Relatives of a retired couple whose Lions Bay home was destroyed by a weekend mudslide anxiously awaited updates Monday as search teams combed through the debris field, which had spilled onto the busy Sea to Sky Highway and down to Howe Sound.
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Squamish RCMP said late Sunday that searchers had recovered the body of one of the residents of the home, which was wiped out on Saturday morning during a windstorm that hit B.C.’s south coast. The second person remained missing Monday night.
Abe Enns, of Calgary, confirmed to Postmedia that his brother David’s body was the one that was found. David’s wife, Barbara, was still missing.
Their son in Vancouver is “broken up,” he said.
The couple had lived in the home for about 30 years and had carried out a number of renovations, including strategic tree removal to improve their views of the water far below and building a veranda, he said.
David had worked in commercial real estate, his brother said. Barbara was a banker when the house was purchased in 1995, according to property records.
David and Barbara Enns, who lived at 6 Glendale Ave., had been preparing to host their adult children and other family members from out of town for Christmas, according to a local resident.
“Sadly, on Dec. 15, emergency crews located the body of one of the residents directly involved, who had succumbed to their injuries,” said RCMP Cpl. James Grandy. “Emergency crews are continuing their search … for a second person associated with the home who remains unaccounted for.”
The slide began on Magnesia Creek at around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday and destroyed a small bridge that crosses the creek and connects Glendale Avenue and Crystal Falls Road.
A notice on the Lions Bay website posted Sunday night said a local state of emergency had been declared, covering the Brunswick/Magnesia Creek area “due to debris flow that has caused property and structural damage, and loss of life.”
The notice said the flowing debris “swept one residence off the foundation and damaged some infrastructure.”
Trees, mud and other debris blocked Sea to Sky Highway for almost 24 hours on the weekend and the gash it left in the side of the mountain was the width of two or three tractor trailers.
The landslide revealed black soil and a metre wide stream of water that ran from high on the mountain, with lush evergreens and spindly but tall birches on either side. Above that, a smaller flow could be seen through the trees.
Heavy machinery was still picking up logs and other debris at the highway level on Monday.
An RCMP vehicle parked at the bottom of Crystal Falls Road blocked access to the area of the village that took a direct hit from the slide.
Lions Bay Mayor Ken Berry said the crews involved in the search for the missing person included a heavy urban search and rescue team from Canada Task Force 1 in Vancouver.
He said engineers had determined there is no imminent risk of another mudslide in the area.
Out of precaution, the village on Sunday evacuated nine residents from two homes near the one that was lost in the slide, officials said.
They had been asked to remain home the night after the slide because it was determined no more debris was likely to come down, said Brent Calkin, leader of the Lions Bay search-and-rescue team.
Crews on the ground climbed up to access the homes through the washed-out area, he said, with the rescuers finding themselves “waist deep in mud and basically having to swim to the houses.”
A second route through the trees was created and, on Sunday, all nine people were able to move to safety using handline ropes. Also included in the walkout rescue were three dogs, and a cat that had to be moved in a carrier by a SAR member.
The village also evacuated the residents who live below the slide along Brunswick Beach Road on the west side of Highway 99 and closer to the ocean’s edge, the village said. But that notice was later rescinded.
However, on Monday afternoon, with an atmospheric river set to drench the south coast again on Tuesday, those same residents were told to be ready in case another evacuation order is issued.
One of the goals of the geotechnical assessment underway is to determine if the area that may have been affected by the slide needs to be expanded, said chief administrative officer Ross Blackwell on Monday.
Blackwell said he was surprised by the slide. Most of the creeks coming off the mountains have been “channelized” to reduce the risk of slides but Magnesia Creek and a smaller one in the area of the slide, Britannia Creek, were not, he said.
A resident of the Brunswick Beach Road area on the west side of Highway 99 said her family left their beachfront house on Saturday morning when the winds shook the house and they worried about tree boughs crashing down. They left by foot because they couldn’t open their garage because the power was out, she said.
They were going to walk to a friend’s house who lived down the road but said emergency responders sent them back to their home before an official evacuation notice was issued.
The resident, who said she didn’t want to be named because she was worried about repercussions from council for speaking out, said she wasn’t aware of a landslide risk for her place.
A number of trees had fallen in her area, some of them bringing down live power lines that had left scorch marks on the forest floor, still visible on Monday.
Brad Wilson, co-owner of Storm Strength and Performance in Squamish, said he was driving south on Highway 99 when he came upon the mudslide.
“It must’ve have happened 30 seconds before I got there,” he guessed.
There was a bus and a few other cars ahead of him in the southbound lanes. He said it was lucky no vehicles were swept off the freeway.
“It takes a ton of power to take those trees down and move them like that and snap them in half,” he said.
He said he and other drivers were concerned whether more debris might come down. “We weren’t sure how stable or unstable it was.”
The mudslide, he said, pushed debris down the west side of Highway 99, across railway tracks and into Howe Sound.
The mudslide was cleared and Highway 99 reopened shortly after 5 a.m. on Sunday.
The risk of a destructive debris flow on the upper slopes of Lions Bay had been flagged in a report several years ago.
A 2018 report from Cordilleran Geoscience noted that “above Highway 99 there are several lots below Crystal Falls that border natural stream banks with relief of 2-4 metres above the channel bed.”
The lots “could be vulnerable to debris floods … (caused by) rare large catchment overtopping events or from ravine side wall failures. Any debris that overtops the bank could then be directed down the surface onto the highway and down the Brunswick Beach access, to Brunswick Beach Road.”
The report said much of the village was developed before geotechnical risk assessments were routine in B.C.
“While there is existing provincial legislation that gives local government the authority to require geotechnical assessment on a case-by-case basis when triggered by development proposals, to date, due to establishment of the village before geo-hazards were regularly considered in development approvals, the Village of Lions Bay has no overarching hazard and risk management framework that allows a consistent approach to guide land development.”
Blackwell asked for time to review the report, which was given to his predecessor, before commenting.
It might be an inherently risky area, but the heights above Lions Bay are also scenic enough that they’ve been a popular filming location over the years. A fight scene for the series Superman & Lois was shot on Crystal Falls Road, as was a scene from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
With files from Douglas Quan and research from Carolyn Soltau