A woman who was missing after her home was washed away in a mudslide in Coquitlam, B.C., on Saturday has been found dead, police say.
Coquitlam RCMP said a search and rescue crew found the body of the 57-year-old woman on Sunday evening.
“This is a deeply tragic outcome and our thoughts are with the victim’s family and friends,” Cpl. Alexa Hodgins said in a statement Monday.
Police said they were called to a slide along Quarry Road, on the southern edge of Pinecone Burke Provincial Park, at about 12:30 p.m. PT Saturday. Officers said they found the slide had rendered the road impassable and cut off several residents.
Coquitlam Fire Chief Scott Young told CBC News on Sunday that the slide knocked one home completely off its foundation.
Canada Task Force 1 — a national Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Team — joined Coquitlam Fire and Rescue in the search for the resident.
As of about 11 a.m. PT Monday, police said Quarry Road remains closed between Calgary Drive and MacIntyre Road. First responders are in contact with the residents cut off by the slide, police say.
Gord Howard, director of the North Shore Emergency Operations Centre in B.C., says the rain that fell on Vancouver and area came in such a short period of time it ‘overwhelmed’ a lot of systems designed to clear water over a longer period of time.
The slide was triggered by torrential rainfall that swept across the Lower Mainland this weekend.
Environment Canada said daily rainfall records were set across the Lower Mainland, including in West Vancouver, which received about 190 millimetres of rain.
Dozens of houses and businesses in North Vancouver were damaged by water, and the District of North Vancouver issued evacuation orders for six homes in the Deep Cove area.
