Nazko Gets Hit with 1 in 150 Year Flood Event

[Glacier]

And that's less than year after barely escaping the massive Plateau fire that was stopped just to the west of the community.

[JagXKR]

Maybe the flood has much to do about the fire. There are changes in the land upstream so now the the water is not held in the ground by the flora, due to it's all dead. I seem to remember something on the news this week about Cawston(?) and the person being interviewed mentioned that there was nothing to hold the water back due to the Princeton fire.
Question is if this type of behaviour is present after a large scale fire should not the RD's and the Province be better prepared?

[Glacier]

Yup, the fire kills the trees, and also makes the snow melt faster because there's no shade the ground is black. The Plateau fire was 592,000 hectares (just shy of 1.5 million acres), and most of that was in the Nazko-Blackwater drainage. This flood was definitely cased in part by the fire.

The water melted so fast that people had to be evacuated out with helicopters. The hay fields and farms are all under water. The valley bottom is at 1000m elevation, so there's still snow to melt up in the hills. Here's a picture from today...

[Queen K]

Or do we need a better tree planting program?

[vegas1500]

Learned something today....never heard of Nazko in my life...

[Glacier]

Learned something today....never heard of Nazko in my life...

It's a very small community in the middle of nowhere. You'd only ever hear of it if you're from Quesnel (which you'd only ever hear of if you're from BC).

Or if you're ever read Rich Hobson's books "Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy" featuring Pan Phillips. His daughter and friend of my mom wrote a book in 2010 called "Beyond the Chilcotin: On the Home Ranch with Pan Phillips" which is less well known, but perhaps a better historical document. The CBC also covered the area in a documentary.

Beyond Nazko, things are very remote. The First Nations community of KlusKlus did not have road access or running water or electricity until 2007. Back in the 1990s we took a horse and wagon trip north from Anahim Lake the abandoned village of Ulkatcho, and met up with people from Kluskus who rode in on horses. From there we headed west on horseback to the Rainbow Mountains (subrange of the Coast Mountains). We were using old trails thousands of years old. Alexander MacKenzie took these very same trails in 1793 when he became the first person to travel across North America. This trail still exists today, starting near Quesnel and ending in the Bella Coola Valley.

[Catsumi]

Gosh, thanks for the trip I just took with you, Glacier.

I have been to Bella Coola (you call that a road!) but never heard of Nazko either.

Just learned a little more!

[Glacier]

Looks like Nazko had a 1 in 300 year flood event. Also, check out the West Fraser Rd. near Quesnel...

[Catsumi]

Yikes! Looks like a lot of topsoil moving towards Pacific Ocean.