Search continues for man feared swept away in Coquitlam River during B.C. storm

With RCMP drones overhead, hunt crews continued to comb the banks of the Coquitlam River connected Wednesday for immoderate motion of a missing man who whitethorn person been swept distant during the weekend’s almighty storm.

The efforts came arsenic different parts of the Lower Mainland continued to grapple with cleanup aft an atmospheric river dumped hundreds of millimetres of rainfall connected the portion betwixt Friday and Sunday.

Robert Belding, 59, was past seen astir 5 p.m. Sunday evening successful the country of Galette Park. He was reportedly walking a canine adjacent the river. The carnal was aboriginal located, raising fears Belding whitethorn person fallen successful the river.

“Over the play we did person a grounds magnitude of rainfall and the h2o levels of the stream person swollen rather significantly,” Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Alexa Hodgins said.

“At this point, we are inactive holding retired hope, and we are continuing efforts to hopefully find our missing person.”

Coquitlam Search and Rescue was connected the crushed with a canine squad Wednesday, and said it would similar to deploy its swift h2o squad but that the conditions were inactive excessively hazardous.

“The water’s inactive reasonably high, truthful it’s not harmless for america to get successful there. The different origin is the h2o is rather murky, truthful there’s not a full batch to spot that we can’t spot from the surface,” hunt manager Helena Michaelis said Tuesday night.

Locals similar Malcolm Sutton. who said helium grew up connected the stream and knows it well, besides turned retired to help.

“My grandparents raised maine conscionable to dainty others however you privation to beryllium treated and to dainty others with dignity and respect,” helium said.

“And if I was ever successful that concern I would privation others to look for me, I would privation to beryllium treated with respect and found. I don’t privation a household to person to spell done not having the answers.”

Trending Now

Meanwhile, residents of the Woodlands neighbourhood of Deep Cove successful North Vancouver are assessing harm to their properties aft the tempest delivered 340 mm of rain, flooding creeks and creating unsafe debris flows.

“A upland has landed beside our location and present we person a creek moving done our beforehand gait and however bash we adjacent statesman to hole this? It’s conscionable overwhelming,” nonmigratory Bruce Hamersly told Global News.

His adjacent doorway neighbour’s location suffered adjacent greater damage, with ground-floor windows smashed and the crushed level filled with mud and debris.

Engineers and geoscientists person been done to marque assessments, but cleanup enactment has yet to begin.

Residents constituent to grounds of a landslide uphill from the neighbourhood, and accidental they’re disquieted the instability could pb to further damage, with much rainfall successful the forecast for this coming weekend.

“There has been immoderate question and I’ve sent our engineers and geoscientists conscionable to bash their assessments connected that to marque definite its harmless for radical to spell done those areas,” District of North Vancouver Emergency Operations Centre manager Peter Hohen told Global News.

Anywhere from 30 to 70 mm of rainfall is imaginable crossed the Lower Mainland by the extremity of Sunday, with the North Shore mountains receiving the bulk erstwhile again.