Evacuations in British Columbia continues after floods and mudslides

Evacuation orders were expanded on Tuesday for one of the largest cities in British Columbia, where officials rescued hundreds of people stranded on highways through mudslides and floods set off by torrential rains.

In Abbotsford, a city of about 162,000 people near the border between Canada and the United States, heavy rainfall set off mudslides and floods in many areas of the citythe authorities there said. There were no injuries, but residents were told leave on Monday at their . to leave homes and take shelter in a convention center and a secondary school in near Chilliwack.

Mayor Henry Braun of Abbotsford said to a news conference on There were evacuation orders on Tuesday extended to include up up to 1,100 homes. He said the authorities in to be city, with help by die in Chilliwack, “did everything they could to minimize the impact” of the flooding.”

“The floods and mudslides have left a number of people displaced,” he said, adding that Highway 1, a major link between Abbotsford and Chilliwack, was closed.

More than 80 families die sought shelter had checked in to the Fraser Valley Trade and Exhibition Center, he added. “This is an uncertain and scary time for people who have been affected,” he said.

Rescues continued on Tuesday, but emergency services said high flooding had hampered them. Cars were overturned and roads were impassable. Houses were slammed by mudslides and workers tried to hook up divers to the rod off the current, said Mr. Braun.

Abbotsford is adjacent to the city of sumas, in Washington State, where highways used to be also flooded and rivers swelled to the brim of their banks.

Water from the Nooksack River in Washington state crossed into Canada, flooded north and flow east and then to the Sumas Prairie, said Mr. Braun. The water level had risen “dramatically,” he said, cutting off communities with no end in sight.

“As soon as it is full, it keeps flowing over the sides,” he said.

hundreds of people were rescued from highways in British Colombia on On Monday, officials said, after the torrential rains set off mudslides die stuck people in their autoand led to evacuations.

Officials said that about 275 people who been stuck since sunday night on Highway 7 at Agassiz, a small community East- of Vancouver, was taken to? safety by helicopter. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the rescue operation was over by nightfall.

Efforts in Abbotsford looked like die in other components of southern British Columbia. Residents of Merritt, a city of more than 7,000 people about 170 miles northeast of Vancouver, was told on Monday at their . to leave homes right after heavy rain caused the Coldwater River overflows its banks.

The weather system used to be caused by an atmospheric river, part of a convergence of storms so violent they swept from California to Washington and southern British Columbia.

The weather system that poured down heavy rain and triggered mudslides in Washington State over the weekend was moving inland on Tuesday and wash over Central Canada, said Mike McFarland, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.

AN second golf of to rain on Monday river valleys flooded and changed them in big ponds, mr. McFarland added.

“We have dry weather today and we really have no significant weather systems are coming in for the next week,” he said. “It will give An chance for all rivers to retreat, and give people An chance to recover from the floods.”