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About 40 residents, however, are refusing to leave, a decision city emergency officials said Thursday is putting the lives of emergency crews at risk.

“We are not out of this by a long shot,” said Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun, at an early-morning news conference Thursday. He said those who were refusing to leave were likely farmers located in the eastern part of Sumas Prairie who are worried about getting water and food to their livestock.

A broken water main is making it difficult to get water to farmers who defied the order, but efforts are underway to find and fix the leaks, said Braun.

Braun said he didn’t know exactly how many animals were lost to the flood but added that the losses to livestock, property, and infrastructure in Abbotsford would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.