Megan Grittani-Livingston/The Question

Jeff Westlake, operations manager of the Pemberton Valley Dyking District, said flood-system upgrades since the 2003 flood have made the community safer.

In 2 1/2 days ending on Oct. 18, 2003, a downpour of approximately 369 millimetres of rain led to flooding that inundated parts of Pemberton, Mount Currie and much of the surrounding road system, and swelled Rutherford Creek so much that it reached out to claim the lives of five men. In that memorable period, the Richman family’s low-lying Highway 99 home filled with 1.4 metres (4.5 feet) of water.

Tanya and Mike Richman, owners of the Pony Espresso, had to take then-two-year-old daughter Alyssa and move out of their house for two months while they repaired the approximately $55,000 worth of damage, with the help of their family and friends.

Tanya Richman remembers the whole flood experience, which forced the evacuation of about 600 people from Pemberton and Mount Currie flood zones and the declaration of a state of emergency on Oct. 18, as being “all very surreal.” But the element that stands out most for her is how the community came together.

All the support she and her family received from community members and officials alike — everything from help with laundry and child-minding to sharing clothes and blankets — made her realize Pemberton had truly become her home, after having lived in the corridor for 11 years at that point.

“For me, being one of those people who moved across the country from central Canada and ending up in Whistler and then in Pemberton, it really for me made the transition from thinking I’m somebody who just moved here to it being my home,” Richman said. “The level of support in the community (made me think), ‘Wow, this is my home; these are my people.’”

Stories of neighbours helping neighbours — sandbagging, cleaning, sharing — abounded in the aftermath of the flood, which Squamish-based geological engineer Frank Baumann said was the area’s worst ever.

Support flooded in for the families of the men whose lives were tragically cut short when the Rutherford Creek Bridge crumbled and three cars plunged into the water.

Jamie Burnette and Ed Elliot were traveling home to Pemberton with Burnette’s brother Casey, who was able to swim out of the red SUV that presumably trapped the other two in the water on Oct. 18 between 3 and 4 a.m.

Mike Benoit of Nova Scotia and Australian Darryl Stevenson were riding in a beige Volvo that plunged into the raging creek around the same time; their vehicle and bodies were recovered on Oct. 19.

More than a year later, in December 2004, an excavator unearthed the remains of a 1989 Isuzu Trooper with a body inside, believed to be the flood’s fifth victim.

Jamie Burnette left behind a wife and baby son, and the community rallied around Katie and Cole. A group of local musicians, calling themselves the Rutherford Creek Collective, produced a CD in Burnette’s honour that raised $10,000 for the young family.

Glenn Mishaw, who worked with Katie Burnette at ResortQuest, wrote the song “Love Another Day” to capture what Jamie Burnette might have wanted to say. Mishaw said he now thinks about the tragedy, and the fearsome power of Mother Nature, “every time I drive over the bridge.”

The two-lane replacement Rutherford Creek Bridge, completed in August 2004 with $4.9 million in provincial funding, has been built to withstand the province’s 200-year peak flow event standard, meaning the statistical probability of having a flood of that magnitude is once every 200 years.

According to a Ministry of Transportation spokesperson in 2004, the new bridge came equipped with a warning system that would be triggered by the unlikely event of a pipe failure in the Rutherford Creek independent power project, which could wash out the north approach to the bridge.

It takes Jeff Westlake, operations manager for the Pemberton Valley Dyking District (PVDD), about half an hour to list all the improvements that have been made in the area since 2003.

First came the $1.5 million worth of repairs immediately after the flood, which patched up sections of the river bank protection with rock known as riprap, fixed damaged dykes and re-established river channels. Those repairs were carried out all over the valley, Westlake said, after failures on the Lillooet and Ryan rivers and Miller Creek.

In 2004, significant improvements to Miller Creek included the development of a debris basin and a sediment trap weir. The measures were “designed to mitigate debris flooding,” Westlake said.

“In 2003, that was one of the main contributing factors to flooding in the Glen and in the Peaks,” he said. A reported 780,000 cubic metres of debris washed down Miller Creek, filling the creekbed and forcing the water level over the banks.

A portion of that overflow ended up in the Arn Canal, which flows through town and into Pemberton Creek past the Peaks townhomes. But backwatering from the Lillooet River forced the flap gates at the canal’s end to remain closed, allowing water to escape into the Peaks townhouses.

The sediment trap weir within the basin “was designed to intercept some of gravels migrating downstream,” Westlake said, and is cleaned out by the PVDD staff every few years.

More than 4,000 metres of the Miller-Lillooet dyke, which roughly covers the area between Miller Creek and the Highway 99 bridge over the Lillooet at the Adventure Ranch, have been improved since the flood. That includes an overall upgrade and raising of about 2,200 metres of dyke in 2005, and like measures for a further 2,000 metres carried out this year with $496,000 in provincial funding.

Since 2006, the PVDD has been busy upgrading infrastructure. Four major culvert crossings have been improved in what Westlake called “pretty significant projects,” and five sections of riprap have been repaired on the Lillooet and the Ryan.

In November, the PVDD is scheduled to launch a survey and hydraulic assessment of the Arn Canal, which will better inform future decision-making about the waterway, Westlake said. A final version of the hydraulic assessment of the Ryan River is also on its way, he added.

Early-warning methods have been improved with dyke-crest gauges that were “installed specifically to be able to communicate what our river levels are to the local authorities,” Westlake said, and the system could be further assisted with gauges built into the local independent power projects.

Asked what could have if the 2003 levels of rain fell again, Westlake was adamant that things would be different.

“Absolutely — we made some significant improvements in the levels of protection,” Westlake said. “I think if the same thing happened today there might be some pooling water here and there, but on the whole in flood hazards, I think we would fare pretty good.”

Pemberton Mayor Jordan Sturday, who was the PVDD chair at the time of the flood, said communications would definitely be better if a 2003-level flood were to happen again today.

“We all need to work better and more closely together in order to ensure the communication is good and people are prepared,” Sturdy said.

But he felt all the communities in the area — the Village of Pemberton, Mount Currie, Electoral Area C and the In-SHUCK-ch Nation — pulled together well in 2003, recognizing “we all live together in this valley.”

The PVDD improvements are substantial, but more work remains to secure better protection for the residents in and around Mount Currie.

“I feel that this is a system that is not finished, that the lower part of the valley is impacted as a result of the dyking that’s taken place,” Sturdy said.

Options to help the Mount Currie area, which Sturdy said “gets flooded all the time,” include a potentially controversial dredging of the outlet of Lillooet Lake, the expensive alternative of building another 25 kilometres worth of dykes or creating a spillway for planned flooding.

To Sturdy, doing nothing is not an acceptable option.

Eppa (Gerard Peters), chief negotiator for the First Nations comprising the In-SHUCK-ch, has had to live with incomplete changes for his people, who were among the most affected by the 2003 flood. Cut off from the outside world for a longer period by damaged bridges and flooded roads, better travel and communications jumped to the top of the priority list.

While Eppa expressed gratitude for the subsequent Ministry of Forests and Range and federal department of Indian and Northern Affairs investments in rebuilding bridges, he said it will be vital for the area’s road system to be improved, and for the In-SHUCK-ch communities to be linked by phone and hydro grid to the outside world.

“Creating new bridges, building new bridges, is one thing — of course, when you appreciate that bridges are useless when roads are out, and roads are out when they’re under water, there’s still additional work that needs doing,” Eppa said, pointing to a study that showed it would cost about $27.2 million for a year-round, safe, gravel-surface road between the mid-Fraser Valley and the Duffey Lake Road turnoff.

Eppa said B.C. Hydro has indicated to him the In-SHUCK-ch communities are in line to be connected to the grid in November 2010. “Somewhat late, but better late than never,” Eppa said.

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