VANCOUVER, British Columbia >> The body of a woman was recovered from one of the mudslides caused by extremely heavy rainfall in the Pacific coast Canadian province of British Columbia, authorities said today.

Police said search and rescue personnel were continuing to look for other possible victims from Monday’s slides.

“Our team did recover one person,” said David MacKenzie, the Pemberton District Search and Rescue manager.

He said his team came across seven vehicles at the slide site on Highway 99 near the town of Lillooet and police were trying to determine if there were any other bodies.

“It is a significant amount of debris. It makes it very difficult for our search crews. The mud is up to their waist. I can’t recall our team being involved in anything like this in the past,” he said.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sgt. Janelle Shoihet said the total number of people and vehicles unaccounted for had not yet been confirmed. She said investigators had received reports of two other people who were missing but added that other motorists might have been buried in the slide.

Vancouver Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Team spokesman Jonathan Gormick said while the roadway has been cleared of potentially trapped vehicles or people, they’ll now be searching the slide’s debris field.

Elsewhere in the province, Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said impassable highways were creating havoc in his city as police and firefighters tried to get people to evacuation centers.

“It breaks my heart to see what’s going on in our city,” Braun said.

Sunny skies followed two days of torrential storms that dumped the typical amount of rain that the city gets in all of November, but the mayor said the water was still rising and Highway 1 would be cut shut down for some time.

Braun said he was worried about getting enough information from officials in Washington state about water levels that have risen dramatically from the overflowing Nooksack River and over the Sumas dike.

“When are we going to crest? When is it going to level off here? It’s like a full cup of coffee. Once it’s full, it keeps flowing over the sides,’ he said.

Abbotsford Police Chief Mike Serr said officers removed some people from the roofs of cars awash in flood waters Monday night but left some motorists in semi-trucks because they were higher above the water.

“I was out there last night. You could not see where the side of the road was. We had one member put on a life-jacket and swim out towards a car that was overturned to bring someone back. And that was on a regular basis for about two hours,” Serr said.

About 1,100 homes had been evacuated in Abbotsford, adding to others in various parts of British Columbia, including in Merritt, where the entire town of 7,000 people was forced to leave after the sanitation system failed.

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Nearly 300 people trapped overnight in their vehicles by mudslides on a highway in British Columbia were being flown to safety by helicopters Monday while authorities sought to determine if anyone was swept up in the flow of debris set off by torrential rain.

A yellow Cormorant chopper dropped people off near the community center in the town of Agassiz before taking off for another rescue trip.

“Trapped between two slides are approximately 275 additional people, including 50 children, who were advised to shelter in place overnight as debris was unstable and unsafe to cross,” the City of Vancouver and Canada Task Force 1 said in a joint release.

Multiple highways in British Columbia were closed due to the downpour.

Melanie Forsythe said her drive home from Vancouver to Hope, British Columbia, had her making at least five detours as rain washed out a bridge, closed roads and trapped her overnight between two mudslides before a helicopter landed on the highway and carried her to Agassiz.

Forsythe, who was with her boyfriend, Shawn Ramsay, and a friend, made it to the town about 18 hours after they were forced to stop on Highway 7 with nearly 300 other travelers.

“All three of us were kind of hyping each other up, saying it’s going to be good, we’re going to get out of here. But then we all had moments like, ‘Is this it? Is this the last time we’re going to see our kids?’ We were talking to our parents and our families, but it was just a scary situation,” she said.

Forsythe said everyone in her vehicle joined about two dozen people on the flight to Agassiz, where nearly 80 others from the highway had already arrived.

Forsythe said their vehicles were expected to be towed. Her group was about a nine-hour drive from home and couldn’t find a hotel room to spend the night.

Twelve people had been rescued from Highway 7 by the local fire department Sunday evening before the Vancouver Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Team was called in Monday

Jashanpreet Singh and his wife, Harleen Kaur, were also caught between the two slides Sunday and said they came upon a vehicle that had been partially crushed by a slide.

A 9-year-old boy was injured and had blood coming out of his nose and ears, Kaur said. Firefighters who were first to the scene Sunday were able to take the boy to care, she said.

The couple was flown out Monday. Singh said they learned a valuable lesson because they had no food or water with them.

The deluges in parts of the province also caused the interior town of Merritt to issue an evacuation order Monday, warning its 7,000 residents not to use water from faucets or flush toilets.

Flood warnings and watches were issued on rivers and streams for areas from Merritt south to the border with the United States, the lower Fraser region and sections of southern Vancouver Island.