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With light drizzle in the air, a young woman wiped away tears as she stood on the veranda of a newly renovated gray and white house. Its toilets and other plumbing fixtures sat beside her. Most of the house’s other contents were on the street in a muddy pile.

Three doors down, a chain of soldiers in green camouflage fatigues stacked sandbags atop a rock-and-earth dike intended to keep the Tulameen River out of modest homes on Allison Avenue. The engine noise and reverse-warning beeps of a small excavator filled the air as it scraped up mud, soggy mattresses, end tables, chairs, tools and VHS cassettes of children’s cartoons.

The heavy rains that caused flooding in Princeton and across southern British Columbia were the third large-scale natural disaster this part of Canada has endured in six months — the likely cumulative effects of climate change, according to climate experts.