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Emergency Crews Trying to Save Reserve Homes From Rising Flood Waters

Posted on: Sunday, 22 April 2007, 19:09 CDT

NIPAWIN, Sask. (CP) - Pumping crews worked around the clock on the weekend to save dozens of homes on a reserve northeast of Saskatoon where flooding has forced more than 600 people to flee as the water rises towards record levels.

Roughly 100 emergency workers scrambled to patch leaks in the major dikes around the Red Earth First Nation, northeast of Saskatoon, where more than half the residents were evacuated Friday.

"This is very hard work, they're carrying a lot of sandbags around," Richard Kent, a spokesman for the Prince Albert Grand Council, told a news conference Sunday. "In some parts, they can't get in with quads, so they're physically carrying sandbags up and down a dike. So we're spelling them off quite often."

Kent says reserve officials were trained and ready to react quickly because of the lessons they learned in the wake of similar flooding and evacuations last year.

"They really did their practice and training and it's showing," he said. " They had lists made up of the priorities they wanted moved out first and they got the operations centre up and running quickly."

There were no additional evacuations Sunday after 16 communities had declared a state of emergency by Saturday, giving them more powers to restrict access to roads and to take action to preserve roads and bridges. Eight other communities also reported flooding, but did not declare an emergency.

Most of the people evacuated where sent to hotels and motels in Saskatoon and Prince Albert, but 124 people found temporary shelter at a community centre in Saskatoon, where they bedded down on cots and were served food and hot coffee.

Officials suggested Sunday the evacuations could last several days because peak flood levels may not occur until mid-May.

Government officials also continued to urge people with homes and cabins on Fishing Lake to pack up their belongings and forget about trying to build makeshift sandbag dikes around their property.

"There had been a significant amount of sandbagging going on by individuals," said Colin King, a spokesman for the provincial government's Public Safety Department. "Local officials are now strongly advising all of the property owners to focus their efforts on asset recovery."

The latest flood forecast is that water levels in Fishing Lake and Waldsea Lake will rise by up to 35 centimetres over the next two to three weeks, while several other lakes and rivers are also rising a few centimetres each day.

On Fishing Lake, about 300 homes and cabins are in jeopardy and many are already flooding, but officials say it's too early to give a damage estimate. About 50 cabins on Waldsea Lake have also been flooded.

A few of the 800 people living on the Yellow Quill First Nation east of Saskatoon were forced to evacuate Saturday as water seeped into their homes. Officials said Sunday that they're seeing record water levels in creeks and rivers that flow into nearby Nut Lake.

Source: Canadian Press

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