In addition to sandbags, emergency officials are using portable dams to mitigate flooding.
A shipment of 8 km worth of the rubber barrier tube is on its way to the Central Okanagan from Louisiana.
“You fill them with water and they become a great, big water filled bag, essentially, that acts as a dam,” says Alan Newcombe, Operations Chief for the Central Okanagan Emergency Centre “So once the event is over you let the water back out and they can be rolled up and re-used another time.”
The portable dams were secured by the province and are expected to arrive in the area on Saturday.
“We have two or three individuals that are very familiar with the drainage in the area and areas of flooding concerns,” says Newcombe “so they’re putting together a plan right now on where we’re going to deploy these things.”
Areas that are being looked at include the foreshore in case the lake floods, or critical infrastructure such as the hospital and airport.
A set of portable dams received from Calgary earlier this week has already been set-up along parts of Bellevue Creek.