Two residents of Merritt, B.C., are spearheading a proposed class-action lawsuit against the city for allegedly failing to repair its dikes in the years before the 2021 flood, which forced 7,000 residents to evacuate and damaged more than 600 homes in the area.
The community, located about 190 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, was overwhelmed with water when the November 2021 atmospheric river caused the Coldwater River to overflow and the city’s dikes to fail. The entire municipality was forced to evacuate after the local wastewater treatment plant was flooded.
Now, Michelle Hintz and Jennifer Biddlecome, on behalf of those also affected by the flood, are suing the city for damages in B.C. Supreme Court.
The City of Merritt said it would not comment while the matter is before the court. None of the allegations have been tested in court.
Representing the plaintiffs, lawyer Luke Zacharias, a partner at Zacharias Vickers McCann, said the flood had an enormous impact on residents.
“People have lost everything, and they’ve had to start over again,” he said. “It’s been utterly devastating for some of the people that I’ve been talking to.”
Plaintiff Biddlecome suffered extensive personal property damage, according to the suit, and her property was “flooded and severely damaged.”
Hintz, a renter, was unable to return to her home as a result of the flood, according to the filing.
Zacharias said he expects a “somewhat substantial” number of people to join the class action, if it is certified.
The lawsuit alleges the Coldwater River flooded areas of the city “resulting in injuries, mass displacement and catastrophic damage” to homes and businesses.
Dike maintenance
The plaintiffs say the city failed to repair the dikes, despite yearly reports between 2018 and 2021 from a consultant who recommended a number of high- and medium-priority maintenance tasks.
The consultant’s 2018 report, according to the suit, said the dikes were experiencing erosion, and noted there was “rampant unchecked growth of large cottonwood trees and other vegetation along sections of the dikes, which had severely compromised the integrity of the dike structure.”
Reports from the following years indicated the dikes were in a similar condition.
The lawsuit alleges the city was grossly negligent in failing to ensure the dikes were in proper condition.
The plaintiffs say the dikes failed at various places during the 2021 atmospheric river, causing extensive damage to Merritt, including the shutdown of the wastewater treatment plant, the collapse of the Voght Street Bridge, significant damage to homes and more.
Warning system
The suit also alleges the city failed to warn residents of the “impending and foreseeable flood” in a timely manner.
The suit says the city alerted residents that it would make evacuation orders through its Facebook page but did not use the official Voyent Alert! app, a communication platform that notifies residents of critical incidents, which the city had introduced months earlier.
The plaintiffs say the city was well aware of the risk of flooding and note that Merritt exists on a floodplain.
They lay out nine instances when Merritt experienced flooding between 1894 and 2018, noting the dikes were built to prevent flooding during the spring freshet season, when rivers swell with runoff from snow melts.
“Adequate and timely warning of the severe weather events would have been life-changing for those whose livelihoods were rooted in Merritt,” the plaintiffs say in the suit.
To proceed, the proposed class action must be certified by a judge at a court hearing.
