An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Yes, it’s a cliché, but clichés are what they are because they’re not only true, they’ve been proven to be so over a very long period of time. It was Benjamin Franklin who coined the phrase, back in 1735, and nearly 300 years later it’s as valid as it ever was.
Following last week’s flooding in Cache Creek, a lot of people have clearly had Franklin’s observation on their minds and lips, judging by what I’ve seen and heard, even if they haven’t said it in quite that way. Indeed, no less a person than the Hon. Bowinn Ma, B.C.’s Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness, said something along those lines recently, when she was discussing the aftermath of the disastrous B.C. floods in November 2021.
Ma stated that “Preventing floods is a better use of funds than dealing with the aftermath… Recovery work, for many reasons, is far more complicated, much more disruptive, very challenging and very expensive as well. We in the emergency management world generally say that a dollar spent in mitigation is actually worth seven or eight dollars spent in response and recovery. So the focus on mitigation is incredibly important.”
One wonders where the province’s focus on mitigation has been in the wake of flooding in Cache Creek in recent years. I’m well aware that flooding of the Bonaparte River is not new: in 1948, for example, residents of the area reported that flooding along that river was the worst it had been in 50 or more years.
Flooding of Cache Creek itself, however, is — or at least was — very rare indeed. In May 2015 a freak rainfall caused the creek to flood, and history shows that it previously did so in the late 1920s and again in 1979. Then, in 2017, the creek flooded again, this time due to freshet, claiming the life of fire chief Clayton Cassidy.
It could have been classed as a rare event, except that it was followed by more bad flooding of the creek in 2018, in what was described as a one-in-90 year event. The creek flooded again in 2020, and here we are again in 2023 watching the same story play out. I’m not much good with either math or statistics, but if it was a one-in-90 year event in 2018 and then happened again in 2020 and 2023, then that means I have a headache from trying to make sense of it.
Perhaps statisticians can do better, but in the real world we’re left with a situation that has cost millions of dollars in mitigation five years out of the last nine, and doesn’t even begin to take into account the life lost, the homes and businesses and village infrastructure destroyed or damaged, the heartache and stress and financial hardship. And then there are the knock-on effects, such as closed businesses and facilities like the school and post office, most apparent in Cache Creek but also impacting untold numbers of other people who couldn’t get into the town or couldn’t leave it to get to work or school or appointments.
The village has done what it can, after each of these events, but its hands are tied by other levels of government and (most crucially) by a lack of funding from the provincial and federal governments to make the changes necessary to ensure that in future such flooding is either prevented, or mitigated to have much less of an impact. The province will provide funding to deal with a flood as it happens, and clean up after, but when it comes to mitigation there’s a cheery “Good luck with that grant application!” followed by crickets.
Here’s hoping that this time, at long last, the province will listen to one of its own, the Hon. Ms. Ma, and get serious about mitigation. Communities like Cache Creek, and the people who live and work there, know all too well the truth of Franklin’s words, and the results if they’re not heeded.
editorial@accjournal.ca
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