Flash flood devastates childcare centres in Maple Ridge, leaving families scrambling

MAPLE RIDGE (NEWS 1130) — Hundreds of families will have to “scramble” to find new childcare centres in Maple Ridge for at least the next two months after a flash flood during Friday’s storm devastated two buildings at the Ridge Meadows Child Development Centre.

Calida Russell, manager of Start Smart child care centre, says she and her team had to seek high higher ground and evacuate about 30 kids when the water started rushing into the building. Luckily, she says, everybody is fine after the ordeal.

“There was a little river coming up our centre,” Russell recalls from Friday, praising her teams response to get the kids to safety. “It was about a foot up the wall and and we were seeking dry land inside our centre.”

Russell does not know how extensive the damage is and says they are in the middle of restoration now. Her centre sees around 80 kids a day come through and efforts are underway to accommodate the families in the meantime.

“There is furniture upon furniture and boxes upon boxes. A lot of stuff was ruined,” she says. “We’re hoping to open our doors somewhere else in this next week.”

Casi Bemister, parent of a four-year old pre-schooler at the centre, says she can deal with the disruption this week, but wonders what will happen after the weekend.

“My father-in-law helps us quite a bit and I have some time that I can take off work,” Bemister says. “Next week might be a bit of a panic.”

She also worries whether she will able to find a day care for her son in the face of big shortages in child care spaces and says that some of the parents she is contact with are looking into getting leave-of-absences from work.

“Maple Ridge is already bursting at the seams,” she says. “We were on the wait list for a long time before he got in and thankfully I only worked a couple of days a week, and I am concerned how 180 kids are going to find alternate arrangements. It’s pretty scary.”

Amber Lebrun, another parent, says it was a “big scrambling mess” trying to find someone to take care of her two-year old because she has no relatives in Maple Ridge that could help out. She says it adds to the cost since she has to be away from her new job and feels obligated to pay whomever will take care of her daughter for the time being.

“I have no choice but to backtrack every day, drive all the way to Mission for my sister-in-law to watch my daughter and drive all the way back to Langley, and then back to Mission afterwards to pick her up,” Lebrun says. “Either my husband and I have to try to take teh time off, or…I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do.”

— with files from Kurtis Doering