Compared to the flooding of the Yangtze, the BC flooding is in all respects trivial.
For Canada, it is serious however
The Yangtze watershed is enormous, and the Chinese have been building along side it forever it seems. Which just increases the damage.
The headlines tell a dramatic story.
As the newspapers reported, in the spring of 1948, the Fraser River overflowed its banks and destroyed dikes. The flood forced the evacuation of 16,000 people, destroyed or damaged 2,300 homes, left 1,500 people homeless and resulted in $150 million in damage.
Ten people drowned.
“How do you describe those times?” asks Barrie Peterson, an Agassiz senior who graduated from high school the year of the flood. “They were hard. You can’t really know unless you were there. Like everything else, you cope with it. And afterwards you start over.”
Like many of the people who lived through 1948, Peterson believes the Fraser River will flood again — and he fears we’re not prepared.
“People have forgotten the power of the river,” he says.