The morning of Thursday, November 18 broke to find swine producer John Guliker and his team travelling in a convoy along a clogged mountain highway, attempting to return to the farm he hadn’t seen since being rescued from a rooftop by river boat, three days earlier. At 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, the convoy had been stalled at the side of the road for 30 minutes with no idea when they would be able to start moving again or how long it would take to negotiate the detour, normally a 35-to-40-minute drive. 
Guliker’s three barns, one farrow-to-finish and two grow-finish, stand in the Sumas Prairie in British Columbia’s lower mainland near the city of Abbotsford. The three sites are among the thousands of square kilometres of property flooded by heavy rains and a sudden snow melt that started on the previous Sunday, taking out Guliker’s farrow-to-finish barn the following day. Raging waters washed out roads and bridges from Kamloops to the coast, stopping traffic in both directions, swamping cities and farms. At press time, one person had died, two were missing and thousands of farm animals had perished. 
Guliker was able to get to one of the grow-finish sites on Tuesday but had to leave again as dikes failed and more water flooded in. He held hope as he headed back on Thursday that some animals may have been rescued. He said there was some access from the west, but none from the east and there were no trucks or trains in the area to bring feed and supplies. 
Assuming that most of his animals had perished in the flood, Guliker said feed stored on the barn sites was ruined and he had no idea how he was going to look after any stock that may have survived. 
Sumas Prairie is an old lakebed straddling the Canada-United States border, created in the 1920s using a system of pumps, dikes and dams. That infrastructure, last updated in the mid-1980s, started to fail on Sunday as massive flooding overtook the Fraser Canyon. 
“We had a crazy amount of rain and we had a really hot Sunday afternoon. The Fraser River rose to almost its peak levels. These areas that are pumped are under a lot of pressure when it rains already – this infrastructure is 40 years old. 
“We’re sitting here in four-hour line up to go over some mountain to get to this farm. We haven’t even moved in the last half an hour. This is the only way through this entire area. 
“We’re right next to Abbotsford and we’re right next to the US border. This actually happened last year as well . . . it wasn’t near as bad. 
Guliker said his barns were taken out one by one, as infrastructure failed and flood waters poured into the area. 
“The (site) that flooded on Monday, we haven’t seen since Monday.” Some animals were rescued from a barn site that stayed dry until Tuesday but was then swamped as the water breeched failing infrastructure. 
“I think there’s going to be a lot of loss. I know there are certain things, when the going gets going, we can get a lot of s..t done. I don’t know how to deal with anything. I just need to get in there, assess things, and then as soon as I can, get my foreign workers back in their living quarters at that farm so I can have a workforce there.” 
Twenty minutes away, producer Chad Goertzen was still high and dry, but unable to ship any hogs because there was no trucking access in or out of Johnston’s, the plant that normally takes his stock. Goertzen said he can hold the pigs back for a few days but would run out of feed in a week to 10 days if trucks can’t get to the farm. 
Michael Mensah-Wilson, quality assurance manager for Britco, said that its plant was also shut down, but hoped by the end of the day on November 18 to have a better idea of when normal operations can resume. 

Certainly, with so many animals lost in the flood, there will be supply issues in the months to come, he said. 
Britco and its parent company, Donald’s Fine Foods, had workers with the provincial government and local authorities on an emergency response, he said. 
“We had some trucks that were stuck, but we were able to resolve the situation so the animals were safe,” said Mensah-Wilson. 
“Our top priority of course was the safety of the drivers and animals that were stuck in traffic, so that was our focus and we got that all resolved.” 
Darcy Fitzgerald, executive director for Alberta Pork, offered accolades to emergency management teams from both provinces as well as local fire departments in BC for their cool and efficient handling of the immediate crisis. 
Four trucks heading to Britco from two Alberta farms ended up stuck in traffic at Kamloops. Others were turned around and diverted to other facilities and Britco was able to stop further shipments from heading out, said Fitzgerald. The four trucks were travelling together when the highways were closed, he said. 
“They were in the traffic and then cut off at both ends. The fire departments were able to find a route for them to get out of the mess that they were in.” 
One Britco-bound truck was able to turn around and go back to an empty barn, where animals were fed and rested, and then shipped to Moose Jaw. 
Those that had been stuck with nowhere to go were unloaded at sites in Kamloops for feed and rest. Fitzgerald said the first truck was unloaded fairly quickly, but it took longer for authorities to deal with the others. 
He was full of praise for local firefighters who sought out trucks hauling livestock and were then able to get them off the highway and route them to safety. 
“When you’ve got a crisis like that, what they’re worried about, is everybody safe in their vehicles? Is there food and water for everybody? They were all able to get to where they needed to go and safely look after the pigs.” 
Fitzgerald said after seeing the heavy damage on Hwy 1 that it will likely take months to repair. 
“From the pictures I’ve seen, it looks bad. I don’t know how you find enough earth to put back into that hole,” he said. 
Mensah-Wilson also commented on the power of natural forces. 
“The force of nature is unbelievable. There was a time when I was in Germany in 1982 or 83, there was an earthquake picture of Los Angeles and there was a huge bridge made of concrete, very solid, and it was cut in half. When nature wants to take stuff back, we can’t compete.” 
Prairie Hog Country will keep in touch with plant officials, producers and local authorities on developments as BC works toward recovery and reconstruction. Our hearts and prayers are offered to everyone affected in this natural disaster. •
— By Brenda Kossowan
See bottom of page 49 for details on a GoFUndMe page that has been set up to help those affected by these devastating floods. To donate to the Help Our BC Farm Families GoFundMe page, please visit:
gofundme.com/f/help-our-BC-farm-families