Apr 11
18
More Flooding in Western Canada
Preparing for the water in Medicine Hat
Courtesy of CBC –
Manitoba officials were working quickly Monday to build higher dikes along the Assiniboine River, while their counterparts in Saskatchewan warned that flooding will remain a threat for the rest of the month.
For the past week, much of the Prairie provinces has been flooded or in danger of being so, with parts of the region seeing the highest water levels in 150 years.
About 700 people in Manitoba have already been forced from their homes, dozens of roads have been closed, and officials are urging more vigilance.
“Many of the crests are some time off,” Emergency Measures Minister Steve Ashton said on Sunday. “We’re not even necessarily at the end of the beginning of the spring flood stage.”
Dikes along the Assiniboine upstream of Winnipeg were built to withstand water levels seen in 1976, the worst year on record. But the river was ice-free that year, and officials worry that ice jams this year will make water levels worse than they would otherwise be.
“We have not had a dike breach at this time — just over-topping,” Steve Topping with Manitoba Water Stewardship said. “Equipment is following the ice jam as it progresses down the stream and they’re raising the dikes to contain the waters.
Temperatures are forecast to rise this week, so more snow melt is expected.
The forecast peaks for the Assiniboine River have increased because of the snow and rain that fell across Saskatchewan over the weekend, CBC News meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe said.
Souris overflowing
The Souris River is already overflowing its banks in some areas and will get additional snow on Monday.
In neighbouring Saskatchewan, the worst case scenario for flooding does not appear to be materializing. But there, too, officials called for vigilance. The Saskatchewan Watershed Authority said many water flows in the southern half of the province have hit a plateau because cold weather is slowing the melt.
A dozen communities have declared states of emergency and more than 400 people in two First Nations communities have been forced from their homes because of flooding.
Water continues to flow down Wascana Creek and into the engorged Qu’Appelle River, and the peak in Regina is still a week away.
Helping each other out
“It’s like a war zone here with everybody moving and stuff floating around,” said Len Antal, who lives on Crooked Lake the Qu’Appelle River valley. “Everybody down here has just been unbelievable helping each other out.”
“If the wind ever picks up and the ice breaks up and starts to move, like really move, it’ll just shear houses down like toothpicks.”
In Alberta, the city of Medicine Hat remained under a state of emergency Monday, but elsewhere in the province, flooding appeared to be subsiding. Officials are still concerned, however, about the snowpack in the Cypress Hills border region with Saskatchewan. The snow has barely begun to melt and could carry torrents of water into area waterways.
