British Columbia’s most prolific hog producer credits a fire last spring with helping his farm survive the devastating flood that swamped his barns in November.
John Guliker, whose operations include four units in BC’s Sumas Prairie, another unit in Alberta and a blueberry farm, lost all the pigs in one finishing unit and some of the pigs in another barn when an atmospheric river formed over the Fraser Valley. The resulting floodwaters took out bridges, highways and railroads between Abbotsford and Kamloops, totally swamping the Sumas Prairie. BC officials now estimate that more than 600,000 animals were lost altogether, including beef cattle, dairy cattle, swine and poultry.
Guliker’s was the only hog operation affected by the flood. It was a devastating blow to him, to his staff and to the processing facilities that rely on his animals to fill their shackles.
Four months after the flood, Guliker has refurbished the finishing barn and is repopulating with weaners shipped to him from a farm in Saskatchewan. Some of the temporary foreign workers who fled to their homelands after the flood have returned and new staff have been hired in place of those who did not come back. Whether the blueberries can be recovered has yet to be determined, he said.
On the road by 7 a.m. on March 23, Guliker said he learned from the fire that took out his sow unit late in April that it is possible to rebuild and carry on. That understanding – along with the contract already in place to buy weaners and replacement gilts – gave him the tools he needed to clean up, restore and repopulate his farm. The support of his wife, Ina and help from BC Pork and fellow producers have been an integral part in his decision to stay calm and carry on.
“We’re happy he decided to stay,” said Jack Dewit, Chair of BC Pork.
Dewit compared the fertile and highly productive Sumas Prairie to a war zone in the aftermath of the flood, adding another layer of worry and destruction in a province that had been coping with wildfires and bracing for the potential introduction of African Swine Fever.
“We’ve been hammered here in BC,” he said.
Response to the November emergency was outstanding in some cases and troublesome in others, said Dewit. The Princeton fire department played an instrumental role in rescuing four loads of hogs headed for processing on the coast and stalled at Kamloops. The fire department excavated a forestry road and diverted the trucks, returning some to the prairies others were offloaded and housed in Kamloops, he said.
Officials from Canada and the United States created a bond agreement that allowed further shipments to be diverted through Washington until the highways could be reopened. Emergency supplies of grain for those animals that survived the flood were flown in by helicopter from the port at Vancouver.
On the other hand, farmers attempting to get back to their animals had to force their way through roadblocks and about 200 local citizens fought past security to sandbag the Barrowtown pumping station, said Dewit. People who had been “kicked to the curb” as “zeroes” are now recognized as heroes for saving the pumping station, a vital piece in the region’s flood mitigation system, he said.
Guliker is now negotiating for compensation through the federal AgriRecovery program. It won’t cover all his losses, said Dewit.

“How many years does it take off his life?” he said.
The BC experience was at the centre of discussion during Alberta Farm Animal Care’s annual Livestock Care Conference, held online in mid-March.
Emergency planners from across the continent and sharing a wide range of expertise offered insight they have gained from the front lines. Speakers wrapped their discussion around the PREP model for emergency planning: Prepare, Respond, Evaluate, Progress.
There is no way of knowing when disaster will strike or what form it will take, but it is possible to develop a plan that will mitigate the damage and help with the cleanup and recovery afterward, said Keynote Speaker Rebecca Gimenez Husted, a repeat visitor to the Alberta conference. Based in Georgia, Husted is a firefighter and former US Army signal officer. She is founder of Technical Large Animal Emergency Rescue and holds a doctorate in animal physiology.
“We used to have plans for different types of disasters. We’ve realized that an all-hazard plan is best: One basic plan, shelter in place or evacuate, and tailor that when a disaster happens,” she said.
“Shelter in place is normally the best plan for livestock and is by far the most utilized method.”
The coronavirus pandemic, now entering its third year, is the type of emergency that has required people to shelter in place along with all the implications such an order brings as well as the ongoing and long-term effects. Floods and fires are on the other side of the emergency spectrum, driving people out of their homes and off their farms, raising questions about what is going to happen to animals that are left behind.
The Guliker family and staff were rescued by boat from rooftops. Their first attempts to return to the barns were via boat. Guliker said when he finally got inside the big finishing barn, the water had come within one meter of the ceiling. Thousands of pigs had perished inside.
Farm evacuations are difficult and it’s rarely the best choice for most farms, said Husted. How do you move animals, to where, who is going to look after them? What about biosecurity and shelter agreements?
She emphasized the need for producers to introduce themselves to local officials and get involved with people in charge of planning for their regions. The time to meet your fire chief is at the office over a coffee, where you can talk about your operation and the support you need and can offer during an emergency, said Husted. It is less common now to have a rural fire department operated by people with livestock skills, and therefore more important that producers step up to the plate.
“You have to be a part of the process ahead of time. Show up at the meetings so they know who you are. I hear where emergency managers say they don’t do horses or cows. Speak up. Help them realize that there are more than just a few. Many times, they don’t understand agriculture, cattle, the size of your horse industry. You’ve got to make them smarter about those things.”
Husted reminded conference attendees that the time to take care of the aftermath of a disaster is before it happens, offering producers a few things to consider in case of a wreck on their farms:
Insurance: READ THE FINE PRINT. For example, are you covered if you suffer losses because of a municipal order?
Continuity of business planning: update regularly
Think about the people affected, their health. A huge percentage of farmers and ranchers are older. What happens to animals if an owner dies?

Checklist: Where is all of our stuff if something happens to us?
Flood: What else is in the water?
Phishing, hacking, predatory practices
Under guidance from AFAC, Alberta has set the standard in livestock emergency management with its network of emergency trailers equipped with appropriate gear for handling frightened animals. Tools include light standards, generators, corral panels, ropes and halters. Emergency responders need to know that these trailers exist and they need to know how to find and use them, said Husted.
A lunch session held in advance of the main conference dealt with allowing livestock producers access to their animals while evacuation orders are in place.
Matthew Shapero and Max Moritz from the University of California described an Ag Pass program developed at the urging of the California Cattlemen’s Association in the California counties of Santa Barbara and Ventura, which have suffered extreme effects of wildfires. The program was developed in cooperation with county authorities and a variety of relevant groups to give commercial producers and their workers access into sites that had been blocked off.
Counties involved in the program have agreed to honour each other’s passes and a state-wide program is now under development to ensure continuity across county boundaries, said Shapero.
The precedent for this type of access is that it is routinely given to news media attending emergencies, he said. A similar plan is now being developed in BC.
During a discussion session after their presentation, Shapero said the committee did encounter a couple of pain points that had not been anticipated.
“There was a moment when one agency was left out and we had to backpedal to help that person feel comfortable moving forward,” he said.
Secondly, there was a question of liability in connection with the passes.
“I didn’t anticipate the level of pushback from county attorneys. It certainly slowed the process down. The waiver was the most significant part in allowing the process to move forward.”

Asked if the program would be appropriate for flooding as well as wildfires, Shapero said it was set up to address natural disasters of all types, offering as an example the catastrophic floods and landslides that accompanied the Thomas fire in 2017.

Javier Bahamon, quality assurance and production manager for Alberta Pork, described the measures his organization has taken to help producers with their emergency PREP. With help from the Animal Health Emergency Management project team, Alberta Pork has developed an emergency plan tailored to swine producers, said Bahamon.
Citing management of the 2019 outbreak of porcine epidemic diarrhea in Alberta, Alberta Pork and Alberta Agriculture put protocols to set run incident command from an Emergency Operations Centre in Edmonton. The incident command team members were assigned specific tasks, such as managing samples.
When disease is discovered, it is a fundamental role to keep it contained and prevent it from spreading, said Bahamon.
Much of the effort in Alberta is focused on disease, he said, pointing to the plans that have been laid out in preparation for the discovery of African Swine Fever. Since the first outbreak in China in 2018, ASF has devastated herds and disrupted the industry around the world, he said. Alberta and Canada have set out detailed preparations to monitor for signs of the disease and to keep it contained in the event of a suspected case, he said.
Through the course of the session, producers heard details on the varieties of emergencies that could affect their farms and the resources available to them to prepare and respond to those emergencies.
Alberta Farm Animal Care is a non-profit organization founded and supported by the province’s livestock industry as a means of helping commercial farmers take the best possible care of their animals. •
Learn more from AFAC (www.afac.ab.ca) or Alberta pork (www.albertapork.com)
— By Brenda Kossowan