Searchers recover body from British Columbia mudslide

By Amy Simonson and Paul P. Murphy, CNN

The body of a woman has been recovered from a mudslide that occurred Monday morning near Lillooet, British Columbia, according to a statement released Tuesday by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The woman was from the Lower Mainland, but authorities gave no other details.

Family members of the deceased were notified, according to the release and the BC Coroners Service has been notified and is conducting its own investigation.

Search efforts continue, the release said.

“The total number of people and vehicles unaccounted for has not been confirmed, however, investigators have received two missing people reports and believe there may have been other occupied vehicles that were lost in the slide,” Staff Sgt. Janelle Shoihet of the Mounted Police’s British Columbia Division said in the statement. “We are asking anyone who was a witness to the event, or believes their loved one is missing and has not yet been able to make contact with them to contact the Pemberton or Lillooet RCMP Detachments.”

Lillooet is located north of Vancouver in the interior of British Columbia along the Fraser River.

Hundreds of other people who were trapped on a British Columbia highway were rescued, emergency management officials said.

There were three incidents where cars were trapped between debris flows where hundreds of people were trapped, Emergency Management British Columbia communications director Jordan Turner said.

Nearly 300 travelers ended up stuck in the region, according to Jonathan Gormick with Canada Task Force 1, a search and rescue team based in Vancouver.

Canadian authorities across southern British Columbia were being forced to post evacuation orders ahead of rising water as flooding continues to wreak havoc across the greater Pacific Northwest.

According to the province’s emergency information website, 24 evacuation orders have been posted because of flooding. Abbotsford, British Columbia, Mayor Henry Braun said in a news conference Tuesday residents of roughly 1,100 homes in his city have been ordered to evacuate because of flooding.

Photos and videos posted online by authorities show widespread flooding across Abbotsford, which hugs the US-Canada border and is located 30 miles southeast of Vancouver.

Some critical infrastructure in parts of the province have also been damaged by the rain and flooding. Princeton, British Columbia Mayor Spencer Coyne told CNN’s Canadian newsgathering partner CBC their entire town is without gas after a line was broken during storms and flooding. The break could endanger residents there as temperature will dip well below freezing over the next few nights.

The city of Merritt said Tuesday afternoon they were forced to shut off drinking water because flooding contaminated it.

“The water is undrinkable, even if boiled,” the city said on Twitter.

Penticton, British Columbia, reported on Twitter the storms and flooding knocked out town phone lines.

Flood warnings have been posted for the areas surrounding the province’s Similkameen and Thompson rivers, meaning the river levels have, or will imminently, exceed their banks.

Large swaths of the area surrounding the southern part of the Fraser River have also been placed under a flood watch.

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CNN’s Joe Sutton and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.