Merritt’s three-year flood anniversary to be marked with Middlesboro Bridge opening

Construction workers were putting the final touches on the new Middlesboro Bridge ahead of its opening on Saturday (Nov. 16) — exactly three years to the day after it was destroyed by flood waters.

“Even for us dropping our kids off at school, now it will be a shorter trip for kids being dropped off at school. These kids will be able to take a shorter route home instead of going all the way around. It may sound like a small thing but after a while it’s a big thing and it’s just nice to have the connectivity back,” said Mike Goetz, mayor of Merritt.

Mayor Goetz has referred to the missing bridge as the last remaining visible scar of November 16, 2021. For his flood recovery team, it means the turning of a new page.

We are pretty excited about effectively ending — at least from an infrastructure standpoint — the recovery phase. [We’re] moving on to concentrating and focusing on mitigation at this point moving forward. It will be a multi-year journey,” said Director of Flood Recovery and Mitigation Sean Strang.

“The old bridge was engineered to [withstand] about 120-to-130 cubic metres per second. You take one point (on the bridge), 120 cubic metres per second pass — that is a ton of water is this sort of corridor. The actual flood was closer to 400,” stated Strang.

While the bridge is now in place with celebrations to ensue, work remains tireless on securing funding for dike work, that Strang states is only 25 per cent complete, directing his attention to the feds.

“I am going to tell you there is a level of government that is missing from this equation that we just haven’t heard from yet,” said Strang, pointing out both a municipally-funded dike and the provincially-funded bridge. “We had during the flood, Minister Bill Blair who came here into our emergency operations centre and he said very clearly we will be here for Merritt.”

“They declined to fund anything in Merritt through the DMAF (Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Funding). And we asked how else they are going to make good on their promise to help Merritt to fund our mitigation and we have heard nothing from the federal government yet,” added Strang.

While the city is still susceptible to future flooding due to lack of diking, Saturday will be a celebration, with the hard work picking back up right after.

“The time for sadness is over. Now we have to relish in our successes and our moving forward and our victories. Sadness has happened — it’s time to move on. I think the tear in my eye will be when we have a complete dike system and the city is safe,” said Goetz.