'My truck was actually floating': Campers dig out after flood forces evacuation near Grande Prairie

Crystal Jennifer awoke to find her campsite submerged in silt-brown water.

She was among more than a dozenpeople who had to be evacuated from the Smoky Flats campground near Grande Prairie on Saturday.

Days later, many are digging their campers out of the thick mudand assessing the damage to their rigs.

"The place is unrecognizable it has flooded so bad and still rising at an incredible rate," Jennifer said in a Facebook post Saturday morning.

'We were lucky'

"We were lucky to have made it out safely but our trailer did not as of yet. My truck was actually floating at one point. Crazy!"

The river was rising fast, and churning with debris. Heavy rainfall upstream caused flash flooding in the area.

• Man missing after canoe capsizes on Smoky River

On the same day, a canoe capsized in the floodwaters. Three people, two women and man,were thrown into the river andclung to a log for several hours.

The women, suffering from hypothermia, managed to swim to shore, but the man, too exhausted from the ordeal, remained in the water.

The women made it to shore and were found on the side of the river, but the man remainsmissing.

On Sunday, helicopters joinedthe search,but police suspended theground search asthe Smoky River's rising water level created "dangerous search conditions."

As of Tuesday morning, RCMPwere unavailable to comment on the status of the search.

The campground on the banks of the Smoky River was among the hardest hit by the flooding. RCMP were called to help evacuate campers from the area.

"That last time anyone was awake, it was at 3 a.m.," said Jessica Reid, who has been camping on the beach with her four kidsand a close circle of friends every summerfor years.

"Then 5:30 a.m. somebody went to let their dog out and couldn't let their dog out because it was so flooded.

"So they started banging on doors getting everybody up."

While all people in the area were accounted for, two people became stranded on a small island formed by the rising water. A STARS air ambulance helicopter was flown in to rescue the couple.

''When the water came in as quick as it did, it made a kind of gully behind us and that's where the road is, up on the hill. And so they couldn'tget off," said Reid.

'We can't get any of them out'

Reid said most of the campers were spared any serious damage, except for one larger RV which was "teeter tottering" on top of the flood waters.

However, all of the units, including Reid's remain stuck in the muckindefinitely. They've spent hours wading through waist-deep water trying to get their units out, but it's been a comedy of errors.

"One pick-up truck tried to get atrailer out and ended up getting stuck, and got the trailer stuck worse after trying to raise all the jacks under that cold water the whole time, and it took three other pick-up trucks to pull him out.

"The sand and silt is just way too intense to even get a pick-up in there, let alone trying to pull a camper out so they're kind of trapped," Reid said. "We had a backhoe in there, we had flat-deck tow truck in there, we can't get any of them out."

"But pretty much everyone on the beach is pretty redneck so we're all helping each other out."