RCMP say search crews recovered three bodies after a boat overturned on the Squamish River north of Vancouver following heavy rain and flooding.
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RCMP say a third body was recovered after a boat overturned in the Squamish River, with the incident occurring during heavy rain and flooding north of Vancouver.
Sea to Sky RCMP Insp. Robert Dykstra said there were originally about eight people aboard the boat on Thursday and that police said no one is unaccounted for.
Dykstra told reporters on Friday that he did not know why the group was on the water or what caused the boat to overturn, adding, “I do believe that they ran into something. That's all I really know at this point.”
He also said he believed the boat was local to Squamish and was not aware of any injuries among survivors.
Police said they received the call at around 1:50 p.m. on Thursday, but responding crews took time to access the area because of a road washout and the state of the raging river.
RCMP initially said two people had died and a third person was missing, and a third body was recovered by Friday afternoon.
Three full white body bags were unloaded from a helicopter at the Squamish airport around 1:30 p.m. as search and rescue teams gathered before deploying.
Dykstra called the situation “tragic,” and said, “You never know exactly why people are doing what they're doing sometimes,” adding that “there could be any number of reasons” for the boat being on the water.
He urged people to stay home and stay safe during major weather events, particularly around rapidly moving waters, saying, “These waters are unforgiving when they're going fast.”
The tragedy followed storms that brought more than 300 millimetres of rain to some areas of British Columbia over the previous week.
Although the rainfall warnings covering the region were lifted by Friday, effects of the deluge were still being felt, including in the Sea to Sky corridor.
The entire village of Pemberton, about 90 kilometres north of Squamish, remained under an evacuation alert, and evacuation orders imposed by the nearby Lil'wat First Nation and in Zeballos on Vancouver Island also remained in place, though an order for parts of Pemberton was downgraded to alert status.
A shelter-in-place advisory issued Thursday for some residents about 16 kilometres north of Squamish was lifted Friday, but RCMP and residents were advised not to drive across flooded roads and to stay out of flood zones.
BC Emergency Health Services said it received a call at 2:48 p.m. on Thursday about the boat incident near the 15,900 block of Squamish Valley Road and that no one was taken to hospital.
Regional conditions were also evolving: the province’s River Forecast Centre downgraded warnings it had issued for the south coast to a lower-level high streamflow advisory and ended flood watches for Fraser Valley north, the central coast and east Vancouver Island.
At the same time, Environment Canada said there was a new coastal flooding risk as rains eased, with a storm surge that could raise sea levels, driven by high winds and enhanced wave activity, with impacts that could last into the weekend.
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