The hill didn’t just collapse. It swallowed them.
In seconds, Highway 99 turned into a graveyard of mud, twisted metal, and unanswered prayers. Families waited for calls that never came. Rescuers clawed through debris as the rain kept falling, and the clock kept killing hope. Three men found. One still lost. A woman gone.
In the shadow of the mountains south of Lillooet, the search teams finally had to stop. Days of digging through unstable mud and shattered vehicles yielded three men’s bodies, following the earlier recovery of a woman who never made it home. One more man remains missing, his absence now a quiet wound in the lives of those who loved him.
Officials say every viable search option has been exhausted, but the emotional aftershocks are only beginning. Families are being notified, names are being confirmed, and communities already battered by a year of fires, floods, and loss are bracing for yet another funeral, or perhaps the harder fate of never knowing. As Highway 99 stays closed and the slide zone lies eerily still, British Columbia is left wrestling with a brutal question: how many more lives must be buried before we learn how to protect the ones still standing.
