Resort coping with rising waters
Residents of the Red Wing Resort community north of Penticton found themselves amid rising flood waters — and a jurisdictional quagmire — over the weekend.
Most of the 350 homes there are built on leased land designated part of the Penticton Indian Reserve, putting it in a grey area when it comes to emergency response.
“When we tried to get help from other authorities, it was difficult to get others to pay attention,” resort manager Don Kelly said Monday.
Strata president Nancy Eckstein said she eventually got in touch with Penticton MLA-elect Dan Ashton last week and he was able to straighten out the mess.
“He came over right away and walked through the area with us. We reached out again to (the City of) Penticton and got an immediate response,” she said.
“I think some of the problem was there were much higher issues with the (Penticton) yacht club and the walkway and we realized that. Once they felt they had dealt with that, I think they came very quickly,” Kelly added.
Ashton deflected credit to the city and Regional District of OkanaganSimilkameen.
“In a situation like this there’s a lot of collaboration and co-operation,” he said.
“I have to give a lot of credit to RDOS who have been handling it for a while now. And the City of Penticton and (city manager) Peter Weeber have been instrumental as well. My job is to pull all of these resources together to make things happen.”
Once the jurisdictional issues were sorted out, a 20-person team from the B.C. Wildfire Service was sent to Red Wing on Sunday to help place sandbags.
“If anyone is to get kudos, it’s that young crew…. From my standpoint they saved half a dozen, six to eight homes. Without them they would have flooded,” said Kelly.
“I think we’re in pretty good shape” now, he added.
“We’ve lost a lot of beach. Red Wing is a pretty low area, it’s built on a marsh, and we have unlivable crawl spaces that typically start to fill up with water.”
While at-risk homes were proactively sandbagged, water found its way into four crawl spaces and had to be pumped out. The other area of concern, the clubhouse, is now also well-protected.
“The city and (Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen) was very good in supplying us with sand and sandbags,” said Eckstein.
“We had younger homeowners who were very co-operative with filling them. The company contracted to do our landscaping and our resort manager, Don, really pitched in as well.”
Ducks, geese and a school of carp had taken over the flooded Red Wing beach as of Monday afternoon, where a long stretch of waterfront was reinforced with high walls of sandbags, with more on standby should the need arise