For a few days I’ve been meaning to write about the beautiful private gardens we toured in Campbell River and a fantastic walk we took through jungle-like greens at Elk Falls. But then way more serious things happened. Yesterday (Thursday, August 12, 10:30 am), a major landslide occurred at Johnson’s Landing, which is where my current hosts, Brett’s parents Greg and Donna, have a cabin.

The water level at Kootenay Lake had been unusually high for weeks due to a record-high snowpack in winter that had been melting and an extremely wet spring. As their cabin is right next to the lake, Greg went up yesterday morning to check on their deck, boat etc. While he was on his way, a mudslide roared down that destroyed several houses, one of which belonged to my hosts’ friends. It was their permanent home – it is now completely flattened. Luckily, they were not there when it happened. The road that leads to the small community at the lakeside is gone. Water and electricity are down. Four people are still missing.

Greg and a friend hiked towards the sight of destruction, trying to account for missing neighbours. Greg is a soil expert and has been studying landslides for 30 years but he says he has never seen anything like this. He has also been on a project researching climate change in the West Kootenays for the last two years. Their results suggest we should get used to natural catastrophes like this. As global warming proceeds, what used to be really rare extreme situations (“once-in-a-hundred-years flood”) are now projected to occur much more frequently (every fifty, twenty, ten years etc.). One effect of climate change in the Kootenays is that precipitation (dt. “Niederschlag”) is increasing in winter and spring so that the soil becomes compeltely soaked with water. In combination with the steep slope and what had apparently been an unstable patch of ground for some time, this lead to a huge mudslide taking down hundreds of trees and obliterating whatever was in its way.

Here’s a picture that Greg took from the lake when they were trying to get to affected areas in their canoe. The debris of mud, rocks and trees was as high as 20 feet at places.

Today, Friday, more slides occurred, hindering search and rescue teams in their effort (more info can be found here http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/07/13/bc-landslide-search-johnsons-landing.html)

What is most stunning to me in all this is the following. News reports kept saying that four people were still missing: one guy, his two adult daughters and a German tourist. Since I’ve been here, I’ve meet a lot of people, friends of Brett, family friends and relatives. All of them called or e-mailed, some of them trying to reach us via friends, neighbours or friends of friends when we weren’t home, asking where we were, if all of us were safe. Luckily, we all are. Greg was right there only shortly after the slide had left a track of obliteration. The major slide came down very close to their cabin, and the following ones have moved even closer, but not hit their property yet. The German lady is from Munich, apparently… Thank you to everyone for their concern!

My heart goes out to the victims, their families, and to all those who won’t give up searching as longs as there’s even the sligthest gleam of hope.

Merken