When Mother Nature decides to unleash her fury down a mountainside, the results are usually catastrophic and fatal.

So it is seemingly more than remarkable or amazing that it appears as though no one was hurt or killed in yesterday’s (July 15) flash flood and landslide at Fairmont Hot Springs.

At 4:48 p.m. on a warm summer Sunday afternoon, at one of the busiest tourism attractions and resorts in the Kootenays, a combination of rapid snow melt and rain bloated Fairmont Creek to recently unseen levels.

A wall of chocolate milk exploded down the mountain leading from the resort ski hill into the small canyon running beside Fairmont Hot Springs Resort, cutting off about 600 people in the RV Park from the rest of the resort.

The flash flood served as an alarm bell to many people who scrambled for higher ground or away from the onrushing water.

“My wife was getting something out of the car and I looked out and saw this brown water coming down the hill,” said a vacationing Calgary resident, staying at Fairmont Mountain Vacation Villas with his family, adding his immediate instinct was to flee.

“I grabbed the kids and we ran toward the community centre,” he said, looking at his partly buried family vehicle. Nearby, emergency work crews feverishly removed about four feet of rock from the villa parking lot, with two other vehicles damaged in the landslide that followed the flash flood.

Witnesses say after the water initially coursed down the down-blast turned into a mudslide and then a rockslide, as thousands of small boulders and rocks were scoured loose.

It appears that the order of the mayhem may also have helped spare many properties from greater damage, as rocks and boulders smashed into a thick bed of mud that may have swallowed much momentum.

Another Calgary resident vacationing in Fairmont with his family also related a story about hustling away from their condo when the slide hit. His vehicle, too, was trapped in the debris and he had no idea of the extent of the damage. He was seeing his vehicle and condo for the first time when e-KNOW chatted with him (forgetful e-KNOW forgot his notepad and Smartphone like a rookie git before embarking on a photo tour today and did not get names).

“You come on a vacation and this happens. What can you do?” he said with resignation. Later he slopped through the knee-deep mire of debris to his vehicle and retrieved a diaper bag for his wife. “She’ll be happy with that,” he shrugged.

Both men, in their early 30s, said their families had been well looked after since the slide.

Columbia River-Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald, who toured Fairmont earlier in the day, said he’s heard numerous people say the emergency workers and accommodators in Fairmont had done excellent work.

Appearing to be hardest hit in the disaster is the Fairmont Mountainside Golf Resort and the adjacent Villas, with many of the condo units hammered hard by the debris. That said, it seems like it could have been much worse, an observation shared by Macdonald.

Noting his shock at the amount of debris that flowed downhill through Fairmont, Macdonald said he is grateful that one was hurt or lost.

“It’s amazing, considering the time of day – 4:30 – that no one was using the trail” along Fairmont Creek when the flashflood happened, he said.

Story continues after photo presentation. Please click on an image to enlarge and begin self-directed slide show.

Fairmont was a beehive of activity today as work crews carved away at the debris and trucked some of it to the new watercourse park area.

However, Mountainside Golf Course was silent, with three to four of its 18 gorgeous holes either destroyed or near as be damned.

The always packed Fairmont Hot Springs Resort was also silent, with the hot pools closed. The footpath leading over the canyon from the pools to the RV Park was also closed, with trees smashed against its east side.

Yet, down the hill at Riverside Golf Course and the Par Three course, it was business as usual, though there didn’t appear to be any lines at any of the holes.

Macdonald noted that it is important people understand that “Fairmont remains open for business” and the rest of its tourism infrastructure remains in place.

Regional District of East Kootenay Emergency Program Information Officer Loree Duczek, who must be now officially up to her chin in disasters so far this spring and summer (Kimberley flooding; Wasa flooding; Windermere flooding), noted at 6 p.m. this evening (July 16) that the roughly 600 campers who had been stranded on the other side of a bridge washout in the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort Campground are now able to move freely after the resort constructed and opened a temporary road this afternoon.

The temporary road will remain open for two-to-three days and then the campground will be closed while they install a more permanent road structure, she said.

“Downstream, crews made more progress today as they work to re-establish flow to the creek channel and culverts. Our goal is to get as much water out of the way as possible and re-establish the channel. Everyone who was evacuated and out of their homes last night has been allowed to return today, with the exception of two units. The people in those units were allowed to go in and retrieve their belongings. There is still debris blocking driveways in several areas; however, access is expected to be restored to all driveways by mid-week,” Duczek stated.

“With more rainfall in the forecast over the next few days, we will be closely monitoring water levels and are working with the Ministry of Transportation to ensure culverts are monitored and kept clear of debris. We would like to extend special thanks to the people in Windermere who took in billets overnight and to the many other volunteers who’ve offered to help in so many different ways,” she said.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

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