Those take a long time to install, they are really costly and then they take a long time to remove them and get it right back to the regular condition, pre-flooding.”
He says while nothing is imminent, staff is taking precautions…
“There’s always areas within the city what are most susceptible to flooding. What our staff is doing right now is taking measurements of all the exact length of this temporary diking that we would need to install, the inflatable diking, and making sure that the province has exactly what we need on hand.”
Johnson says the City continues to monitor the water levels and they also want to caution the public to stay away from the creeks and rivers as they are quite dangerous right now.