Improvement and concern from Kamloops city hall about flooding.

Utility Services Manager Greg Wightman says on the positive side,

“Locally, we’ve seen some real drastic improvements actually on some of the smaller streams. The River Forecast Centre is letting us know that most of the mid-level elevation snow has now melted. So areas like Noble, Campbell and Heffley, all those sort of creeks, they are actually starting to improve at this point. Campbell Creek has actually dropped about 7 inches in the past couple days.”

Wightman says, work crews are now turning their attention to a drastic increase in the South Thompson River over the next several days.

In the Nicola Valley, 75,000 sandbags prepared and deployed around the City of Merritt.

The Director of Corporate Services, Sean Smith says, the estimate is staggering.

“We have had 75,000 sandbags deployed to Merritt. The number that we have actually put out there is not as certain because we went through some of the supply we had from last year, and we haven’t used all of the supply that we’ve had deployed here, but I think probably close to that amount.”

Merritt RCMP dealing with several unhappy residents.

Staff Sergeant Lauren Wood says most, if not all the complaints in recent days revolve around access to areas evacuated over the weekend.

“We understand that people are upset, they’ve got friends who haven’t left, or they’ve got property and they want to go in and that, and I totally get that. You know, tensions do run high at times, but we can’t really be liable for letting people back into an ordered area when its not safe. You know, if somebody were injured or killed, then suddenly we’re liable.”

Roughly 70 residents within the City of Merritt remain under Evacuation Orders, and all homes on the Nicola River floodplain remain on Alert.