British Columbia’s public safety minister confirms as many as 100 vehicles have been trapped in the eastern Fraser Valley between two mudslides that severed Highway 7 near Agassiz.

Mike Farnworth says he has no reports of injuries and efforts are underway to free the trapped travellers, although plans to airlift them out of the area could be hampered by strong winds.

The slide, and several others that cut most key routes into B-C’s Interior, followed more than 24 hours of extremely heavy rain.

Environment Canada said yesterday that conditions could ease, but up to 250 millimetres is expected over the hardest-hit areas of the Fraser Valley, where officials say flooding or slides have already prompted a state of local emergency in Agassiz, along with evacuations there and in nearby Abbotsford.

Flood warnings or watches are posted as river levels surge on waterways from southern Vancouver Island to the Interior city of Merritt and high water has overcome Merritt’s water treatment plant, forcing an immediate shutdown of all sewer and water services.

Farnworth says two-thousand people have already been evacuated from Merritt and all seven-thousand residents may be forced out, but reception centres are being prepared in Kamloops and Kelowna, if a full-scale evacuation is needed.