Flood victims will be inspecting the damage to their homes over the coming days, and Huntingdon residents were the first on Wednesday afternoon, as their evacuation order was lifted.
While the damage to residences was not as severe as will be found on Sumas Prairie, the people of the border community definitely had their own flood drama.
Aman Kang’s house on the east end of Second Avenue was one of the worst hit by a rush of water that came from the south.
Kang and his family were given just 10 minutes notice to evacuate when police knocked on their doors on Monday at about 10 a.m. It was almost not enough time. They grabbed some clean clothes and their passports, and by the time they got to the cars in the driveway, the flood water was up to the licence plates.
“We barely saved our cars,” he said. “The water entered my exhaust, and it was really hard to start my car.”
The water blasted through his backyard, and as it pushed between houses it gushed through the narrow space like the stream in a pinched hose, knocking boards off his fence and pushing mounds of landscaping rocks across his front yard.
On his side entrance stairs, the bottom three steps are covered with silt left by the water and the top two are clean, revealing that knee-deep water rushed across the properties.
Miraculously, the water didn’t appear to get inside the house. The power was still out and he hadn’t yet appraised the damage by 2:30 p.m.
Kang only moved into his new million-dollar home four months ago, and he’s having second thoughts about the location.
“It’s a pretty nice location, but we never knew there was a lake here before,” he said.
The flooding at the business behind his property, Enviro-Grit Abrasives, was far more severe, with deep water still covering the site.
The train tracks at the end of Second Avenue were washed out near the road, with nothing left to support the rails underneath, and a pile of debris left down the tracks.
As they returned to their homes, several Second Avenue residents walked into the farm field across the street to retrieve their garbage bins which had floated away.
Others will have a lot more picking up to do.