An evacuation order affecting thousands of Brantford residents was lifted Thursday afternoon, as officials warned that people should stay away from sightseeing around the Grand River.

Approximately 2,200 homes in the Holmedale, Eagle Place and old West Brant neighbourhoods fell under the evacuation order, which was issued Wednesday morning. City officials estimated that 4,900 residents were affected.

The order was lifted at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. A state of emergency remained in place. Mayor Chris Friel said the state of emergency likely wouldn’t be lifted until next week.

There were other signs of a return to normalcy in Brantford as well. The Lorne Bridge on Colborne Street and the Veterans Memorial Parkway Bridge were both reopened. The Brantford Charity Casino was scheduled to reopen at 8 p.m. Thursday, and the downtown Market Centre parkade was expected to reopen on Friday.

Schools that had been closed Wednesday and Thursday due to the evacuation order were to be closed again on Friday. Pedestrian bridges over the Grand, which were damaged this week, will remain closed indefinitely.

After the evacuation order was lifted, it was announced that an evacuation centre set up at Assumption College would close as of 8 p.m. A second evacuation centre, at the Woodman Park Community Centre on Grey Street, would remain open indefinitely.

Authorities warned that some evacuated homes would be without electricity or natural gas until those services could be returned. No timetable was given for that to happen.

Friel said the city had received numerous reports of people heading to the river to see its height and speed for themselves – something he said people should not be doing.

“People need to use basic common sense here,” he said earlier in the day.

“Stay away from the river. If a road is closed, do not move the pylon to go down and take pictures.”

The mayor’s concerns were reiterated by the Grand River Conservation Authority.. A three-year-old boy disappeared into the Grand Wednesday morning near Grand Valley, 100 kilometres away.

“We don’t want to see any more tragedies from this event,” said Dwight Boyd, the GRCA’s director of engineering.

Friel noted that this week’s flooding was an unusual situation precipitated mainly by the ice jam upstream in Cambridge.

When that jam released early Wednesday morning, it sent a torrent of water and ice down to Brantford.

“We were at the whims of what the Grand River wanted to do,” the mayor said.

“The Grand River is a flooding river. We’re used to it. We are not used to … what we just saw.”

As of late Thursday morning, the river was six metres deep – down slightly from the seven-metre peak, but well above the 0.2-metre level normally seen during the summer months.

River flow data on the GRCA website showed that the Grand was moving through Brantford at more than 2,000 cubic metres per second during the morning. It had peaked at more than 3,000 cubic metres per second the previous day.

By 2 p.m., an ice jam in the Tutela Heights area had cleared, allowing water to again move freely out of the city – and dropping the measured flows in Brantford below 1,000 cubic metres per second almost immediately, according to the GRCA’s website.

The normal flow level in Brantford during dry summer weather is 20 cubic metres per second.