Two years after the flood, houses feeling more like homes in Merritt

MERRITT, B.C. — It’s been just over two years since a devastating atmospheric river led to widespread flooding and a community-wide evacuation of the city of Merritt. Two years later and the signs of flood are fewer and farther between, with homeowners working to rebuild and the city shoring up the riverbanks with new dikes.

Just one year ago, Frank Craig was on his hands and knees working to install the flooring in his twice-flooded Merritt home. Now, his house is once again a home.

“Now, it’s kind of just cleaning all that stuff up, putting it away and getting life back in here,” said Craig. “It feels a little bit more like home now, whereas it took me a long time — even after I moved in here it didn’t really feel like home. It was a place to stay but it wasn’t really home. And now it’s feeling more like home, so that is kind of nice.”

“It feels good to get back in here, have a bit of normal to my life. My grandkids come over and visit now and I have a place for them to come and relax and play and stuff. That’s all really nice, and you can see I’m starting to put pictures up on the wall. I emptied a bunch of totes that were in storage,” added Craig.

While positives are certainly more prevalent two years on, the community still has a ton of work ahead of it with 30-to-40 homes still not rebuilt and 23 households still receiving support from the Red Cross.

“We do have a lot of groups that come into town for a weekend and help people who didn’t have insurance, and who have been denied DFA (Disaster Financial Assistance),” said Mayor Mike Goetz. “People are getting closer and some people are having to do it when they can afford to start fixing their homes up because the insurance was the situation where some people didn’t have it, didn’t have enough or didn’t have overland.”

The City of Merritt received $2 million for a portion of needed dike work along the Coldwater River, but Mayor Goetz admitted it’s just a drop in the bucket of what’s needed for community.

“Coming into our third freshet, we are not in the safest position but we do have a Plan B which we are ready to act on. And we have had some approval for that, so if we need to move quickly we can. We do have that covered and we do have the rock and equipment if we need it. Of course, it would take some time to get it into town but we do have the ability to protect ourselves if we have to,” stated Goetz.

That’s left Craig concerned that despite all his hard work, disaster could easily strike again.

“When you have been through it, not once but twice, and you know that nothing has really changed on that end, it makes you a little… you don’t sleep as soundly,” said Craig.