Xeni Gwet’in has declared a State of Local Emergency due to flooding on Nemiah Road.
According to First Nations Administrator Dalton Baptiste, a portion of a pond has reached Nemiah Road, causing a closure of the road.
“It’s about 4-5 feet at the deepest part”, Baptiste explains, “Our enterprise department and the Ministry of Transportation has been working to get it all figured out as to a short-term solution of getting access to and from the community, as that’s our main access to Williams Lake.”
Baptiste says there is another access to the community, but the road is rugged and takes between 6 and 7 hours. “We as community members could definitely get in and out if we had trucks,” Baptiste says, “some community members have SUVs or cars, and for them, they wouldn’t be coming or going. It’s a little bit of an adventure to get to town if we went that way.”
Xeni Gwet’in Leadership is asking people to not use those back roads around the washout unless absolutely essential because they are unstable and cannot support heavy traffic.