Gut-wrenching is how Two Mile homeowner Bob Eadie describes his futile fight to save his residence from the wrath of Sicamous Creek.
When the creek blew Saturday evening, Eadie and his family had been entertaining a dozen guests at their residence near the creek’s former outlet. The friendly gathering quickly became a work crew, frantically setting up sandbags and concrete blocks to stop the overwhelming debris flow.
“The irony was that it increased in flow and then in waned, increased and waned, and we thought we’d beat it… and then it came on stronger,” Eadie said Monday, June 25. “And then, at two in the morning on Sunday, essentially a wall of water overcame everything done and we had to abandon it.”
Eadie and his guests slept in Two Mile that night and were evacuated by houseboat the following morning. Eadie says it’s still difficult to think about all that’s occurred in Two Mile since the creek escaped its banks, let alone what’s become of the family home of more than four decades.
“But nobody was hurt, well minor injuries, sandbagging, building the walls,” says Eadie. “Because the boulders are rolling along and they hit your feet and your feet are all frozen because of the water. And then you go out for a few minutes and people say, ‘Oh geez, look, you’re bleeding,’ and that type of stuff. It’s just minor injuries and thank God nobody was hurt…”
Despite the damage to his home, Eadie, says it looks recoverable. He said he was sympathetic to those whose homes are worse in worse shape, and for Waterway Houseboats, whose property was devastated by the diverted creek, which continues to flow through Waterway to the lake. “They’re a victim just like us and we feel that compassion, just like they have for us,” says Eadie. “Waterway provided the houseboats to evacuate and all the residents appreciated that.”