Former National champ Will Routley’s B.C. farm is a meter under water
The floods are destroying homes and livelihoods
Photo by:
Healthy Hooch
The flooding in British Columbia continues to decimate towns, farms and roads. The high waters are wreaking catastrophic damage and forcing many residents to evacuate with a bare minimum of possessions as they watch their homes and land get destroyed.
Former pro roadie Will Routley, and his wife Shoshauna own Healthy Hooch Kombucha. It’s a premium, certified organic kombucha, brewed in Abbotsford, B.C. Even though the Routleys are retired cyclists, they are still active in the community, recently supporting Svein Tuft’s bike packing company. The company has been growing steadily these past few years, and they recently upgraded their facilities to accommodate the growth. The company has always supported local suppliers, and sources local ingredients whenever possible.
On Monday, as the floods continued, they tried in vain to fill enough sandbags to try and protect their house, farm, and vehicles. But the water was too strong. “It’s a total disaster,” Routley explained. “In true Canadian form we paddled a canoe to escape, with our dog and two cats, and a backpack of belongings.”
Hundreds of farmers are in the same boat. Images circulated on the internet of people trying to rescue their livestock on dinghies. “It’s pretty hard to comprehend at the moment. It’s millions of dollars of damage for places like ours,” Routley said. “The images you you see of people dragging their livestock out, those are our neighbors and friends we see every day.”
Love this – cows saved from flooding at WestGen #Abbotsford #flood pic.twitter.com/S5XqOGLfvw
— Ben Lypka (@BenLypka) November 17, 2021
The Routleys hope to return to their land and inspect the damage soon, as floodwaters reduce. “When this happens, some people wonder why farmers build on a flood plain. But all our food comes from there,” he said. “And if not a flood then forest fire-prone area, or landslide. Every area is subject to something like this and it is happening more and more.”
His wife warned on Instagram that the floods are directly the result of climate change, and it’s terrifying.
“We are living it in real time, it’s totally indescribable.” Routley said. “We are looking at five years of our life, 60-hour weeks of work literally under water.”
