news Officials say about 200 homes damaged in some way by Manitoba flooding

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Officials say about 200 homes damaged in some way by Manitoba flooding


1 hour, 20 minutes ago





By The Canadian Press

ST. CLEMENTS, Man. - A rush of flood water and shifting slabs of ice three metres thick have damaged many homes along the Red River north of Winnipeg.
Officials said Monday that about 200 houses have been affected in some way - everything from flooded basements to more serious concerns that have made some homes a writeoff. It wasn't yet clear how many would be permanently uninhabitable.
And there were indications more trouble could be on the way.
"There are some homes that are still sitting under four feet of water and some homes that are not going to be livable again," Steve Strang, mayor of St. Clements, said via cellphone as he toured the hardest-hit areas of his sprawling rural municipality.
"We're trying to assess things, to get people back into their homes to salvage what they can."
Crews have been battling the swollen Red River for weeks by using ice-breaking machines to try to keep the water flowing and setting down sandbags and dikes to protect properties.
Efforts were overwhelmed on the weekend when a sudden, massive ice jam sent a rush of water spilling over the banks about 20 kilometres south of where the river empties into Lake Winnipeg. Some 100 homes were evacuated. Sixty people had to be rescued, including a handful who climbed onto a rooftop to stay dry.
"This was the worst-case scenario that I've seen. Nobody could have prepared for it," Strang said.
The Manitoba government promised disaster financial assistance to cover evacuation costs and losses not covered by insurance.
The ice jam moved downstream Monday and water levels were dropping, but officials were bracing for more trouble all along the Red River in the days and weeks to come.
"This has been a unique and very challenging time," said Steve Ashton, minister responsible for emergency measures.
It's not clear when the flood threat will ease. Recent heavy rains in North Dakota are expected to send a second crest downstream into Manitoba later this month. That crest will still be well below community ring dikes, but rising levels were already swamping more farmland and rural roads south of Winnipeg.
"The flooded area is growing day by day ... it is getting to be (16 kilometres) wide in some areas," said senior flood forecaster Alf Warkentin.
There are other areas of the province where the flood threat is still taking shape. The snow has yet to melt around the low-lying community of Fisher River northwest of Winnipeg, and the Assiniboine River that brings water in from western Manitoba is still rising.
"We are going to maintain a very high state of vigilance, I mean the highest possible state of vigilance, over the next days, quite frankly weeks," Ashton said.
Manitobans are used to some amount of flooding every spring, but this year is proving to be one of the worst in decades because of a triple-whammy of rough weather.
Rain saturated the ground just before it froze in November, which left little room to absorb melting snow this spring. Heavy snowfall in North Dakota sent more meltwater into the Red River. And below-average temperatures created thick river ice that is proving slow to break up.
The river has already flooded a lot of farmland and many roads south of Winnipeg, including the main highway between the capital city and the United States border.
However, communities in the area have been well-protected by massive dikes that were expanded after the so-called flood of the century in 1997.
The crest of the Red River that hit Fargo, N.D., last month crossed into the border town of Emerson, Man., last week, but remained well below the town's dike.
Winnipeg has escaped serious flood damage thanks to its floodway, a massive ditch that diverts rising water around the city before dumping it back into the river.